#National Association of Evangelicals

[wutbju]

This statement is from the Sword of the Lord in May 21, 1948. This National Association Committee would become the ACSI. The code is so very typical for the time.

The National Association Evangelicals Committee on Christian Philosophy of Education, suggests that Christian people begin an active nation-wide protest against anti-Christian teaching in grade schools, high schools, state colleges and state universities, since the Supreme Court now rules that school buildings may not be used for released time education. If the schools cannot cooperate with Christians, they certainly should not cooperate with anti-Christian groups. Since the schools cannot be for the Bible, they certainly have no right to be against the Bible in educational teaching. Dr. Frank E. Gaebelein, chairman of the committee, Headmaster of Stony Brook School, Stony Brook, New York, makes the report.

[whatisonthemoon]

The Unification Church Seeks Influence, Acceptance Among the Political ”Christian” Right (2009)

From the Christian Research Institute Updated: Jul 31, 2022 Published: Jun 9, 2009

After newspapers across America last December revealed Unification Church attempts to infiltrate the political “Christian Right” through gifts to political action commit­tees and conservative Christian groups, the Moonies quieted their activities.

Now some Unification Church-watchers are concerned that the group is stepping-up another tactic which may result in political acceptance: infiltrat­ing independent charismatic ministries to gain favor in the bur­geoning charismatic movement as a whole.

“They’re out there winning friends and influencing people,” said a source at the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) who did not want to be named, adding that gaining acceptance in America is essen­tial to the church’s objective of having their leader Sun Myung Moon recognized as the second coming of Christ.

Last December’s articles, which appeared mostly in promi­nent Knight-Ridder newspa­pers, stated that in March 1987 Moon forged an alliance with the Christian Voice, the largest con­servative Christian lobby in America. They also reported that Moon has been funding anticom­munist guerrillas in Central Amer­ica, Afghanistan, and the Philip­pines, and that the Unification Church gave the late John T. Dolan, founder of the 300,000-member National Conserva­tive Political Action Commit­tee, a $775,000 gift. Former Trea­sury Secretary Robert Ander­son had also been paid $127,500 as a Unification Church consultant.

Recently the NAE warned its members to be wary of Unification Church attempts to infil­trate their ranks by joining with organizations that seem to have conservative goals. Moon-watch­ers say two points of Moonie infiltration into the Christian community have been over issues of religious freedom and anticom­munism.

In recent years certain Chris­tian leaders have been criticized for what some perceived as drawing too close to the Unifi­cation Church. Several years ago Tim LaHaye, Christian author and head of the American Coalition for Traditional Val­ues, came under fire for accept­ing a gift from Col. Bo Hi Pak, a former Korean intelligence offi­cer, president of the Washington Times newspaper, and Moon’s right-hand man. Since then, a number of pastors from a broad spectrum of denominations have received free trips from CAUSA, a Unification Church-funded anticommunism organization. Churchmen have also been speaking at CAUSA rallies (e.g., Jerry Fallwell spoke at a confer­ence in Miami last year which was co-sponsored by CAUSA).

Another group admitting Uni­fication Church funding is the American Freedom Coalition (AFC), publisher of the monthly Religious Freedom Alert, headed by Donald Sills as president and Robert Grant as chairman. Although LaHaye, Florida pastor D. James Kennedy, and others have left the AFC because of the Moon connection, others, such as Trinity Broadcasting Net­work’s Paul Crouch, Ben Armstrong of the National Religious Broadcasters, evangelists James Robison and Rex Humbard, and other prominent evangelicals have remained on AFC’s executive committee. (Although there is no known direct connection between CAUSA and AFC, Sills often speaks at CAUSA func­tions. CAUSA is headed by Phillip V. Sanchez, former U.S. Ambassador to Honduras and Columbia.)

In recent days Sills has been concentrating on attacking anti-cult organizations as a threat to religious freedom to audiences with a high percentage of charismatics. Sills (who visited Moon during his prison term) appeared May 3 on Crouch’s “Praise the Lord” show on TBN and denounced the secular Cult Awareness Network (CAN). From there Sills went on the AFC’s radio network hosted by Grant and sharply criticized CAN and cultwatchers in gener­al. (In recent months Sills has emerged as a public affairs spokesman for the Greater Grace World Outreach — formerly The Bible Speaks World Outreach, a controver­sial group a federal judge recent­ly ordered to return $6.6 million in contributions it swindled from a former member.)

But many agree that the church’s best attempt at influencing the political right is Bo Hi Pak’s Washington Times newspa­per, which is reportedly losing $200 million a year. Moon him­self is widely reported as saying he is having an influence on Pres­ident Reagan “through the Wash­ington Times”.

