Some More News - Some More News: How (And Why) The Right Stole Christianity

Episode Date: April 24, 2024

That's not good. It's loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up, loosening up,. Yes. Okay, so we're all set up. One quick note, since we're doing this religion thing, could you actually try and work in some lines about how much Jesus loved corn?

Okay. Is that accurate? I don't understand the question. Sorry. It's just that we really need to offload all these corn cream survival jars, and I'm thinking maybe we can rope in our religious fanbase that we definitely have. Oh! That's what all these new jars are then.

I wasn't sure they were all mixed with my pee jars. We could sell those too maybe. Way ahead of you on that one. Whatever we can do to make some extra money at this point, you know, now that we're on Warmbow's payroll. You got your envelope full of buttons too, huh? Little shit is gonna put us in the poor house. How can someone run away and still never leave? We need to find him and eat him.

I'm sorry, but it's true. You know that's what he wants, right? He made a big stink and ran away and he's waiting for us to go find him, but I'm not giving him the satisfaction. He will come crawling back soon enough. He has to, I mean, who else does he have but us? You know, he's probably out there.

He's out there now, he's crying. He's all cold and alone. Nobody to talk to or put their hand up inside him we've been rolling by the way oh hey howdy ho it is the show we'll uh we will we will cut all that other stuff and hey now here's some more news. Cody wants you to know-de about Christianity. No, no, please, please, please keep watching. Let me finish. And the healing magic of Jesus Christ. And corn, he loved corn.

And corn. And more specifically, we're talking about the American version of Christianity and the healing magic of Jesus Christ. Or even more specifically, the right-wing American version of Christianity and the healing magic of Jesus Christ? Because here's some news.

The sequel, American Christianity is almost completely synonymous with right-wing politics and morals, despite the fact that those morals, spoilers for this episode, don't necessarily line up with the actual religion. And that's weird, isn't it? How'd that happen?

Is everyone on the left just a godless Satanist? Only on the weekends, am I right? Hold for applause. Are they applauding? Go to the title. Did we go to the title? General Dr. Reverend Cody's, How the Rat Stole Christianity.

Hey, it's still me. And as the title suggests, today's episode is exploring the long history of American Christianity and the politics that have been injected into it. In case you were worried, this isn't really gonna be a judgment on religion itself. I'm not gonna preach about Christianity being good or bad,

or whether or not God exists, or tell you to subscribe to my zine about how there's a fleet of invisible spaceships piloted by the wise Ashtar race over the planet, but that zine is available upon request and I will pay you to read it. No, the purpose of this video is to analyze Christianity's influence on American politics and society along with how politics also influenced

American Christianity. Because whether or not you believe that the Christian God exists, a whole lot of other people do. People who vote and make laws and repeal those laws and do other stuff as well, one assumes. Somebody made this shirt after all. Seven out of 10 Americans at least identify as Christian

per a 2020 Public Religion Research Institute poll. On top of that, this version of Christianity is uniquely American compared to other countries in which Christianity is practiced. Hey, did you watch the Super Bowl this year? If so, you probably saw this. I We can Oh, yeah, he does have us in his name big deal I have Odie in my name, like the dog, and he loves Mondays?

I don't know. Anyway, that clip was from the He Gets Us campaign, a movement that promotes, you guessed it, Jesus and Christianity. That ad, plus ones that aired during the 2023 Super Bowl, are part of a billion dollar multi-year campaign investment to promote Christ through TV and social media.

It's neat and glad that Jesus guy is finally getting some mainstream success. So why spend so much money on promoting a religion that most Americans already identify with? Well, you probably noticed how progressively those ads are framing the church. And it just so happens that actual church attendance is at an all time low in this country. Surveys estimate that around six or seven

in 10 Americans identify as Christian, which is significantly lower than the whopping 92% recorded in 1972. And of course, that's people self-reporting themselves as Christian. A recent report on cell phone data shows that actual attendance is even lower. Also, yeah, apparently we know that from your cell phone data. That's haunting. Obviously,

the COVID-19 pandemic impacted church attendance numbers, but a growing number of Americans are reporting that they don't associate with any religion at all. The reasons vary more than you think. Some of them are pretty mundane. But of course, these surveys also saw a sizable chunk of people who left the church due to feeling like they don't fit in or having bad experiences or because of their gender identity or being upset at church scandals

or having conflicting politics. Typically, younger adults don't seem to feel welcome in a church environment and fear that their life choices wouldn't be accepted. A 2021 report by the Springtide Research Institute found that half of the 13 to 25 year olds surveyed didn't think churches and other Christian houses of worship cared about the social issues they cared about, which included income inequality, racial injustice,

gender equity, gun control, and rights for immigrants among others. And so from these surveys, what might be the most telling is that only 14% of evangelicals left their church because they quote, no longer believe. And that's actually pretty low. So in other words, people aren't leaving the church in droves because they don't leaving the church in droves

because they don't believe in a higher power, but rather that they don't believe in the church, probably because of all the things I just mentioned. I mean, listen, if you live in America, you already know the problem, the disconnect between what Christianity teaches and the terrible things people do and say in the name of it. You know, like wars or that Dennis Quaid pilot film.

