+- +-

+-User

Welcome, Guest.
Please login or register.
 
 
 

Login with your social network

Forgot your password?

+-Stats ezBlock

Members
Total Members: 48
Latest: watcher
New This Month: 0
New This Week: 0
New Today: 0
Stats
Total Posts: 16867
Total Topics: 271
Most Online Today: 119
Most Online Ever: 1155
(April 20, 2021, 12:50:06 pm)
Users Online
Members: 0
Guests: 30
Total: 30

Author Topic: Corporate Fascist Corruption of Christianity  (Read 9416 times)

0 Members and 4 Guests are viewing this topic.

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Corporate Fascist Corruption of Christianity
« on: January 25, 2016, 10:40:40 pm »
The Suicide of the Liberal Church

Posted on Jan 24, 2016

By Chris Hedges

The chapel of The General Theological Seminary in New York City. The seminary, founded in 1817, sold much of its property to developers in recent years. (Julie Jacobson / AP) (graphic at article link)

Paul Tillich wrote that all institutions, including the church, are inherently demonic. Reinhold Niebuhr asserted that no institution could ever achieve the morality of the individual. Institutions, he warned, to extend their lives when confronted with collapse, will swiftly betray the stances that ostensibly define them. Only individual men and women have the strength to hold fast to virtue when faced with the threat of death.

And decaying institutions, including the church, when consumed by fear, swiftly push those endowed with this moral courage and radicalism from their ranks, rendering themselves obsolete.


The wisdom of Tillich and Niebuhr has been borne out in the precipitous decline of the liberal church and the seminaries and divinity schools that train religious scholars and clergy. Faced with shrinking or nonexistent endowments, mounting debts, dwindling memberships, a lack of employment for their graduates and growing irrelevancy in a society that has little use for tepid church piety and the smug arrogance that comes with it, these institutions have fallen into physical and moral decay.

The number of adults in the mainline Protestant churches—Presbyterian, Unitarian-Universalist, Lutheran, Methodist, Episcopalian, Congregationalist—decreased from about 41 million in 2007 to 36 million in 2014, according to the Pew Research Center. And the average age of the congregant is 52. The Catholic Church also is being decimated; its decline has been exacerbated by its decades-long protection of sexual predators within the priesthood and the Vatican’s relentless campaign, especially under John Paul II, to force out of the church priests, nuns and lay leaders who focused their ministries on the poor and the oppressed. The Catholic Church, which has lost 3 million members over the last decade, has seen its hold on the U.S. population fall to 21 percent from 24.
 
Mainline seminaries and divinity schools have been merging or closing, and enrollment at such schools has declined by 24 percent in the last decade. Andover-Newton, founded in 1807, recently shut down. Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, Pa., and Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia plan to merge. Union Theological Seminary, where black liberation, feminist, womanist and queer theologies have their roots, appears to be on the verge of selling “air space” to a developer to construct a luxury 35-to-40-story condominium building on its campus. General Theological Seminary in New York City, a school founded in 1817, has sold much of its property to developers, and it ended tenure for its faculty after the professors went out on strike to demand the removal of Dean and President Kurt Dunkle. Dunkle, who epitomizes the infusion of corporatism into the church, worked for many years as a lawyer doing commercial litigation before being ordained.

“What doomed General Seminary was not just financial mismanagement, but unethical leadership,”
Rob Stephens, a third-year student for the ministry at Union and part of a student movement fighting Union’s building project, said when I spoke with him by phone. “That is what made the faculty walk out. The Union administration, board of trustees and all of us need to learn this lesson and put a halt to the project.

The Union administration has said that Union, by building this luxury condominium, was being as bold as the original founders. This is one thing I can agree on. The original founders envisioned a place for privileged, white men. The original founders called abolitionism ‘fanaticism.’ The founders’ values won’t get us through this storm. Union is bigger than the administration and board. Union should be for all God’s people. If built, this luxury condominium would be a middle finger to Harlem. It would be a middle finger to faith-based social movements.

“This seminary has turned Black Lives Matter into a commodity,” he went on. “They sell this campus as being allied with Black Lives Matter and other social justice movements. But if we are readers of the Bible, we know that saying one thing and doing another leads to internal combustion. Inconsistency of values and actions can only lead to failure. As a seminary community, how can we have more faith in an unstable housing market than in the Gospel? You can’t reconcile luxury condominiums built by an anti-union contractor and no affordable housing with the Gospel of Jesus. This is another example of mainline Christianity casting their lot with capitalism instead of community. When will we learn?”