[wolfsskull]

God loves you!

ooh yikes... feeling's not mutual. Awkward

[queerprayers]

Today is (for many of us) the feast of Christ the King, and I wanted to take a moment to honor that. I was baptized on this feast, and I've always been drawn to it. Originally instituted by the pope in 1925 as a response to growing nationalism and secularism, making it the newest element of the liturgical year, most Lutherans and other liturgical Protestants also honor this day.

I have differing opinions on secular rule/the separation of church and state (and evangelism, for that matter) than the founders of this feast did, but I can appreciate the yearning for more world leaders/political groups/religious groups to recognize our true callings as human beings--to each other, to Love. And I love the concept of combating nationalism with allegiance to a higher power!

"King" has a lot of political implications, and mostly negative associations for anyone like me, so I wanted to point out how the original encyclical describes this title of Jesus's, by quoting Cyril of Alexandria: "Christ," he says, "has dominion over all creatures, a dominion not seized by violence nor usurped, but his by essence and by nature." Today is the reason I'm not a monarchist--there is no earthly ruler that has my allegiance. There is no earthly rule established without force. My allegiance is to Christ, the ruler of the only valid kingdom; to God's house, the only state without lines on a map; to Love which is the universe, the only empire that includes people by embracing them rather than conquering them.

We can only understand so much of who God is. We separate out God's roles; we can only focus on one tiny piece of the universe at once. (This is why we have holidays--to honor pieces of our religion in human time.) The king we are called to serve is only called "king" because that's one of the closest words we have in our language to describe what we're talking about--the old-fashioned meaning of king, one born for the role and called to die for the role. A romanticized meaning perhaps, one that has never been true in any society, one that has caused so much harm, but nonetheless one used throughout centuries to get across one of the ways we approach God--along with "father" and "friend" and "bridegroom" and "creator."

We pray for God's kingdom to come because that's an idea we can understand--we can logically process that a new kingdom coming, a new empire conquering, means everything changes, the rules are turned upside down. We hold this language while acknowledging there is so much more to it. If you can't stomach using these words, if they are filled with violence for you, I encourage you to sit with that truth, consider what it would be like to take earthly ideas and fill them with Love, and also acknowledge you do not have to use this language. We try to hold God with our words and fail over and over. We come to God from our culture and language and time and we squint at the universe. We see in a mirror dimly, for now.

As we encounter earthly nationalism and imperialism and colonialism and warmongering, as we see people claim that their nation-state is chosen by God, we honor power turning on its head today. We see Jesus revealing what kingship, what ruling, what power is when Love is the center of the universe. Jesus, who had more power than any human, fed the hungry, hung out with the oppressed and misunderstood, threatened the powerful without violence, was killed by earthly empire, and conquered death with life.

May we, as members of God's kingdom, under Jesus's rule--by choosing this as our practice--serve the only king who has ever deserved our allegiance. We work to bring our communities and religious groups and, yes, our nation-states, closer to the image God has set for us, but ultimately we know we are creating and navigating human-made borders between things that will one day be one.

You already know what God has asked of you. It's not a democracy but neither is it a monarchy, really--it's something else. Something you have to opt in to, but don't really get a choice in. Something you can run from but never escape. Something that once you see clearly, you'll never be satisfied without. You are technically free to abandon the work, but you would be abandoning the only thing that will make us whole. Call your government representative. Go to a protest. Give money to the person by the side of the road. Read a book. Hug your lover. Feed the birds. Denounce your country in favor of your community and every single human being. You are a citizen of the universe, which is God, which is love. Christ the King, the reign of Christ, means what rules us is Life.

(We look down the road to Advent--to new year, rebirth, apocalypse. "Apocalypse" meaning unveiling, revelation, disclosure. We see in a mirror dimly, and then--thy kingdom come--we see face to face. All at once, awfully, blindingly, daylight after years of darkness. Christ the King says, what if New Year's Eve was a surrender to time and power? What if before you even remembered Christmas exists, you were confronted with the reality of your calling? This is the feast of victory to our God. Alleluia!)

[socialjusticeinamerica]

These MAGA “parents” have been terrorizing schools in Massachusetts for a few years now. A small handful of radicals go from community to community screaming threats and insults at school staff, school boards, and normal parents. Many teachers, administrators, librarians, and board members have had to resign or even move out of the community. In person and online threats of violence have escalated resulting in police involvement and lawsuits against MAGAts organized and funded by various MAGA groups. There a few if any after school events anymore due to violent threats and complaints of trespassing on school property and at the homes of staff are on the rise.

MAGA terrorists like Marjorie Taylor Greene have shared graphic imagery of the LGBT community that has redneck parents worked into a frenzy. It’s become an all out war against the LGBT at the local level. In the small towns and suburbs it’s become very difficult to operate public schools with any sense of calm or normalcy. In the few cities the MAGAts stay away for the most part due to their overpowering fear of urban environments.