Equally bad things, those. And so you might look at these He Gets Us ads and think, yeah, finally. It was only a matter of time until somebody decided to modernize the church. The campaign spokesman, Greg Miller, said, quote, our goal is to really show that Jesus loved and cared for anyone and everyone.

The hegetsus.com website also says that Jesus loves gay people and Jesus loves trans people. Good for them. I'm sure there isn't anything bad we're about to reveal in the next sentence. See? This is technically the next sentence and I'm not saying a bad thing.

This sentence on the other hand is going to tell you that the He Gets Us campaign has received major funding from the Signatory, a subsidiary of the Servant Foundation. The Servant Foundation provides funding for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal group that's responsible for throttling and overturning LGBTQ rights and women's rights. It's also the turd nest that hatched

that scary little freak Mike Johnson and most notably helped overturn Roe v. Wade. The good news is that this was back in 2023 and the Servant Foundation no longer oversees the He Gets Us campaign. The bad news is that it is now being run and the Servant Foundation no longer oversees the He Gets Us campaign. The bad news is that it is now being run by a new charity group named Come Near,

which is financially backed by David Green, the billionaire owner of Hobby Lobby. His son, Mark Green, also serves on Come Near's board of directors. If you don't recall the deal with Hobby Lobby, let me jog that memory. Hobby Lobby Corporation, owned by the Green family of Oklahoma City,

claims its owners religious beliefs should prevent it from making some birth control products available in its employee health plan. The Department of Justice has ordered one of the nation's largest craft stores to hand over illegally acquired artifacts from Iraq. Hobby Lobby will now have to pay a $3 million fine after buying more than 5,500 rare tablets and bricks. The company making worldwide headlines with this

letter sent to employees last week. It reads, in part, we serve a God who will guide us through this storm. Oh right, they're kind of monsters? The company is most famous for forcing employees to work over a pandemic and restricting their benefits and stealing artifacts like some kind of Indiana Jones villain. And they did all of that in the name of their religion, which seems like a quick and easy way to make people hate your religion. So it's a tad ironic that they're now funding

the PR campaign aimed at undoing the thing they helped to cause. Now, to be fair and balanced and saucy, but sweet with a smoky finish, He Gets Us says that their intention isn't to entice people to start attending church, but it does invite those who visit their website to sign up for their newsletter for people to connect with their community,

get content revolving around Jesus Christ, get Bible reading plans, and attend special events in person, which all just sounds like what a church does. Like if it's not to get people to attend church, I'm not sure what it's for. See, I wanted to start with this campaign because it's kind of a microcosm of the larger problem.

On the surface, these ads seem very positive. And all they're doing is pointing out that Christianity teaches love and compassion and not being a dickwad about things. And then the moment you dig into it, just a little bit more, you realize that the people pushing these ads don't actually

believe in them, and probably just want to get church numbers up by pretending to be progressive. And in spite of what he gets us says, a whole lot of Christians lead the fight against laws that protect the rights and lives of LGBTQ people. That doesn't seem very loving. The history of misogyny and throwing hurdles at women's health? Not loving either. Christianity was a big part of the civil rights movement, but has largely been the significant backbone for the pasty body of racism in this country. Then there's the whole... What's it called? Christian nationalism. Christian nationalism is an ideology that is based around the idea that this is a Christian nation, that this was founded as a Christian nation, and therefore it should be a Christian

nation today and should be so in the future. What this has led to some decades later is the new apostolic reformation leaders, the apostles and the prophets that are really at the head of this movement were some of the earliest to support Donald Trump in 2016. And they've remained steadfast in that support. They were at the very avant-garde of trying to get the 2020 election overturned in the wake of Joe Biden's victory

and mobilizing folks to be at January 6th. Boy, that doesn't seem to be loving at all. Opposite of loving. We should invent a word for that. And again, this is all stuff we already kind of know, but don't stand back and really look at. Like we just accept that regular evangelicals are going to vote for Trump.

Again, sure, there's some discord among the evangelical base regarding Trump's morality, but there's still a large amount of evangelists who are hell bent, heaven bent to get him reelected to the point that many Trump supporters believe God sent him to rule over all of us. And on June 14th, 1946,

God looked down on his planned paradise and said, I need a caretaker. So God gave us Trump. That's a video that Trump shared and other people presumably watched and enjoyed and agreed with. And like, how did that happen? Again, I know this isn't new news, but seriously, how did an obvious con man who embodies the opposite of Christian teaching

become such a religious icon to the point that some people think he was sent by God, or at the very least, fighting on the side of Jesus. But I think if you had a real election and Jesus came down and God came down and said, I'm going to be the scorekeeper here, I think would win there, I think would win in Illinois and I think would win in New York, which is all places in theory. Look, politicians using the Bible or religion in general

to gain favor or manipulate people isn't new. But it's pretty darn wild that this is the guy that Christians are getting behind. Because despite this church exodus, there are certainly a lot of people who still consider themselves Christians while siding with progressives on all of these issues, like the writer of this episode.