The self-identified religious institutions that thrive preach the perverted  “prosperity gospel,” the message that magic Jesus will make you rich, respected and powerful if you believe in him. Jesus, they claim, is an American capitalist, bigot and ardent imperialist.     >:( These sects selectively lift passages from the Bible to justify the unjustifiable, including homophobia, war, racism against Muslims, and the death penalty. Yet there are more students—2,067—at the evangelical Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary alone than at the divinity schools and seminaries of Yale, Harvard, Union, Vanderbilt and Chicago, whose combined enrollment is 1,537.

The doctrine these sects preach is Christian heresy. The Christian faith—as in the 1930s under Germany’s pro-Nazi Christian churchis being distorted to sanctify nationalism, unregulated capitalism and militarism.
The mainstream church, which refuses to denounce these heretics as heretics, a decision made in the name of tolerance, tacitly gives these sects credibility and squanders the prophetic voice of the church.

Kevin Kruse in his book “One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian Americadetails how industrialists in the 1930s and 1940s poured money and resources into an effort to silence the social witness of the mainstream church, which was home to many radicals, socialists and proponents of the New Deal. These corporatists promoted and funded a brand of Christianity—which is today dominant—that conflates faith with free enterprise and American exceptionalism. The rich are rich, this creed goes, not because they are greedy or privileged, not because they use their power to their own advantage, not because they oppress the poor and the vulnerable, but because they are blessed.     

And if we have enough faith, this heretical form of Christianity claims, God will bless the rest of us too. It is an inversion of the central message of the Gospel.

You don’t need to spend three years at Harvard Divinity School as I did to figure that out.

Full article:

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-suicide-of-the-liberal-church/

Agelbert NOTE:
Quote
"The mainline churches, by which we mean white denominations, are responsible for many of our greatest social ills, ..."

AGREED.

And they, like the "greed is good" bastards that corrupted this country, began their descent into irrelevancy and chaos when they forgot that respect for all life, not just human life, is a sine qua non REQUIREMENT for the perpetuation of a tool making, self aware species.

Although It certainly was part of the Christian Gospel before the corporate fascists corrupted it, you don't need to read it in the Holy Scripture to know it is true.

« Last Edit: August 20, 2019, 05:30:51 pm by AGelbert »
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Corporate Fascist Corruption of Christianity
« Reply #1 on: January 31, 2016, 07:05:34 pm »
Wise Advice from Webster Tarpley 



Tax Wall Street Party Calls on Iowa and New Hampshire to Stop Fascist Trump at All Costs; Democrats Should Hold Their Noses and Vote for Bernie Sanders to Keep Primaries and Convention Open
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Corporate Fascist Corruption of Christianity
« Reply #2 on: November 24, 2016, 01:14:22 pm »
Agelbert REMINDER to those who will be "offended" (because they are supporters of the President Elect) by the hard truths stated in the article below:
 



TOPICS: Democracy & Government

TAGS: 2016 election, donald trump, hillary clinton, media criticism
Democracy & Government


Farewell, America
 

No matter how the rest of the world looked at us on Nov. 7, they will now look at us differently.

By Neal Gabler | November 10, 2016

The sun sets behind the Jefferson Memorial in Washington. (Photo By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)

America died on Nov. 8, 2016, not with a bang or a whimper, but at its own hand via electoral suicide. We the people chose a man who has shredded our values, our morals, our compassion, our tolerance, our decency, our sense of common purpose, our very identity — all the things that, however tenuously, made a nation out of a country.

Whatever place we now live in is not the same place it was on Nov. 7. No matter how the rest of the world looked at us on Nov. 7, they will now look at us differently. We are likely to be a pariah country. And we are lost for it. As I surveyed the ruin of that country this gray Wednesday morning, I found weary consolation in W.H. Auden’s poem, September 1, 1939, which concludes:


Quote
BY Neal Gabler | November 8, 2016

“Defenseless under the night
 Our world in stupor lies;
 Yet, dotted everywhere,
 Ironic points of light
 Flash out wherever the Just
 Exchange their messages:
 May I, composed like them
 Of Eros and of dust,
 Beleaguered by the same
 Negation and despair,
 Show an affirming flame.”

I hunt for that affirming flame.

This generally has been called the “hate election” because everyone professed to hate both candidates. It turned out to be the hate election because, and let’s not mince words, of the hatefulness of the electorate. In the years to come, we will brace for the violence, the anger, the racism, the misogyny, the xenophobia, the nativism, the white sense of grievance that will undoubtedly be unleashed now that we have destroyed the values that have bound us.

Quote
We all knew these hatreds lurked under the thinnest veneer of civility. That civility finally is gone.

We all knew these hatreds lurked under the thinnest veneer of civility. That civility finally is gone. In its absence, we may realize just how imperative that politesse was. It is the way we managed to coexist.

