Christian Nationalists: Suffering Brings People to God
This video is one example of Republican Christian Nationalist language we've covered here (Scroll to the end to listen)
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Yesterday, we covered Project 2025’s policy position that would ban death with dignity nationwide. Because “protecting life from conception to natural death” includes denying terminally ill people bodily autonomy.
From that newsletter:
Fascist Republicans don’t want anyone to have bodily autonomy. The more Americans suffer, the more open and receptive they are to God’s voice; the more likely they are to turn to the One True God and repent.
Readers often express horror and revulsion over the god Christian Nationalists worship: angry, vengeful Old Testament God. But this dogma is central to their utter lack of empathy.
Which is why their public-facing language fails to meet many moments.
Thoughts and prayers ring hollow in the wake of thousands of mass shootings with few changes to gun laws. Protecting the sanctity of life is an abomination as red state pregnant people suffer and die due to pregnancy complications. God doesn’t make mistakes is no comfort to transgender people who cannot access healthcare in their states.
Republicans have worked for almost five decades to finely tune their coded Christian Nationalist language. Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation, recently said that conservatives can’t use the same language with voters. If they spoke with voters the way they talk amongst themselves, he said, more voters would reject conservative politicians and positions.
Translating this coded Christian Nationalist language is seminal to my work at How Project 2025 Will Ruin YOUR Life. Because I was indoctrinated in Christian Nationalism, I know what their public-facing language means, both in policy documents and in the wild. For months, I’ve translated this language for those who don’t speak it.
Still, it’s jarring. A reader sent me this video of Tennessee Republican Representative Mark Green speaking in a church. Please refrain from eating or drinking anything you could projectile vomit while watching.
Thanks to the TN HOLLER for covering this story. If you’re a Tennessee voter, please support their work.
I have written extensively about how Project 2025 will force Americans into religious indoctrination for welfare assistance, addiction counseling and other therapy, and religious programs in lieu of jail time.
Here we have a Christian Nationalist politician espousing unfiltered radicalized Christian positions in an extremist-friendly environment - a church pulpit.
Government has stepped in and done the work of the church.
The framers of Project 2025 and Christo-fascist Republicans intend to make every American endure religious indoctrination for all kinds of welfare assistance. Because as Mark Green explains, it is the church’s job to provide this assistance, not the government’s. He and his Christian Nationalist Dominionist brethren believe requiring recipients of aid to check religious boxes is a healthy, reasonable expectation for providing help.
Here Mark Green espouses a principal basis of Christian Nationalist lack of empathy. No one should step in to alleviate suffering, because “it interrupts the opportunity for people to come to a saving knowledge of who (the One True) God is.” We have highlighted this talking point in the text of Project 2025 and in Republican talking points over and over since January.
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Yes, Christian Nationalists love to fetishize suffering. That's their thing. They excel at victim blaming, guilt and shame.
However, my personal experience has been that churches typically don't like to assist their communities - not in a real or substantive way. It's a burden and an inconvenience for the church.
Definitely any assistance the church provides comes with strings attached. The push is to direct them over to government services in the long term.
I would welcome more churches filling in the gaps of government social programs - with no conditions.
Yes, the government is doing God's work. But that's ok. I think God probably wants each and every one of us, individually or through our places of business, to do his work and help each other. And the government doing God's work does not detract from the work the church can do. The two do not have to be mutually exclusive in doing God's work.