And I imagine those people are very frustrated by this current state of things. And so after the break, we're going to look into the history of how Christian values and right-winged values got intertwined. But for now, there's only one set of gods this show has to answer to, our sponsors. Also the Ashtar, of course, and Xenu, Xenu's there too.

And God willing other deities. Anyway, ads be with you. And cut. What? Great job Sticky, that was perfect. But for safety, let's do another take of everything you already said, but this time let's work in a little more pattern about corn.

Okay, two things. Number one, you've never directed the show before. Like ever, what's going on? And two, we wrote the script ahead of time. There's no corn stuff. I can't just add corn stuff. Are we still rolling? Motherfuck, can we actually cut?

Boy, those Teslas sure seem to be terrifying. There might be one hiding in your attic right now, waiting, don't look. And wouldn't you know it, I just read on ground news that Tesla is laying off 10% of its workforce. You see, Grubby, ground news is a news aggregation site and app that we at the Shoddy specifically sought out as a sponsor. And we did that because their platform is great

for learning fun things about the news. And not fun things. For example, only the left and center leaning headlines mentioned that those Tesla layoffs are because of poor car sales, while the right-leaning sites largely omit that part. Hmm, how strange. You see, ground news shows you how the media around the world is covering any single story

and compares and contrasts that coverage based on things like their political lean and who owns the publication. Like if Elon Musk owned an online publication someday, it would be good to know that. I wonder if that webpage would also crash a bunch of times. Oh, you can't get the website wet either? Gah, terrible products.

So you should check them out, the good product, ground.news slash smn. It's a pretty darn important tool to have right now. For example, they have an elections page that includes a blind spot section, showing you which stories aren't being covered by one particular side. So once again, go to ground.News slash SMN.

You can subscribe for as little as 40% off with unlimited access through our link this month only. What they're doing is more important today than ever. And I encourage you to check them out. The link is in the description. Don't go in that attic. That's what it wants. It also wants to like crash and get like caught on fire.

Amen. I mean, amen. get like caught on fire. Amen. I mean, amen. Welcome back. Before we took our moment of reflection and prayer to capitalism, our God the coin, Cha-ching be his name, we were talking about Christianity and how the right stuck a claim in it.

Just really nailed into it, like something. I'll think of a simile later. In any case, let's look at the history of when Christianity and Republicans came together like booger glue. And while abortion is, of course, going to make a Thanos cameo in there, the original meet-cute was actually segregation.

You hear of it? You have, and you think it's bad, yes? Okay, good. Well, here is some news for you then. In 1954, the Brown v. Board of Education decision desegregated public schools. Huzzah! But in turn, that caused a massive shift

in white students dropping out of public school and moving to private religious schools. You see, private schools don't have to abide by pesky things like the Constitution. And so it's no coincidence that a bunch of new private schools opened up right around this time. It was a loophole used by racists who didn't want to share their space with non-white people.

As this Politico article lays out, this was quickly challenged in 1969, when black parents in Holmes County, Mississippi, took the Treasury Department to court to prevent tax exempt status from being granted to three new whites only private schools. They argued that due to their discriminatory policies, they shouldn't be considered charitable institutions.

They would eventually win this, but not before white flight caused a massive dropout in students attending desegregated schools to the point that there were no white students attending Holmes County public schools by 1970. This was of course happening everywhere. And the first half of the 1970s saw more than 3,000 segregated private schools enroll 750,000 white students.

As that Holmes County case continued, the court ordered a preliminary injunction, which is a fancy way of saying that they made a temporary decision to stop the actions the plaintiffs had deemed harmful. In this case, that meant ordering that any private school practicing segregation would lose their tax exempt status. This of course pissed off evangelicals twofold.

The first fold being the obvious racists within their ranks. The second fold being the very few not actively racist but still not anti-racist evangelicals under the impression that their religious liberties were being attacked. Eventually the US District Court upheld and cemented the new IRS policy to not grant federal tax exemption

to racially discriminatory private schools. And thus began, at least in this modern political context, the tradition and tactic of organizations hijacking the concept of religious freedom to do selfish and fucked up things. God demands I bang your spouse. You see, one of the schools targeted by the IRS was the fundamentalist Bob Jones University,

which didn't admit black students. Probably because Bob Jones Jr.'s father is Bob Jones Sr. just plain thought that racial segregation was good, even biblical. Bad job at names, Bob. But instead of saying any of that, his fellow Christian conservative friends, Paul Weyrich and Jerry Falwell,

persuaded him to shift the debate towards religious freedom. After all, it's a tad bit easier to swallow than, us honkeys can't learn alongside black people. You hear? They formed an argument based on how, because they didn't accept any federal funding or aid, aside from, you know, not paying taxes, they didn't need to answer to the government.

The IRS and Bob Jones University battled back and forth, with the university initially trying to placate the IRS by admitting one black student who they also hired to work part-time until he quit and left the school a month later. Without looking it up, I'm going to assume that the kid did not have a good time there. No, I'm not gonna look it up.