If there is a single sentence that characterizes the election, it is this: “He says the things I’m thinking.” That may be what is so terrifying. Who knew that so many tens of millions of white Americans were thinking unconscionable things about their fellow Americans? Who knew that tens of millions of white men felt so emasculated by women and challenged by minorities? Who knew that after years of seeming progress on race and gender, tens of millions of white Americans lived in seething resentment, waiting for a demagogue to arrive who would legitimize their worst selves and channel them into political power? Perhaps we had been living in a fool’s paradise. Now we aren’t.

This country has survived a civil war, two world wars, and a great depression. There are many who say we will survive this, too. Maybe we will, but we won’t survive unscathed. We know too much about each other to heal. No more can we pretend that we are exceptional or good or progressive or united. We are none of those things. Nor can we pretend that democracy works and that elections have more or less happy endings. Democracy only functions when its participants abide by certain conventions, certain codes of conduct and a respect for the process.

Quote
No more can we pretend that we are exceptional or good or progressive or united. We are none of those things.

The virus that kills democracy is extremism because extremism disables those codes. Republicans have disrespected the process for decades. They have regarded any Democratic president as illegitimate. They have proudly boasted of preventing popularly elected Democrats from effecting policy and have asserted that only Republicans have the right to determine the nation’s course. They have worked tirelessly to make sure that the government cannot govern and to redefine the purpose of government as prevention rather than effectuation. In short, they haven’t believed in democracy for a long time, and the media never called them out on it.

Democracy can’t cope with extremism. Only violence and time can defeat it. The first is unacceptable, the second takes too long. Though Trump is an extremist, I have a feeling that he will be a very popular president and one likely to be re-elected by a substantial margin, no matter what he does or fails to do. That’s because ever since the days of Ronald Reagan, rhetoric has obviated action, speechifying has superseded governing.

Trump was absolutely correct when he bragged that he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and his supporters wouldn’t care. It was a dictator’s ugly vaunt , but one that recognized this election never was about policy or economics or the “right path/wrong path,” or even values. It was about venting. So long as Trump vented their grievances, his all-white supporters didn’t care about anything else. He is smart enough to know that won’t change in the presidency. In fact, it is only likely to intensify. White America, Trump’s America, just wants to hear its anger bellowed. This is one time when the Bully Pulpit will be literal.

The media can’t be let off the hook for enabling an authoritarian to get to the White House. Long before he considered a presidential run, he was a media creation — a regular in the gossip pages, a photo on magazine covers, the bankrupt (morally and otherwise) mogul who hired and fired on The Apprentice. When he ran, the media treated him not as a candidate, but as a celebrity, and so treated him differently from ordinary pols. The media gave him free publicity, trumpeted his shenanigans, blasted out his tweets, allowed him to phone in his interviews, fell into his traps and generally kowtowed until they suddenly discovered that this joke could actually become president.

Just as Trump has shredded our values, our nation and our democracy, he has shredded the media. In this, as in his politics, he is only the latest avatar of a process that began long before his candidacy. Just as the sainted Ronald Reagan created an unbridgeable chasm between rich and poor that the Republicans would later exploit against Democrats, conservatives delegitimized mainstream journalism so that they could fill the vacuum.

Quote
With Trump’s election, I think that the ideal of an objective, truthful journalism is dead, never to be revived.

Retiring conservative talk show host Charlie Sykes complained that after years of bashing from the right wing, the mainstream media no longer could perform their function as reporters, observers, fact dispensers, and even truth tellers, and he said we needed them. Like Goebbels before them, conservatives understood that they had to create their own facts, their own truths, their own reality. They have done so, and in so doing effectively destroyed the very idea of objectivity. Trump can lie constantly only because white America has accepted an Orwellian sense of truth the truth pulled inside out.

With Trump’s election, I think that the ideal of an objective, truthful journalism is dead, never to be revived. Like Nixon and Sarah Palin before him, Trump ran against the media, boomeranging off the public’s contempt for the press. He ran against what he regarded as media elitism and bias, and he ran on the idea that the press disdained working-class white America. Among the many now-widening divides in the country, this is a big one, the divide between the media and working-class whites, because it creates a Wild West of information – a media ecology in which nothing can be believed except what you already believe.

With the mainstream media so delegitimized — a delegitimization for which they bear a good deal of blame, not having had the courage to take on lies and expose false equivalencies — they have very little role to play going forward in our politics. I suspect most of them will surrender to Trumpism — if they were able to normalize Trump as a candidate, they will no doubt normalize him as president.


Cable news may even welcome him as a continuous entertainment and ratings booster. And in any case, like Reagan, he is bulletproof. The media cannot touch him, even if they wanted to. Presumably, there will be some courageous guerillas in the mainstream press, a kind of Resistance, who will try to fact-check him. But there will be few of them, and they will be whistling in the wind. Trump, like all dictators, is his own truth.