A large number of these MAGAts have been proven to not even be parents or residents of the communities they terrorize. In one nearby town the mother and father leading the MAGAt charge are a prostitute and drug dealer being paid to crisis act. They bring in that stupid Tucker Carlson book about the penguins and rant and rave at LGBT students and staff and then go to their out of state home and perform really nasty cam shows. It’s total lunacy. If they’re pulling this crap in one of the bluest states try to imagine what a nightmare it is to be an educator in a Deep South state.

One man turned this entire country upside down. He created a radicalized cult that is now being manipulated by the Neo-Nazi oligarchs, the Christo-fascist evangelicals, and the RepubliKKKlan assholes. Dark money flowing from billionaire oligarchs has perverted this nation and has about a third of Americans planning to kill the rest of us in the name of Trump. What we’re witnessing is the beginning of the RepubliKKKlan endgame. They didn’t expect Trump to get into the presidency but once they realized his power over the masses they decided to go all in. The Republicans in Congress are not working for America and it’s citizens anymore and are plotting to rewrite the Constitution and created a fascist state. The oligarchs have already purchased the SCOTUS and a plurality of state legislatures. The militias are poised to strike and the street brawlers have been agitating at the local level. They’ve even been launching attacks on local power grids in the hopes of destabilizing the government and creating an environment suitable for a civil/race war. They’re not smart people and all this is out there in the public domain. It’s fairly easy to get into their social media groups and see the directives sent to them by oligarch backed political associations and follow their progress.

Whether they’ll be successful or fall flat on their faces remains to be seen but we’re going to see increasing political violence from the neighborhoods to the nations capital. They have funding, arms, a measure of organization, and some training. They’re biggest drawback is that they’re dumb as shit. Being stupid, poor, cowardly, and unhealthy isn’t a recipe for success in an armed political conflict. Oligarchs always hedge their bets and still have plausible deniability plans in place so they don’t have to flee the country afterwards. So if things go wrong for them on Jan 6th they’ll again sacrifice their pawns and hide behind lawyers and crooked Congressmen.

I’m not going to be ruled by Trump, Crow, Musk, Murdoch, DeVos, Prince, Mercer, Leo, and the rest of these fascist oligarchs. We must take their dark money and corporations out of politics. We must smash their political associations such as ALEC and the Federalist Society. Finally we need to jail the oligarch criminals, their Republikkkan insurrectionidts, and any MAGAt dumb enough to follow their direction.

[contemplatingoutlander]

Putting chaplains in public school is the latest battle in culture wars

Here comes the American far-right "Christian Taliban," all set to indoctrinate a new generation of Americans into a warped, right-wing "Christianity."

Our Founders must be spinning in their graves.

Lawmakers in mostly conservative states are pushing a coordinated effort to bring chaplains into public schools, aided by a new, legislation-crafting network that aims to address policy issues “from a biblical world view” and by a consortium whose promotional materials say chaplains are a way to convert millions to Christianity. The bills have been introduced this legislative season in 14 states, inspired by Texas, which passed a law last year allowing school districts to hire chaplains or use them as volunteers for whatever role the local school board sees fit, including replacing trained counselors. Chaplain bills were approved by one legislative chamber in three states — Utah, Indiana and Louisiana — but died in Utah and Indiana. Bills are pending in nine states. One passed both houses of Florida’s legislature and is awaiting the governor’s signature. [color/emphasis added]

[See more under the cut.]

The bills are mushrooming in an era when the U.S. Supreme Court has expanded the rights of religious people and groups in the public square and weakened historic protections meant to keep the government from endorsing religion. In a 2022 case, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch referred to the “so-called separation of church and state.” Former president Donald Trump has edged close to a government-sanctioned religion by asserting in his campaign that immigrants who “don’t like our religion — which a lot of them don’t” would be barred from the country in a second term. “We are reclaiming religious freedom in this country,” said Jason Rapert, a former Arkansas state senator and the president of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, which he founded in 2019 to craft model legislation, according to the group’s site. Its mission is “to bring federal, state and local lawmakers together in support of clear biblical principles … to address major policy concerns from a biblical world view,” the site says. The group hosted House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) late last year at its gala at the Museum of the Bible in Washington. The chaplain bills, Rapert said, are part of an effort to empower “the values and principles of the founding fathers.” Critics who compare such efforts with theocracy, he said, are creating “a false flag, a boogeyman by radical left to demonize everyone of faith.” Rapert says he’ll push in the next round of chaplain bills to make the positions mandatory. Heather Weaver, senior staff attorney at the ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, called allowing chaplains into public schools “a constitutional time bomb.” “It definitely would be a much more direct route to promoting religion to students and evangelizing them than we’ve seen in the past.” she said. [color emphasis added]

[edited]

[inqorporeal]

I hesitated to write this, because it's such a touchy subject now more than ever, but this needs to be discussed, because I'm seeing too many arguments where people are talking past each other because their conceptual understanding is incompatible:

What culturally Christian people think of as Zionism and what Jews know as Zionism are two vastly different things, and it's important to be able to parse the distinction when the subject comes up.