After that, they were like, okay, fine, we got, okay. We'll let black students in, but only married ones. Then in 1975, they like, okay, fine. We got, okay. We'll let black students in, but only married ones. Then in 1975, they said, oh, fine. Unmarried black students are allowed, but no interracial dating. The IRS was still not satisfied and finally revoked Bob Jones University's tax exemption status in January of 1976.

It should be noted that Bob Jones University did eventually lift its interracial dating ban in the year, guess before I say it, 2000. Did you guess? Did you guess the year 2000? The university also did apologize for its racist policies in 2008. Oh, and it also became tax racist policies in 2008. Oh, and it also became tax exempt again in 2017.

Lesson learned. Anyway, going back to 1976, the same year as Bob Jones University's tax exempt status was withdrawn and evangelicals began to enter the political arena, something that they had traditionally kept away from. Why did they do this? Well, 1976 marked the beginning of a presidential campaign

for a candidate who would finally represent them on the national stage. A candidate that would mark the beginning of the rise of the ultra religious right wing. Any guesses who that was? Evangelicals were not involved in politics, certainly not in a organized way. Many were not even registered to vote.

They considered politics dirty and kind of beneath them. Glory, glory, hallelujah. Until Jimmy Carter came along. Not who you imagined, is it? That's right, the politician that brought devout evangelical Christianity to the forefront of American national politics was former peanut farmer, American dad character, and Guinea worm Hitler, Jimmy Carter.

Part of Carter's pitch and appeal was that he read the Bible daily, taught Sunday school, and even preached at churches. A huge part of his success during the 1976 election was having this previously unpolitical, evangelical Christian voting bloc come together and win him the presidency. And the right definitely took notice.

Having Bob Jones University fall to the evil of just needing to pay your fucking taxes was the biggest rallying cry for evangelicals and had caused them to wonder if the government would further interfere with religious institutions. And guess which political party runs on cutting taxes and reducing government regulation? Did you guess?

So you take those worried evangelicals peanut butter and mix it with the Republicans chocolate need of a loyal group of voters, and what do you get? Jesus pieces? So to self invent Jesus pieces and get a hen. So this new Christian right was spearheaded by Republican Paul Weyrich and conservative Christian televangelist Jerry Falwell.

You know, the two guys that told Bob Jones he was being too loud about the white supremacy earlier and who by the mid 1970s had one of the biggest megaphones any political party could ever want. Televangelism really erupted in the 1970s and Jerry Falwell was riding that wave. Jerry Falwell turned a small Virginia church of 35 into a Christian's communications empire.

A Virginia television preacher with an audience of millions. Damn you TV, you sexy enchantress! This growing national reach is what of course made a handful of televangelists so politically powerful. This is also when they immediately began to turn on the Democrats. You see, Falwell and Weyrich didn't care

for Carter's diverse cabinet or how he backed civil rights and even supported gay rights activists. And despite the fact that Carter had nothing to do with the IRS taking away their tax exempt status, they still framed him as the enemy in the fight for religious freedom. But this was now the seventies. Segregation wasn't exactly a winning position.

And so they needed a fresh issue for their new moral majority to lean on for support. Luckily for them, Roe v. Wade had just happened. You see, here's a fun, fun, fun, sure fun, fun fact about abortion. Before the late 70s, Christians actually weren't unanimously bothered by it. In 1968, the evangelical Christianity Today

gathered 26 theologians to discuss abortion and contraception, and then published a collective statement saying, quote, "'Whether the performance of an induced abortion is sinful, we are not agreed, but about the necessity of it and permissibility for it under certain circumstances, we are in accord. In short, they couldn't agree on whether abortion was bad,

but they all agreed that it shouldn't be criminalized. But then came Falwell and Weyrich and the need to find a new cause for their religious liberty battle. They had noticed a major uptick in legal abortions after the Roe v Wade decision, and that this concerned many Americans, but especially and specifically Catholics. Unlike other sects of Christianity, Catholicism had been traditionally anti-abortion and anti-contraception even prior to Roe v Wade. As for the uptick, well, yeah, no shit. There was an increase in legal abortions

after abortion was legalized. Who would have thought? Although another fun thing about abortion is that it actually went way down since this initial uptick, probably because of the rise of contraception and sex education, and has recently gone back up

now that Roe v Wade was removed. But anyway, right-wing evangelicals decided to glom onto abortion as an issue, which brought many practicing Catholics into their group and shook up the 1978 midterm elections. And when I say shook up, I mean they rattled them fuckers. Senate races in Minnesota and Iowa in 1978 showed that an anti-abortion pro-life movement could unite the religious right and give them real political power.

In Minnesota, pro-life Republicans won two Senate seats. In Iowa, the Democratic incumbent, Senator Dick Clark, was expected to win by a landslide. He did not. Primarily due to the work of mostly Catholic pro-like life activists. The anti-abortion movement has political clout. That surprised a lot of journalists and political analysts who believed those people made a lot of noise,

but not much difference. So basically the anti-abortion crowd was written off by Democrats, which in turn bit them on the ass. It's actually a little ironic that we're seeing the opposite play out today. But at the time, relying on the non-issue of abortion was a political success.