What’s more, Trump already has promised to take his war on the press into courtrooms and the halls of Congress. He wants to loosen libel protections, and he has threatened Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos of Amazon with an antitrust suit. Individual journalists have reason to fear him as well. He has already singled out NBC’s Katy Tur, perhaps the best of the television reporters, so that she needed the Secret Service to escort her from one of his rallies. Jewish journalists who have criticized Trump have been subjected to vicious anti-Semitism and intimidation from the alt-right. For the press, this is likely to be the new normal in an America in which white supremacists, neo-Nazi militias, racists, sexists, homophobes and anti-Semites have been legitimized by a new president who “says what I’m thinking.” It will be open season.


This converts the media from reporters to targets, and they have little recourse. Still, if anyone points the way forward, it may be New York Times columnist David Brooks. Brooks is no paragon. He always had seemed to willfully neglect modern Republicanism’s incipient fascism (now no longer incipient), and he was an apologist for conservative self-enrichment and bigotry. But this campaign season, Brooks pretty much dispensed with politics. He seemed to have arrived at the conclusion that no good could possibly come of any of this and retreated into spirituality. What Brooks promoted were values of mutual respect, a bolder sense of civic engagement, an emphasis on community and neighborhood, and overall a belief in trickle-up decency rather than trickle-down economics. He is not hopeful, but he hasn’t lost all hope.

For those of us now languishing in despair, this may be a prescription for rejuvenation. We have lost the country, but by refocusing, we may have gained our own little patch of the world and, more granularly, our own family. For journalists, Brooks may show how political reporting, which, as I said, is likely to be irrelevant in the Trump age, might yield to a broader moral context in which one considers the effect that policy, strategy and governance have not only on our physical and economic well-being but also on our spiritual well-being. In a society that is likely to be fractious and odious, we need a national conversation on values. The media could help start it.

But the disempowered media may have one more role to fill: They must bear witness. Many years from now, future generations will need to know what happened to us and how it happened. They will need to know how disgruntled white Americans, full of self-righteous indignation, found a way to take back a country they felt they were entitled to and which they believed had been lost. They will need to know about the ugliness and evil that destroyed us as a nation after great men like Lincoln and Roosevelt guided us through previous crises and kept our values intact. They will need to know, and they will need a vigorous, engaged, moral media to tell them. They will also need us.

We are not living for ourselves anymore in this country. Now we are living for history.

Neal Gabler is an author of five books and the recipient of two LA Times Book Prizes, Time magazine's non-fiction book of the year, USA Today's biography of the year and other awards. He is also a senior fellow at The Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California, and is currently writing a biography of Sen. Edward Kennedy.

http://billmoyers.com/story/farewell-america/

Agelbert NOTE: Great article, but, unlike the author, many millions of Americans, like myself, KNEW about this suicidal trajectory, of which the ubiquitous racism is but one symptom of America's moral decay.

Neal Gabler is a good man of principle. He is clear on what is right and what is wrong. However, as the reality of the WAY things REALLY are in the USA struck him like a kick in the groin, Neal Gabler's surprise is evidence that he was a victim of white privileged liberal wishful thinking. None of the following was a surprise to me and millions of other Americans of mixed ancestry that know the score.

Quote
If there is a single sentence that characterizes the election, it is this: “He says the things I’m thinking.” That may be what is so terrifying. Who knew that so many tens of millions of white Americans were thinking unconscionable things about their fellow Americans? Who knew that tens of millions of white men felt so emasculated by women and challenged by minorities? Who knew that after years of seeming progress on race and gender, tens of millions of white Americans lived in seething resentment, waiting for a demagogue to arrive who would legitimize their worst selves and channel them into political power? Perhaps we had been living in a fool’s paradise. Now we aren’t.

I have been warning about it to deaf ears for over a decade.   


Also, unlike Neal Gabler, I dated the final nail in the coffin of American Democracy much earlier than this election.

I dated it to when THIS GUY had the nomination for VP stolen from him so the Truman party hack could do the bidding of the M.I.C. when Roosevelt died.
But, you know what? The abysmally stupid and morally corruptive embrace of greed, xenophobia and racism is the LEAST of our worries as a people in this perfect storm of Wall Street 'dial a reality' that so many fools and knaves wish to celebrate.

Below please find, America TODAY:
Quote
Like Goebbels before them, conservatives understood that they had to create their own facts, their own truths, their own reality. They have done so, and in so doing effectively destroyed the very idea of objectivity. Trump can lie constantly only because white America has accepted an Orwellian sense of truth the truth pulled inside out.