The culturally Christian concept of Zionism is deeply tied to the Evangelical mythology of the end times, when war in the Middle East reaches a peak and all Jews are returned to their ancestral lands to either convert spontaneously to Christianity and die to usher in god's perfect kingdom, or die and burn in hell for eternity to fuel god's perfect kingdom. It's virulently antisemitic at its core, with a veneer of smiling benevolence: of course we support Israel, it accelerates our mythical timeline! Although I was not raised Evangelical, for a very long time this was my only association with the term Zionism.

The Jewish understanding of Zionism is the right of the nation of Israel to exist. Not the state -- a thing of governments and capital and politics -- but the nation: the collective Jewish peoples and their own claim to the land of their faith's origin. That's what it means: the simple right to exist, with their own culture intact.

And this is why antizionism is antisemitism.

I started looking into the heart of the matter when the US government issued a declaration to that effect last year; it concerned me that the government would expend time on such a resolution, and I now suspect that it was intended to make it easier to define and prosecute antisemitic attacks. I have no doubt that many of the politicians in office still think of the culturally Christian concept rather than the Jewish concept; we shall know only by their word and deed. But others in the chambers are sincere in their resolution.

The keyword is "nuance", a fragile commodity in our increasingly literalist internet culture. I would ask my fellow goyim to examine discussions around the subject of Zionism with nuance before leveling accusations at one party or another. Be aware of who is speaking, and how their concept may differ from yours.

[mariacallous]

Most presidential election years advance as follows. There are lots of primaries, someone in each party wins the most and takes center stage at a big raucous convention, they run in the general election, someone wins 270 votes in the Electoral College and becomes president.

But 2024 is no normal presidential election year. The two leading candidates for the major party nominations are the oldest pairing of candidates in American history — one is 81, the other is 77. Age appears to be a major factor in the fortunes of the incumbent president even though he has the kind of record that would re-elect most presidents. The other candidate is under indictment and could be convicted of a crime and head to jail in the election year. The two major parties are so closely divided that third party candidates could swing the Electoral College votes of a state — resulting in the third election in the 21st century where the national vote winner does not win the Electoral College vote and thus the presidency.

It is no wonder that lots of Americans are asking, “What happens if the candidate is incapacitated, drops out, goes to jail, or if no one reaches 270 in the Electoral College vote count?” The answer is that the election could be decided by approximately 10,000 people who no one has ever heard of.

So, here’s who they are.

First, we need to understand the importance of political parties. For example, a great deal of attention has been paid to the fact that officials in Colorado and Maine have recently decided that Trump is ineligible to appear on the Republican primary ballot in their state because of his role in the January 6 insurrection. If these decisions stand (a big if) it could have huge consequences in November but no consequences at all for the nomination race. That’s because political parties control the nomination process. They are covered by the First Amendment’s freedom of association and short of processes that violate other civil rights (all-white primaries, for instance) the state political parties can select delegates to their conventions pretty much any way they want to. The Republican parties of Colorado and Maine can elect delegates at their state convention or by their state committee and send them to Milwaukee to vote for Trump at the Republican convention.

For instance, in the event of the death or incapacitation of a candidate, each state party will continue to elect delegates to their conventions in a series of congressional district caucuses, state conventions, and state committee meetings that will occur most often in April, May. and June. Delegates elected in the name of someone who is no longer a candidate will become uncommitted. Candidates who step into the breach hoping to take the place of the fallen candidate will find out who these delegates are and woo them in as many ways as they can. The outcome will be a convention where the result may not be known ahead of time. In other words, it will be the kind of no-holds-barred event that nominating conventions held between 1831 and 1968.

All this is to say that the first 8,567 people you’ve never heard of are the people who will be delegates to the national conventions. These people can be teachers or labor union members or evangelical Christians or right to life activists. What they all have in common is some degree of activism on behalf of their political party, even if they generally are unknown to the public.

The dominant role of the political parties extends until after the convention as well. If something happens to the party’s nominee and that person can’t run in the general election, the 168 members of the Republican National Committee and 426 members of the Democratic National Committee will meet in special session to choose a replacement nominee. (No, the nomination does not automatically extend to the vice-presidential candidate on the ballot.) The procedures for this are written in the rules of the Republican Party and in the Charter of the Democratic Party. Most of these 594 people are elected in their states and include all the state party chairmen and vice chairmen as well as people who are prominent in their state and party.

Each party has a system of selecting its national committee members and its national convention delegates and methods for implementing the selection process. This is a large and complex undertaking, which is why it requires established political parties and millions of dollars to carry out. If one understands the centrality of the institutional party to the nomination process, one can also see why a group like No Labels is having such trouble figuring out how to nominate a candidate that (supposedly) the public wants and who is neither Trump nor Biden. Over many decades, the two political parties have established a system that has a kind of legitimacy to it. A group that decided to put forth a candidate without calling itself a political party and without building a grass roots of elected leaders will have a very hard time arguing that its nominee is legitimate.