This moral majority movement used the abortion issue like a Katamari to roll into various evangelical Christians, conservatives, conservative Catholics, conservative Protestants, and conservative Jews to form a giant right-wing ball connected by the abortion web. They also scooped up some pig figurines and paper clips, but we'll figure out a use for those. And so this was a ball big enough

to roll into the 1980 presidential election and wreck up the place. We can, and so help us God, we will make America great again. He said the line! It should be noted that Ronald Reagan was also divorced, an alleged rapist, and was pro-abortion before aligning himself with the Christian right

to become president. Also, an actor. So on top of Donald Trump being all of those things too, he's apparently a plagiarizing hack. Also, Reagan plagiarized it from Hitler. Carter was crushed in the 1980 presidential election against Reagan, and Reagan crushed again in 1984 against Democrat challenger, Walter Mondale.

This marked the moment in which politicians realized that they didn't actually have to practice Christianity to court the religious crowd. And seeing such dramatic results forced Republicans, evangelical or not, to cater to that base in their policies and incorporate evangelical Christian goals into their platform.

This momentum would carry on into George H.W. Bush, Reagan's vice president, to have his own presidential term thanks to the GOP's continued alignment with the Christian right. It was smart for politicians to showcase some version of Christian faith while on the campaign trail, regardless of party.

During their candidacies for US president, both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama played up their Christian faith to help secure some votes and appeal to a few moderate evangelicals. However, the power of the Christian right frayed after the disappointing George W. Bush administration followed by Obama winning the presidency.

The slightly leaner yet louder and more potent Christian right was very much on tilt and eager for someone to emerge and be their champion, a savior. This guy'll do. In 2016, Donald Trump courted evangelicals through invoking God in his speeches, promising to appoint conservative judges to the Supreme Court

and overturn Roe v. Wade, making America more churchy and gaining support from Jerry Falwell like Ronald Reagan did. Wait, that typo, sorry, not Jerry Falwell, that's Jerry Falwell Jr. See, Trump actually did something different there. He's not a complete hack. Falwell used funds from his father's Liberty University

to help support the Trump administration's causes, pushing the limits of Liberty University status as a 501c3 organization. I wonder what happened to that guy. Anyway, along with bumming out evangelicals, it should be noted that Obama's presidency also bummed out racists. And yes, the racist evangelical Venn diagram connects,

but it's worth noting that Trump would once more connect the religious right with outright racists who in turn could join forces once more. Jesus ex-racists, the new empire. And while you'd think that after the now unpopular abortion stance and Trump's extremely embarrassing single term as the pro-crime pandemic president, the religious right would be seeking to rebrand.

But I guess there's still some steam left. Despite a low church turnout, many evangelicals are turning to podcasts, live stream services, and social media for their worship fix rather than their local church. Much like how the television first gave them power, they are now harnessing the worldwide web. And so it's not too different

from the televangelism of the 1970s in which millions of Christians listened to only a handful of preachers that were right-wing power brokers. But this time they're exposed to the widespread 24 seven internet instead of just a few hours of broadcast television each week.

The lack of potential exposure to Christians who are less Trumpy has created such an echo chamber that according to one poll, more Republicans see Trump as a person of faith over Joe Biden, Mitt Romney, and Mike Pence, which is pretty incredible since Biden goes to Catholic mass regularly.

Mitt Romney is publicly known for being a Latter-day Saint, and Mike Pence has been a born-again Christian for decades, and that was after he was a Catholic youth minister. He also just looks and acts like a communion wafer. Meanwhile, Trump is, well, you know. Is that your Bible? It's a Bible. Funniest evil guy in the world.

Maybe they just caught him on a bad day though. Let's give him another shot. You mentioned the Bible, you've been talking about how it's your favorite book. And you said, I think last night in Iowa, some people are surprised that you say that. I'm wondering what one or two of your most favorite Bible verses are I wouldn't want to get into it because to me that's very personal you know when I talk about the Bible it's very personal so I

don't want to get into I don't want to get into there's no verse that means a lot to you that you think about or cite the Bible means a lot to me but I don't want to get into specifics I mean come come on. Even if you're not religious, you can probably assume that Trump is far from living a Christian lifestyle. You probably even suspect that a lot of what the right wing believes is based around them picking and choosing which parts of the Bible to follow

and which to ignore. So just for fun, let's actually look into that. We're gonna go to some juicy non-religious ads, but when we come back, we're gonna have a Bible study. You're so excited. You definitely are. Look, okay, wait. If you come back,

I will have some pizza roll stuffed calzones for you. I promise. Hey, it's Katie. You know, sometimes I think about that intangible lapse in human consciousness between our waking selves and our dream selves. You know, the timeless void. And I wonder if that's the oblivion we all face. But then I have some braised lemongrass tofu nuggets I got from Hungry Rude.

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but only for our listeners and watchers, at babbel.com slash more news. Get up to 60% off at babbel.com slash more news, spelled B-A-B-B-E-L.com slash more news. Rules and restrictions may apply, but since when did that stop us huh there's a rule about is there a rule for tearing up paper there's no rule about so i can just do this but we need the paper Okay, people, we are coming back from ads, doing great so far. Maybe lose the beard though. I feel like I need to reiterate that you do not direct the episodes. No idea what you're saying right now.