BUT, THIS is America in the NEAR FUTURE:

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Corporate Fascist Corruption of Christianity
« Reply #3 on: December 02, 2016, 01:52:52 pm »
Quote
They   cherry-picked anecdotes and caricatured the subjects of their criticism.

They complained that other people were creating and enforcing speech codes, while at the same time attempting to enforce their own speech codes.

Political correctness: how the right invented a phantom enemy

For 25 years, invoking this vague and ever-shifting nemesis has been a favourite tactic of the right – and Donald Trump’s victory is its greatest triumph   >:(

by Moira Weigel

SNIPPET 1:
Quote
In truth, these crusaders against political correctness       were every bit as political as their opponents.

As Jane Mayer documents in her book, Dark Money: the Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, Bloom and D’Souza were funded by networks of conservative donors – particularly the Koch, Olin and Scaife families – who had spent the 1980s building programmes that they hoped would create a new “counter-intelligentsia”.

SNIPPET 2:
Quote
Trump has also continued to cry PC in response to criticism. When an interviewer from Politico asked a Trump transition team member why Trump was appointing so many lobbyists and political insiders, despite having pledged to “drain the swamp” of them, the source said that “one of the most refreshing parts of … the whole Trump style is that he does not care about political correctness.” 

Apparently it would have been politically correct to hold him to his campaign promises. 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/30/political-correctness-how-the-right-invented-phantom-enemy-donald-trump

Agelbert NOTE: The Fascists NEVER stop DOING what they DO:




He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Corporate Fascist Corruption of Christianity
« Reply #4 on: December 16, 2016, 02:29:01 pm »


Quote

Joshua Scheer:
We're definitely going to want to talk about that. We're also going to talk about Jeffrey Sterling who is another whistleblower who is still in prison. I believe he is the, at his time, was the fifth person used in history the Espionage Act by President Obama. I want to talk about this intelligence briefing because the president-elect said on Fox News this Sunday, he's a pretty smart guy. We've discussed it in brief.
 
I want to let our listeners know what this president intelligence checklist was. It started with Kennedy in '61. It was typewritten. It's stamped for president only. It has gone through, obviously, technological innovation. Obama gets it on an iPad, and Trump has kind of said, "I'll get it when anything is new. It'll go through Mike Pence. It'll go through my generals." He said, this is his quote, "If something should change from this point, immediately call me. I'm available at one-minute's notice, but eight years, I don't need that. If something should change, let us know." Talk about this, because I'm sure you've been involved in briefing the president and certainly writing these reports.

John Kiriakou:
Sure.
 

Joshua Scheer:
How important are they? Some of the intelligence community, one David Bass, I'm thinking, worked for the-
 

John Kiriakou:
Priess.
 

Joshua Scheer:

Beast, yes, worked for the State Department, worked for Bush and Clinton as a CIA intelligence officer and talks about how important it is to be informed, and that you're making these decisions and you want to know all the information. Talk about this a little bit, about the president-elect rejecting these intelligence reports.


John Kiriakou:

Yeah, we've never had a president since Kennedy who just outrightly rejected his intelligence briefings. Bill Clinton famously was not briefed by his PDB briefer. PDB is President's Daily Brief, but what the briefer would do is that he would go to the White House every morning at 7 a.m. and drop it off, and Clinton would read it at his leisure. He was only briefed in person twice during his presidency, but Gore was briefed six days a week. Clinton read the briefing later in the day, and so he was informed.
 
Now, each day's PDB is specifically tailored to the president and to his interests, and so what Trump is reading right now, or what Trump would be reading if he were being briefed is really Obama's briefing. Obama has been steeped in these issues for eight years. I can see how they might seem a little too tactical, too detailed for Trump, but that's not just what Trump said. He didn't say they were too detailed and too tactical. He said he was a smart guy already and he didn't need to be briefed. That's a mistake, unless he is going to just wholesale turnover foreign and intelligence policy to Mike Pence. If Mike Pence is going to be the de facto president on these issues, then okay, I guess there is really no reason to brief Trump. If Trump is going to still have the final word on foreign defense and intelligence policy, I think this is a big mistake.
 

Joshua Scheer:
Yeah, go on on that a little bit. Obviously, Mike Pence, this guy ... Trump is acting as if this is not even a job. This is something where it's one of the many things he will be doing, certainly has given Pence a lot of power, which is scary. Jeremy Scahill has written about this de facto Christian fascist in power. There has been others who have written about that. What do you make of this? I mean, you've obviously followed politics a long time. Certainly, we've talked about this earlier in the interview, the CIA is probably scared about this, but is to be expected both on ... Obviously, we all have other people on to talk about, the EPA.
 