And finally, what happens if, for some reason, the winner can’t take office after Election Day and before the final count in the Senate? The next critical group that no one knows consists of the 535 members of the Electoral College. Most people are familiar with the Electoral College and on election night we all watch as states announce who won and who lost their electors. But most people don’t realize that electors are actual real live people who travel to their state capitals on the first Tuesday after the second Wednesday in December. They have a real meeting where they sign a “certificate of ascertainment” and a “certificate of votes” which are sent to Washington, D.C. to be read and counted by the president of the Senate (the sitting vice president of the United States.) Some states (29) have statutes requiring the electors to vote for the winner of the election in that state. But others (21) do not.

Electors don’t often cast their votes differently from the election results. But in the case where the nominee is no longer alive, incapacitated, or on their way to jail, some of those electors may think differently and may try to vote for someone new. Electors are generally chosen by the state party for loyalty to the party. In many instances, it is an honor — a sort of gold watch — given for long-term service to the party. They are not expected to think for themselves or to negotiate, which is not to say that they wouldn’t under extraordinary circumstances.

And, of course, it is always possible that no candidates win 270 votes in the Electoral College. If that happens the election goes to 435 people in the House of Representatives. Some people know who their representative is but very few know who the other 434 representatives are. Once in the House — states have one vote each — determined by majority vote of their delegation — a crazy system in this day and age especially when the big states are so much more populous than the small states.

Once the Electoral College meets and makes its decision, if the winner can’t take office, the 20th Amendment to the Constitution states: “If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elected shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President.”

Odds are that 2024 will proceed as expected. Trump and Biden will win the most primaries and be their party’s nominee. And one of them will go on to win the votes in the Electoral College and take control in January 2025. But it is important to understand that there are no guarantees 2024 will proceed along the usual course. There could be surprises along the way that will shock people and destabilize the system. The 8,567 convention delegates, the 594 members of the parties’ national committees, the 535 members of the Electoral College, and the 435 members of the House of Representatives add up to slightly more than 10,000 people. We are in uncharted waters on several fronts, and we should expect strange developments along the way. Ten thousand people who we don’t know could play a critical role in deciding how to deal with those surprises and determine the occupant of the most important office of the United States.

[decolonize-the-left]

I haven't found the original post about whiteness yet. However about "void where culture should be" I can sum up what's there trying and failing the fill the void.

Primarily, religion, specifically Western Evangelical Christianity. Purity culture, heaven and hell, the idea of sin, the idea of God.

Family is family and we must be true to that first and foremost. Following from this it's also marriage and the CisHet norms and as an extension of that having kids. (Which ties back to 1. in many ways.)

Being morally superior in every way we can. Totally not because white people are better, but we're the good normal CisHet Christians and we set the standards. (Sarcasm there.)

Exploitation of natural resources, especially those of non American countries. Vacations and Cruises. Going out into nature verg disrespectfully. Having the biggest life possible and having as much excess as possible. So, so many educational field trips where colonization was evident looking back. Never visiting pr disturbing a settler graveyard, but native burial mounds were fair game and not even in a respectful manner.

Nationalism. Military and Cops being the best thing ever. Just everything associated with American nationalism.

Food, the only not terrible thing on this list. Even that though is really a mix of so many cultures and honestly there's probably something fucked up if I looked into it deeper.

TLDR: Christian Nationalism. Which I am working to reject now. I definitely ain't perfect but I'm gonna work on it til I die.

Unfortunately though, that does leave me with very little culture. There's nothing to even try to fill that void anymore. I have to try and create it for myself. Just like I have to create family for myself. Sorry for the rambling I just had some thoughts.

I agree and think some other things should be there but yes.

And I mean as long as you're growing, that's all I care about ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯ we love to see it 💖🌿

•°•°•

And maybe it's very rainbows and unicorns of me but we should be creating an American identity we can all share. Reject the current reliance on race all together.

Because there Should be more than christian ideology, white supremacy fascism, and capitalism.

Russel Means said it best when he said "Caucasians have a more positive vision to offer humanity than European culture. I believe this. But in order to attain this vision it is necessary for Caucasians to step outside European culture—alongside the rest of humanity—to see Europe for what it is and what it does."

Yes you have to create your own but it can be shared too. Community is crucial to any culture and people at all. Because there is so much more than what you've been given, you can create too just like your long ago ancestors before you.

And on a real note that needs to be the first step like yesterday (provided you want my opinion lol):

If white people ever want to belong here and feel like they're a part of everyone else; like we all share an identity then you have to start being more active allies to all the communities here.