It's just a blubbering noise, kind of like a dead squirrel stuck in a tailpipe. But sorry, circling back, did you say earlier that religions are tax exempt? Is that true? I don't like where this is heading. Okay, are we supposed to be rolling? Because we are. Son of a...

Hey, hi, we're apparently back. I guess we can't edit this even though it's not live. We can't, even though it's not live. We can't even know it's not live. All right, anyway, I lied about the pizza roll stuffed calzones. They aren't coming. And trust me, from my experience, you are better off. I will not explain why. Anyway, before the break, we were threatening to do a Bible study.

So let's see if we can dig into this so-called Bible and see what it says about right wing talking points, starting with abortion. As you may suspect, the word abortion doesn't appear in any English translation of the Bible. And there are a lot of different translations, mind you. We're about to use a bunch of different ones. And the closest thing to it is an excerpt in Exodus

in the Old Testament that is referring to a miscarriage with the focus being the harm done to the pregnant woman. And the fetus is discussed as property, not a person. Some pro-choice Christians refer to a verse that teaches rabbis how to induce a miscarriage to unfaithful wives. Not exactly a cool reason, but you know, it's there in English,

unlike the words no abortions ever for any reason. Aside from that, the Bible is neutral when it comes to intentionally induced abortions, with nothing regarding them written in the New Testament either. As we've previously mentioned, there is a significant debate among the Christian faithful regarding abortion.

But per a 2022 Pew Research Survey, the majority of American non-evangelical Protestants and Catholics surveyed didn't think abortion should be outright illegal. Jesus doesn't mention abortion one way or another in biblical texts, but apparently did heal a woman who had been menstruating for 12 years back when being in contact with women on their period

was considered unclean. So he seems to be cool with women's health. WWOBGYN, dude. Regarding gay people, things are a little more muddled. Jesus himself, Jesus Christ himself, doesn't appear to comment on it one way or another, like abortion. Man, you'd think you'd have a hot take about this stuff,

but, uh. Of course, the famous anti-gay quotes come from the Old Testament, before this Jesus guy dropped. Specifically, there, uh. Of course, the famous anti-gay quotes come from the Old Testament, before this Jesus guy dropped. Specifically, there's Leviticus 20, where a man lying with another man is called an abomination,

and they should, quote, surely be put to death. There's some debate about the use of abomination, and some have said the original text was more vague and could have been about rape. But if we take it as what many on the Christian right do, that being gay is bad, well, it also says that they should be put to death.

And so I guess to all of our Christian brothers and sisters out there, I ask, do you wanna do that? If you wanna do that, you should say you wanna do that. Because it's perhaps even more noteworthy to point out the other things that Leviticus says you should be put to death for,

including but not limited to generally adulterers, boning your daughter-in-law, boning a woman and her mother, high five. Also the woman and mother have to be killed, high five or sinned, or cursing your mother or father, all death. Other punishments laid out include exile for anyone who has sex on their period,

or anyone who sees their relative naked. Also kill the palm readers. If you work seven days in a row, death. Also being defiant to your parents is death. Which is all to say that the Old Testament has some very stern rules about a lot of stuff that we don't make laws about or even take seriously. We just honed in on that one part

and ignored all the other stuff. That's odd, isn't it? It's like saying Jurassic Park is a movie about hacking. Meanwhile, there are verses that are against the hatred and discrimination of gay and queer people, or rather all people in general. Just do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Some guy said it allegedly.

Specifically, sew in everything. Do to others what you would have them do to you. He who is without sin cast the first stone, et cetera. And of course, technically speaking, homosexual and heterosexual weren't really terms or even the social constructions they are today until the 1860s. And even then, they weren't exactly those words

since they were originally coined in German, not English. Again, the Bible has been translated hundreds of times. And there's a case to be made that the use of the word was a mistranslation merging of the Greek terms malakoi and arsenicatoi. Malakoi literally means soft in Greek, which could be associated with being cowardly, lazy and effeminate, which is villainized

because of the deep pockets of big chore, but more importantly, because of the patriarchy of the time and of now too come to think of it. The other mistranslated word arsenicatoi in English means, well, that's up for debate. Some believe it's a compound word meaning male bed, and several American churches and theologians haven't come to a consensus of what that means.

Some have said that it's definitely a condemnation of homosexuality. Others say male prostitution. Others say male on male sexual assault. Others say pederasty. It's debatable. Someone made a whole movie about it. 1946 is the first time in any language,

in any translation, the word homosexual ends up in the Bible, right? I found that incredibly hard to believe. Who made this decision? Why did they make this decision? How did they make this decision? It's also important to note that in the Martin Luther translation of the German Bible

from 1534, over 300 years before a German coined the term homosexuality, the words malakoi and arsinekoitai were translated to nabenschander, which when translated to English means boy molester. That's really quite different from an act of love between two consenting adults, isn't it? At the end of the day, there are two sliding scales to think about here. You are either somebody who thinks the Bible is referring to child molesters, or was really trying to point at gay people specifically, and in fact, only gay men specifically.