We're talking about scared agencies. The EPA right now is ... The Department of Energy, I'm sorry, is hiding people's names who have worked on climate science. They're not codifying the data they have gathered over a number of years to try to say that US States like California saying they're going on alone on immigration, on climate change. I mean, this is a really tumultuous time for everybody. I mean, we talked about it a little bit earlier, but I can't imagine that this is ... I mean, this must be the most experience you've ever seen, right?
 

John Kiriakou:

Yeah, I've never seen anything like this, and I've been close to several presidents from my CIA time. Even my wife was a senior CIA officer and has been even closer in some cases to presidents than have, and he's never seen anything like this either. I had dinner with a great friend of mine on Saturday night. He was my first boss at the CIA, and he goes back to the Carter administration, and he was of the opinion that this is utterly unprecedented. What makes is so dangerous is that this is not a weak president giving a strong president the authority to handle intelligence policy. This is a strongman who has surrounded himself with generals who is giving a weak vice president the authority to lead intelligence policy.
 
He said, "It's a disaster waiting to happen," and he feared that the only time the American people are going to understand what a terrible mistake this is, is when we're the victims of a terrorist attack on American soil, and people are going to want to know why the president wasn't up on this, why the president didn't order countermeasures, why the president dropped the ball. I fear that's the direction we're going in.
 

Listen to or read the full interview transcript:

The CIA's hypocritical stance on election interference

Friday, 16 December 2016 11:35

http://www.therealnews.com/t2/component/content/article/2982
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Corporate Fascist Corruption of Christianity
« Reply #5 on: December 22, 2016, 02:51:41 pm »

War Culture, Militarism and Racist Violence Under Trump
Posted on Dec 19, 2016

By Henry A. Giroux / Truthout

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/war_culture_militarism_and_racist_violence_under_trump_20161219


He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Corporate Fascist Corruption of Christianity
« Reply #6 on: March 06, 2017, 08:21:37 pm »
 

March 6, 2017

Wilkerson: Trump's New National Security Advisor Believes in Empire, More Realpolitik than Flynn

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson says General H.R. McMaster might be more restrained about military action, but will support massive budget increase to military and the imperial mission.


http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=18477

Agelbert NOTE: I disagree with Col. Lawrence Wilkerson's belief (and hope) that Trump doesn't actually want to use the military; he does. As Trump's popularity declines, he will most likely try to distract the people from his domestic fascist mayhem with more war.
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Corporate Fascist Corruption of Christianity
« Reply #7 on: March 07, 2017, 06:28:02 pm »
Empire Files: Chris Hedges & Abby Martin -Trump, Fascism & the Christian  Right


Published on Feb 27, 2017


For the first time in modern history, a fringe wing of Christian extremists have obtained the highest seats of power in the US government—from Mike Pence to Betsy DeVos.

This new development is coupled with the emergence of the Alt Right, the Trump movement, and the rise of fascist movements abroad.

Renowned journalist and author Chris Hedges has embedded himself in what he calls “Christianized Fascism” and warns that this is the biggest danger we face under Trump.

Agelbert NOTE: The Apostate Christian Church in the USA is "Christian" in name only. If Pruitt and the other crooks and liars on the Trump Team (along with Trump himself) are Christians, Hitler was a saint. These Trump cretins give Christianity a black eye!   


Quote
2 Timothy Chapter 3 King James Version (KJV)

1 This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.

2 For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,

3 Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,

4 Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;

5 Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Corporate Fascist Corruption of Christianity
« Reply #8 on: June 17, 2017, 06:52:42 pm »
Quote
George Frederick Baer (September 26, 1842 – April 26, 1914) was an American lawyer who was the President of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad and spokesman for the owners during the Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902.
"These men don't suffer. Why, hell, half of them don't even speak English!" George Frederick Baer

Published on May 4, 2017

A bill to rob Americans of health care is barbaric and intolerable


The Shame and Cruelty of the GOP | The Resistance with Keith Olbermann | GQ

Agelbert NOTE: Keith hopes George Frederick Baer is in a certain place, which he hopes exists.

Well, I know it exists. Below, please find, a picture of Mr. Baer in his present abode:

 
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Corporate Fascist Corruption of Christianity
« Reply #9 on: June 28, 2017, 10:57:14 pm »

SCOTUS is Throwing Us into Jefferson's Nightmare (w/guest Rev. Barry Lynn)


June 27, 2017

Thom sits down with guest Reverend Barry W. Lynn (Executive Director - Americans United for Separation of Church and State) to talk about the recent Supreme Court decisions that reflect the increasing politicization of religious organizations.
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Corporate Fascist Corruption of Christianity
« Reply #10 on: July 01, 2017, 06:25:41 pm »

Yep.  :(  Jesus Christ said a thing or two to about how the Pences and Trumps of this world would treat good people:

Quote
John 15 ( ERV -Easy to Read Version)

21 They will do to you whatever they did to me, because you belong to me. They don’t know the one who sent me.

22 If I had not come and spoken to the people of the world, they would not be guilty of sin. But now I have spoken to them. So they have no excuse for their sin.