You need to act like it, you know? Start actively being a part of dismantling the systems that the many diverse communities here have been critiquing for decades and centuries. Enough conditional support.

Show that you're Truly with us, thick or thin. That you wont fall back to supporting state violence because you think we misstepped in our fight for human rights and more human treatment.

Show us that you think our futures are worth fighting for. That they're a priority and the bigger picture is worth a few property damages that can/will be repaired anyway.

That you stand with us first, not the police or buildings or your political leanings. With us. With the human people that are your neighbors and bakers and bus drivers and business owners. That our human lives matter more than your politics or ideologies. That you stand for the rights of your neighbors and community like we have stood for each other.

We'd be way more of a melting pot if white ppl collectively stopped constantly looking for people to pick out of the pot. Because idk about other people, but that's how I feel as a native when liberals are trying to pick apart Landback or abolishing police or protesters causing damages for pride and ending police brutality but won't question a white imperialist for president because it's a "lesser evil" than the progressive who'd help me.

Way more of a community if other white people collectively stepped up came and stopped those kind of people from spreading their nonsense. Collectively don't take that bullshit.

Consider it your first community value. Solidarity with Everyone, not the whiteness that protects/benefits you.

And I don't mean you personally, but on a grander scale you know? Y'all should be doing whatever you can in that regard. Prove you mean it. That you want that future of belonging here and feeling safe and having an identity as much as we do.

Cuz we've Always been the first to fight, you know? With slow and conditional support...if any. But white people have the power of privilege that people in power pay attention to. More than ours. They try to suppress and repress ours systematically like we're seeing in Florida and across the country with book bans, banning CRT, and passing don't say gay bills.

We need support and it needs to be loud and visible and everywhere all the time. It can be.

The rest of us know what white people as a collective are capable of and what solidarity with one another can do.

The people in charge need to know the time for racism and fascism and individualism is behind us. That it's no longer a value that Us-Americans put up with. That you stand with us, not them.

I think we have a long way to go before the trauma of our shared history can be completely forgiven but I think unconditional allyship and support in the name of human rights and ending war crimes against marginalized communities would be a good first step at attempting to repair trust.

If you want unity we need to know you wont keep aligning with our oppressors first and foremost, you know?

[dostoyevsky-official]

In the Bolsheviks’ Marxist ideology, class divisions were paramount, and society was divided into so-called class-friendly and class-hostile elements as well as certain wavering or neutral classes. A large set of class-hostile elements were grouped together under the label of “former people” (in Russian, byvshie); that is, individuals who were associated intimately with the old regime: industrialists, landlords, clergy, Tsarist officials, policemen, army officers, White Army volunteers. These “former people” were deprived of their civil rights. They could not vote; they were denied ration cards, housing, access to education; and they were subject to a variety of formal and informal harassment. For the Mennonites, the most important of these categories was the clergy, who formed a crucial part of their leadership elite.

The part of Bolshevik class ideology of most direct relevance to the Mennonites was a three-fold division of the rural population into rich peasants (or kulaks), middle peasants, and poor peasants. The kulaks, who were estimated to make up between three and five percent of the rural population, were portrayed as terrible exploiters of their fellow villagers. It is difficult to convey how strongly the Bolsheviks stigmatized the kulaks, but the following quotation from Lenin in 1918 perhaps gives a good sense:

“Comrades! The uprising of the five kulak districts should be mercilessly suppressed. The interests of the entire revolution requires this, because now “the last decisive battle” with the kulaks is under way everywhere. One must give an example.” [emphasis in original]

Who exactly were these kulaks? Like most metaphysical enemies, they could not be clearly identified. Their most typical trait was the use of hired labor. There were no clear economic criteria for defining the kulak, but the possession of several horses, eight to ten head of cattle, and twenty to thirty acres would almost always be sufficient to qualify.

In other words, a substantial part of the Mennonite rural community before 1914 could have been characterized as kulak. In fact, among the local peasantry and local Bolsheviks in south Ukraine (and elsewhere) – many of whom came from the local peasantry and had supported or even participated in the Makhno movement – the Mennonites were seen as a kulak community. [...] Here, oddly, Bolshevik class ideology had a positive consequence for the Mennonites. For the Bolsheviks, there could be no kulak community as a whole. All communities were divided by the same class categories. Poor Mennonite peasants, therefore, just like poor Russian and Ukrainian peasants, were the Bolsheviks’ natural supporters; if they did not realize this immediately, they would eventually be convinced of it.