Though it does include separate passages for both men and women who fuck animals and who will all, you guessed it, be put to death, including the animals that were fucked. The second sliding scale is how important do you find the Bible to be? Either it's a book of lies or a moral tale or something absolute that we should make laws around. And this is all to say that you have to land on a very narrow and specific place on those scales to think that we should make laws punishing gay people because the Bible says so. And if you were such a person,

then I assume you'd also want laws punishing adulterers and the greedy and drunkards and people who screw on their periods and curse their parents since they are also on that shit list, the death list. You get death. Although if you're such a purist, you'd probably also follow the original translations the same way Star Wars nerds would ignore

the many, many remasters. Jehoah shot first. Word from the Bible. Again, it's weird that this thing mentioned in passing gets so much attention while all the other parts around it get ignored. It's one of the most overt cases of cherry picking. And people want to base like political policies

around these few sentences. It's just weird. Especially when that policy goes against so many other parts of the Bible. Racism and discrimination, the Bible has versus against that. Xenophobia, there are verses against that. Hate against the existence and rights

of trans and queer people. The Bible has verses which contradict that. And in fact, there are church leaders that use scripture to fight against it. Good old fashioned misogyny. Yep, there are verses that conflict with that too. Some people even argue that Jesus says you should pay your taxes,

although I suspect he was being a little cheeky and clever there. And while being against Trumpism isn't found in the Bible, obviously not, idiot. I mean, obviously not. But idolatry is. Even conservative Christians from Turning Point USA, the Christian Post, and the Daily Fucking Liar

acknowledged this and denounced the God Made Trump video. How could they not? Not having other gods and not committing idolatry are the first two rules of the Big Ten. They and every person in the GOP should know this. Not just idolizing Trump before their God, but idolizing America before their God too. Pretty weird that the same people

trying to keep monuments of the Ten Commandments in front of government buildings and schools don't actually follow those rules. Number 11, thou shalt not read. These odd contradictions between what the Christian right claims and what some biblical scripture says would explain why religious leaders from different Christian denominations

could lean either Democrat or Republican while being influenced by that very same Bible. There are many Christian leaders who use their faith as the crux of progressive movement, aside from Jimmy Carter. Christian theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a vocal protester of Nazism and antisemitism during World War II while living in Germany,

and was hanged for his connection to an attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Alice got him. Chung Hyun-kyung is a Presbyterian Christian theologian that preaches to wide audiences about ecofeminism. Kittredge Cherry is a lesbian journalist turned priest who has promoted activism for feminist and LGBTQ causes since the 1980s.

Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Christian faith was such a large part of the civil rights movement that even the Christian right dares to co-opt him. Well, a whitewashed version of him for their own cause. Although lately, at least one evangelist has tried a new tactic of just claiming he wasn't Christian at all. And the strange irony was a year later,

they did the same thing for Martin Luther King, who was not a Christian at all, whose life was immoral. I'm not saying he didn't do some social good, and I've always been glad that he was a pacifist or he could have started a real revolution. But you don't honor a non-believer who misrepresented everything about Christ and the gospel. Seems like a worrying precedent to just start changing what it means to be Christian based on your personal racism and politics. But that's also kind of what they have to do

at this point, right? After all, per the Bible, one can interpret that Jesus commanded his followers to heal the sick without compensation, to comfort and help the poor, hungry, naked, unsheltered, and imprisoned, redistribute wealth, and one can argue, stop modern capitalism. He even flipped tables over at that last one.

Of course, your average ex-user these days will say that that was an act of anti-wokeness about trans people or something. My, how we have fallen. And you may also notice that these are things we can do without the help of the Bible. They're just good things to do. For example, many European nations

are getting more secular than Americans and yet are doing better than America at attempting and achieving those Christ-like goals. And while Asian countries like South Korea and Japan still have issues with wealth inequality, they're certainly doing a better job than the US at taking care of their citizens. And that's all without Jesus being a major motivator

and player within their culture's history, especially since both Japan and South Korea have national pension systems, universal healthcare, and universal eldercare for their citizens. This isn't a big reveal or anything, but it seems like you don't have to be a Christian to vote for and advocate policies

that Jesus would be okay with, or dare I say, be vocally supportive of. It seems like good ideas are good ideas, regardless of who says them. Of course, I'm sure that right-wing Christians, especially evangelicals, can cherry pick and cite additional scripture that could be argued to back up their views.

I mean, that's what we just did. But that's also the point we're getting to. The Bible is pretty vague. It's been translated a bunch of different ways and can be used to support pretty much any political belief. It's this joke. I've done everything the Bible says, even the stuff that contradicts the other stuff.

Going back to that sliding scale, whatever you believe about the Bible, it's probably bad to base national policies around it. Not just because religion and government should be separate, but because the Bible itself is a tricky document to interpret. Christianity and the Bible are apolitical in that there is no outright consensus.