23 “Whoever hates me also hates my Father.

24 I did things among the people of the world that no one else has ever done. If I had not done those things, they would not be guilty of sin. But they have seen what I did, and still they hate me and my Father.

25 But this happened to make clear the full meaning of what is written in their law: ‘They hated me for no reason.'

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Corporate Fascist Corruption of Christianity
« Reply #11 on: August 13, 2017, 02:47:00 pm »
2017-08-10 - How fossil fuel money made climate change denial the word of God:
http://splinternews.com/how-fossil-fuel-money-made-climate-denial-the-word-of-g-1797466298

The Word of God has been twisted six ways from Sunday to justify doing EVIL for thousands of years. The Fossil Fuelers are just the latest loyal servants of Lucifer to join the band wagon. The Koch money, and the CIA and other Federal Government money has, for several decades, under the guise of "promoting democracy"  ;) :evil4: (see: National Endowment for fascism Democracy)  been given to "Christian" Churches in the USA and abroad to conflate US Fossil Fuel Gooberment, dirty energy/fascist policies with religion.

It's an old con. The idea is that if, as Hitler said, and had it put on all the belt buckles of the nazi soldiers, that GOT MIT UNS ("God with us" LOL!), then people can be convinced to do the EXACT OPPOSITE of what the Word of God teaches. This way, the oligarchs, whether they be pseudo-Christians or not, laugh all the way to the bank.

Why, for example, do you think that "get prayer back in schools" was organized by hypocrites like "Dr." James Dobson with a call to "See you at the Flag."? Get it? The FLAG is the new symbol for GOT MIT UNS. Corrupted "Christianity", disguised as unrestrained Nationalism IS NOT Christianity, but idolatry.

From the "Manifest Destiny" UNCHRISTIAN Nationalist propaganda that resulted in the murder of millions of Native Americans, wars and racist abuse and murder of minorites  to the "God will solve the Global Warming thing so it's okay to pollute the planet" UNCHRISTIAN dirty energy defending propaganda, our gooberment  has succeeded in getting Americans to WORSHIP THE FLAG because they have been conned into believing that "God" is backing every damned thing (And I am not swearing) our corrupt, profit over people and planet, war loving, dirty energy defending gooberment DOES.

People are not easily convinced to go and fight for whatever or believe destroying their environment and the future for their kids is "okay" unless they think "God is on their side". It is a devilshly clever policy. Too many ignorant people have fallen for it.

The hypocrites do a lot of damage, Az. Which leads me to today's teaching on some of Christ's parables.

Agelbert NOTE: The parables taught by Jesus Christ have been frequently misinterpreted or even used to rationalize doing the opposite of what Christ actually taught. I am posting the following over several days in order to help clear up any misunderstandings among people of good will, along with eliminating self-serving rationalizitions often used by people of bad will.

Matthew 13:1-58

Eight parables are found here. In the first instance the parable is of the sower. The sowing of the seed refers to the Word of God.


The seed, having grown in the good soil, becomes not only one but many believing witnesses cast into the world. Jesus explained that "the good seed are the children of the kingdom".

These parables are given so that we as the children of the kingdom in the world may know that we must expect opposition from the devil and his children.

In these parable, we are given the negative reaction to Christian action.

We must not try to uproot the weeds, representative of the evil ones in the world, because of our inability to judge rightly without the possibility of making a mistake. The ultimate disposition of the evil ones in the world will be accomplished by angels who are going to be sent by the Lord (v. 41) at the consummation of the age. Actually, the angels are designated as the final reapers of the harvest of our labor (v. 39).


Enjoy this Country Western style singing of a Psalm David wrote:     

Continued tomorrow

Parable no. 2 (vv. 24-30 the wheat and the tares) and parable no. 7 (the net which catches both good and bad fish) are illustrative of the fact that, as a result of the witnessing of children of the kingdom in this dispensation, there will be both genuine wheat and good fish, as well as tares and bad fish.

Not all who are caught in the net of evangelism are genuinely saved. The unsaved will be made manifest in the Day of Judgment at the consumation of the age.

Neither we nor angels, no matter how hard we try, wil be able to put the devil out of commision until the appointed time. The disciples wanted to pull out the tares planted by the devil, but were told not to do so until harvest time when the tares were going to be uprooted and utterly burned. See Jude v. 9.