[...] A third prism through which the Bolshevik regime viewed the Mennonites was religion. Here one would have expected that the Mennonites’ intense religiosity, which the Bolsheviks did observe and lament, might have made them a special target for persecution. But due to a quirk of Bolshevik religious policy, it did not. However, their extreme religious hatred is better understood as resentment of the Russian Orthodox Church’s close alliance with the Tsarist state rather than a hatred of religion per se. The Bolsheviks were, for this reason, most hostile to state churches: the Orthodox church above all, but also Islam, Catholicism, Lutheranism. They had much more sympathy for the sectarians – Dukhobors, Molokans, Baptists, Evangelicals, Tolstoyans – who had been brutally repressed by the Tsarist regime and its state church. These sectarians were viewed by the Bolsheviks as potential allies, especially since many of the sects practiced some form of communal property. Thus in the 1920s, these religious groups were given state land to form agricultural communes.

[...] A still more important factor than religion was nationality. Bolshevik policy explicitly defined the Soviet Union as a multiethnic state. It condemned Russian chauvinism as a greater danger than non-Russian nationalism. It called for granting all nationalities, regardless of their size, their own national territories, the use of their national language, and the staffing of administrative and educational institutes with members of their own nationality. It did not allow for ethno-religious nationalities.

[...] A fifth and final prism through which the Bolsheviks viewed the Mennonites was their foreign ties, the fact that they were a diaspora community. In the long term, this would prove fatal for the Mennonites. [...] However, in the short term, foreign ties surely helped the Mennonites. The Soviets were eager for foreign financial help and concerned about potential foreign embarrassments. Mennonite famine relief efforts demonstrated their ability to direct financial assistance to the Soviet Union. Likewise, the Mennonites had foreign political connections who could publicize any persecution undertaken against them.

[tjmystic]

Short version: racists, stop co-opting religious symbols, because now I can't tell who's just religious and who's using those symbol to declare their racism.

Long version (under the cut):

Something happened to me in the late 2000s where I stopped seeing crosses as a source of comfort. Like, I have one in my bedroom, but I mean seeing crosses on other people, like on necklaces and things. As a kid, seeing them made me feel safe, to a degree, because I automatically "knew" that I had something in common with the people wearing them.

And then I started listening to the kinds of things that most of those people said, and all of the comfort bled away.

I'm still Christian, but I never see a cross anymore and think, "Oh, that person believes the same things I do!" More often, they believe the exact opposite. I generally hate to be an idealism purist, same as claiming to know everything and have all of the answers, but I DO know that Christianity has rarely been what Jesus wanted, and never when it was the predominant religion of the ruling class. Even though what these people practice clearly ISN'T Christianity, though, the religion itself and its symbols mostly make me feel uncomfortable now.

Well, I'm starting to feel the same way with Stars of David. And I DETEST that. Because, just like with my religion, I KNOW that Judaism is NOT what Zionists and evangelical hate groups are trying to make it into. I know that more Jewish people than not oppose the genocide in Palestine because they've been victims of countless genocides themselves and know that "never again" means for everyone, not just Jews. I know that Judaism is not a religion or ethnicity built on hate. But, just like I know the same about Christianity while evangelicals and fundamentalists clearly don't, I know this about Judaism while Zionists don't. I can't even say there's a significant difference between the two, because, at least in America, nationalism has tainted both to the degree that most public figures of both Christianity and Judaism are the loudest supporters of Israel. And now I'm wary every time I see a Star of David in someone's profile picture, because I don't know if it's from a Jewish person who's rightfully proud of their heritage and/or religion, a Jewish person loudly reaffirming their faith by asserting that their beliefs don't condone genocide, or a Zionist who co-opted the symbol for their hate crimes or support of them.

I hate it.

I mean, what next? Am I going to start feeling uncomfortable when I see the aum? The crescent? The yin yang symbol? Which group is going to take a religion -- an inherently neutral thing -- next and turn it into something vile that makes me question the morals of everyone associated with it?

I don't hate religions. I love the ways that people have faith and express it. I love the different ways that so many human beings see God or the divine. Religion is not the enemy because, to paraphrase David Mitchell, people have killed each other in the name of anything, whether it was politics or religion or something else, since the dawn of time. Removing religion just removes the comfort and sense of identity that a lot of people cling to in their darkest moments. But the more that wicked people appropriate symbols of faith, the harder it is trust that any religious person believes what they say instead of using their beliefs as a justification for cruelty. Especially since the people who are loudest about belonging to a specific religion are usually the ones doing the most harm.

And in case it wasn't clear (and because reading comprehension on this site is notoriously poor), this is NOT a place for antisemitism. Get out of here with that bullshit. Jewish people are just as much people as everyone else and have just as much of a right to their faith and ethnicity. Zionists, however, are scum who typically hide behind either Judaism or fundamentalist Christianity as an excuse to kill innocent people and colonize land that doesn't belong to them.

[baptist-denominations-poll]

Initial Pairs

Polls start dropping tomorrow!