The Bible and the faith contain arguments and viewpoints that can fit in either a right-wing or left-wing lens. It's an omnibus of different documents written by several different authors from different eras with different agendas, whether you believe in its divinity or not. It's a now that's what I call God compilation of old laws, poetry, letters, parables, stories, and oral history written down, rather than a consistent through-line vision written by

one author that then handed the reins over to another author and so on. If it were a compilation book about vampires, it would contain the script for Nosferatu, the first book of the Twilight series, and the Castlevania strategy guide. And hundreds of years later, Dracula fans would be debating about whether vampires burned to dust in the daylight or just sparkled with exposed abs. Also, we'd wonder if we should include wall chickens in our floor plans. Maybe we should. Heck, the story of Jesus is told four times in the Bible, written in different time periods and with some differences in each version,

much like a star is born. Which means Bradley Cooper is Jesus? Yes, exactly. The point is that this is precisely why we have that pesky First Amendment with the separation of church and state and whatnot. Because even if you take stock in the Bible by faith, the ambiguity in certain interpretations and its ability to be manipulated

by those interpretations make it far too loose to be a cornerstone for laws. Even if you were a fundamentalist and believed the Bible literally. What parts do you believe literally? And which parts do you dismiss? Do you think we should kill children who tell their parents to go to hell? You fucking freak. Even if you believe that everything written in the Bible is true,

there are still issues in how to interpret that truth. Of course, there are other factors involved in how the Christian right rose to power, including how Jesus and the Christian faith are marketed like a product to Americans. But that's another video. Foreshadowing. The point is that it's not necessarily

Christian faith itself as a problem, but how it has been and continues to be used as a vehicle for the hard right to the point at which we're genuinely voting later this year for whether or not we're going to elect fascist nationalism and a one-day dictator. And it's important to call it out now, more than ever, because I think we're nearing another moment where hard right Christian nationalist values are being pushed forward. They have a House Speaker in place and yet another

Trump candidacy, and they're going to use trans rights as their new religious freedom talking point and once more attempt to gain power. The good news is that it's exactly these same GOP freaks who are driving people away from organized religion. As we said at the start, more and more people are falling out of favor with American Christianity because of its MAGA association or its adherence to MAGA-ish ideas and doctrines.

The bad news is that we just don't know what kind of difference this makes. And if Trump does win this year, it'll very likely revitalize this movement. And folks, folks. Republican front runner and former president Donald Trump increasing his lead in a new national NBC News poll, now up five points in a hypothetical

general election matchup. It's not great. That is of course from about two months ago, but even looking at newer polls, not great. And here's the thing, while a MAGA victory is a win for the Christian nationalist crowd, I'd argue it will not be good for Christianity itself.

One thing we haven't really talked about is how frustrating this all must be for actually religious people trying to follow the positive moral messages in the Bible. Liberal or conservative, it's probably horrifying to watch your religion be hijacked by this guy and used to push unpopular, dare I say fascist, policies. Because besides the obvious problems

with a fascist in charge, it'll probably continue to drive people away from the church while also integrating the church more heavily into its movement. Along with it being dishonest and gross, Christian nationalism and the hijacking of Christian faith for political gain is a far bigger threat to Christianity than anything else.

Yes, even wokeness, heck, even super shredder and that guy was a hardcore Satanist. It's like, I don't know, if a social media site was hijacked by a weird right-wing freak, and over time, everyone who was cool and reasonable left that site, eventually all that would be left is a social media site

filled with Nazis and some stragglers complaining about the Nazis. Similarly, if a religion is hijacked by a bunch of racists and fascists and everyone else flees, then eventually those are the only people who will be left. And that's a pretty good motivator for religious people to want to get rid of all the Nazis. That and the fact that they're the Nazis,

so get rid of them. Because religion and spirituality are about faith. And faith involves being vulnerable and putting yourself out there, often in an embarrassing way. And that can clearly give people great joy and satisfaction and comfort. But unfortunately, that same quality

also makes people easy marks for grifters looking to benefit off of the faith of others. Ha ha! K-Money is fucking back! All rise for the first session of the Church of the Low-Priced Corn Cream. I am your God-Priest, Katie the Cornstole, presiding over the corn room. Be seated. We will now hear opening arguments. Wait. So are you a religious figure or a judge? I am all and none of those things.

But mostly of all, I am registered with the federal government. Now bow to your corn goddess. Bow to your corn goddess, I said. Boop. I forgot I can just hang up. I really should do that more. It's so easy to just hang up. That is the corn cream going.

Oh my gosh. That, wait a second. I think it's the corn cream. Honestly, it's bad either way. So what did we just learn? I completely forgot all of it. I totally forgot what we were talking about. All right.

Bye. ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] Something about cheeses sliced? Cheese and rice? It'll come back to me. Just like a certain somebody came back to us. Am I talking about Jesus or warmbo, you ask? And to that I answer, what's the difference?

Thank you all so much for watching. Be sure to like and subscribe. Be sure to like and subscribe and make sure you check out our merch store which we have and we've got a patreon.com slash some more news. We've got a podcast called even more news where all the podcasts are. You can listen to this show as a podcast called Some More News. I think I said all the things. I think I said all the things. Praise our merch store!