Agelbert NOTE: It is one thing to not go out and kill the people you believe are pseudo-Christians dedicated to evil, but that doesn't mean we are not given sufficient discernment to know who they are. I am firmly convinced that Pat Robertson, Vice President Pence (and many other public figures that claim to be "Christians") are in the category of tares and bad fish. You know them by their empathy deficit, despicable, evil, destructive, hateful, war loving, rotten fruit.

Trump gets along great with those hypocrites. Is Trump the same as them?


As for Trump, he doesn't have the remotest idea of what Christianity is, and never has entertained one single thought of accepting Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior, except as a pose to con voters.

To non-believers, the difference between the Trumps and Pences of this world is irrelevant because they both obviously are people dominated by evil desires.

But according to Holy Scripture, the Trumps of this world, who never even looked at the seed of the Gospel or were never caught in the Gospel net of sound doctrine, are less guilty than people like Pence, Gorsuch, etc. et al, who drive potential converts to Christianity away with their in-your-face greed, lack of compassion, racism and bigotry while they simultaneously and shamelessly parade their sanctimonious guise of "Christian" beliefs.

Judgment begins in the House of the Lord.

Quote
17 For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? - 1 Peter 4:17 KJV

Continued tomorrow
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Corporate Fascist Corruption of Christianity
« Reply #12 on: August 13, 2017, 05:50:40 pm »
E vangelical Christians & Climate Change (#GreenSunday)

August 13th, 2017 by Steve Hanley

SNIPPET:

Deacon McGrane refutes much of the scriptural basis that evangelicals rely on to justify their attacks on climate science and governmental policies designed to limit climate change. He feels it is essential to challenge those beliefs for the good of humanity, despite their basis in religious belief.

Climate Change & Christianity

Despising people who belong to other religions, dress differently, or speak other languages; hatred of non-whites; homophobia — all of these are as far from the teachings of Jesus as one can possibly imagine. Yet those hate-filled messages are uttered constantly by such self-important leaders as Franklin Graham and Pat Robertson and are taken to heart by many evangelicals.

Such misguided men are entitled to their opinions, of course, no matter how corrosive and mean spirited they may be. But when such beliefs seek to block essential action on the most pressing problem facing humanity — the destruction of the environment — it is essential to oppose their toxic words.   


Deacon McGrane offers this alternative narrative.

Full article:

https://cleantechnica.com/2017/08/13/evangelical-christians-climate-change/
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Corporate Fascist Corruption of Christianity
« Reply #13 on: September 27, 2017, 09:04:54 pm »
Are There Fascists In America? Yes and They Aren't Who You Think They Are


Sep. 26, 2017 4:00 pm

Thom breaks down the news of the day and asks a question. if there are fascist in America today, who are they? David Koch, maybe Mike Pence?

Agelbert ANSWER: All of those mentioned and many more.



He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Corporate Fascist Corruption of Christianity
« Reply #14 on: November 15, 2017, 06:19:44 pm »
Judge Roy Moore DOING HIS THING.
Agelbert NOTE: Moore is a pseudo-Christian Fascist Kochroach, NOT A CHRISTIAN! Democrat Doug Jones is principled. Let us hope Jones wins agains this corrupt FASCIST RACIST 'Judge' Moore.


Behind Roy Moore's Smear Campaign Against His Survivors (w/Guest Greg Palast)


Roy Moore's story gets even more seedy when not only is he working on a smear campaign against his victims, but he hired the architect of a caging operation aimed at making sure that people of color, jewish people, even black soldiers in Iraq, to stop them from voting. These people are as evil as you could get.

Thom Hartmann Nov. 14, 2017 5:30 pm
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

 

+-Recent Topics

Future Earth by AGelbert
March 30, 2022, 12:39:42 pm

Key Historical Events ...THAT YOU MAY HAVE NEVER HEARD OF by AGelbert
March 29, 2022, 08:20:56 pm

The Big Picture of Renewable Energy Growth by AGelbert
March 28, 2022, 01:12:42 pm

Electric Vehicles by AGelbert
March 27, 2022, 02:27:28 pm

Heat Pumps by AGelbert
March 26, 2022, 03:54:43 pm

Defending Wildlife by AGelbert
March 25, 2022, 02:04:23 pm

The Koch Brothers Exposed! by AGelbert
March 25, 2022, 01:26:11 pm

Corruption in Government by AGelbert
March 25, 2022, 12:46:08 pm

Books and Audio Books that may interest you 🧐 by AGelbert
March 24, 2022, 04:28:56 pm

COVID-19 🏴☠️ Pandemic by AGelbert
March 23, 2022, 12:14:36 pm