American Baptist Association VS Interstate and Foreign Landmark Missionary Baptist Association of America

American Baptist Churches USA VS Canadian Baptists of Ontario and Quebec

Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists VS Canadian Baptists of Western Canada

Baptist Bible Fellowship International VS Baptist Missionary Association of America

Baptist General Conference of Canada VS Independent Baptist Church of America

Canadian National Baptist Convention VS Southern Baptist Convention

Converge (previously Baptist General Conference) VS North American Baptist Conference

Cooperative Baptist Fellowship VS Alliance of Baptists

Enterprise Association of Regular Baptists VS Canadian Baptists of Atlantic Canada

Fellowship of Evangelical Baptist Churches in Canada VS Southwide Baptist Fellowship

Fellowship of Independent Reformed Evangelicals VS Sovereign Grace Fellowship of Canada

Foundations Baptist Fellowship International VS Venture Church Network (formerly Conservative Baptist Association of America)

Fundamental Baptist Fellowship Association VS Old Regular Baptists

General Association of Six-Principle Baptists VS General Association of Regular Baptist Churches

Holiness Baptist Association VS Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship

Independent Baptist Fellowship International VS Confessional Baptist Association

National Baptist Convention, USA VS National Baptist Convention of America International

National Missionary Baptist Convention of America VS Progressive National Baptist Convention

National Primitive Baptist Convention of the U.S.A. VS Central Baptist Association

Original Free Will Baptist Convention VS National Association of Free Will Baptists

Primitive Baptist Conference of New Brunswick, Maine, and Nova Scotia VS General Association of General Baptists

Progressive Primitive Baptists VS Primitive Baptist Universalists

Separate Baptists in Christ VS Kindred Associations of Baptists (AKA General Association of the Baptists)

Seventh Day Baptist General Conference VS New Independent Fundamentalist Baptist

Ukranian Evangelical Baptist Convention of Canada VS Union of Slavic Churches of Evangelical Christians and Slavic Baptists of Canada

Union of French Baptist Churches of Canada VS Covenanted Baptist Church of Canada

United American Free Will Baptist Church VS United American Free Will Baptist Conference

(Due to some categories having odd numbers of denominations, a handful will be dropped into the preliminary heats later on. If you don't see your fave, that's probably why!)

[banji-effect]

We, the undersigned organizations, write to express our urgent concern regarding dire and escalating violence in Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territory, which continues to result in significant human suffering and loss of civilian life.

We condemn all violence against civilians by Hamas and the Israeli military. In this critical moment, we believe it is imperative that U.S. policymakers take measures to immediately de-escalate the violence to prevent the further loss of civilian life. We urge Congress and the Administration to:

Publicly call for a ceasefire to prevent the further loss of life;

Prioritize the protection of all civilians, including by urgently securing the entrance of humanitarian aid into Gaza and working to secure the release of hostages; and

Urge all parties to fully respect international humanitarian law.

We implore Congress and the Administration to abstain from rhetoric that exacerbates violence and to unequivocally condemn all violations of international law. Over the last several days, the Israeli government has cut all food, fuel, and humanitarian assistance to the Gaza Strip. On October 12, Israel issued an evacuation order for the entire northern Gaza Strip, telling residents to evacuate south of Wadi Gaza. This amounts to approximately 1.1 million people. The U.N. is calling for this order to be rescinded, warning it will have “devastating humanitarian consequences.”

We again urge Congress and the Administration to publicly call for, and help to facilitate, an immediate ceasefire to prevent the tragic loss of more innocent Palestinian and Israeli lives. Thank you for your urgent consideration.

Sincerely,

Alliance of Baptists American Baptist Churches USA American Friends Service Committee American Muslims for Palestine Americans for Justice in Palestine Anera Arab American Institute Auburn Theological Seminary Center for Civilians in Conflict Center for Jewish Nonviolence Center for Victims of Torture Church of the Brethren, Office of Peacebuilding and Policy Churches for Middle East Peace Common Defense Council on American-Islamic Relations Demand Progress Democracy for the Arab World Now The Episcopal Church Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Fellowship of Reconciliation Freedom Forward Friends Committee on National Legislation Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect Grassroots International Historians for Peace and Democracy If Not Now Institute for Policy Studies New Internationalism Project International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN) Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Jewish Voice for Peace Action Just Foreign Policy Justice Democrats Lott Carey Baptist Foreign Mission Convention MADRE Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns Mennonite Central Committee U.S. Minnesota Peace Project MPower Change Action Fund National Council of Churches National Iranian American Council Neighbors for Peace Nonviolent Peaceforce PAX Pax Christi USA PC(USA) Office of Public Witness Peace Action Project on Middle East Democracy Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft Quixote Center ReThinking Foreign Policy Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights RootsAction September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows Sojourners The Duty Legacy The Unitarian Universalist Association The United Methodist Church - General Board of Church and Society The Zomia Center United Church of Christ United for Peace and Justice UNRWA USA Women for Weapons Trade Transparency Working Families Party World BEYOND War Yemen Freedom Council Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation Yemeni Alliance Committee