Do not read this post by Peter Greene unless you are a Christian. Do not read it unless you are a Dominionist and believe in the battle to advance God’s kingdom on this earth.
You see, our Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos just won an award for her work on behalf of God.
Peter Greene writes:
“Dominionism argues that the US should be a literal Christian nation, its government run by Christians. It comes in varying degrees of severity, with varying amounts of nationalism mixed in. One of the major proponents of American (i.e. US) dominionism was D. James Kennedy, a minister and broadcaster in Florida. Sample quote: To be a true Christian citizen means to “take dominion over all things as vice-regents of God.” Or there’s this one:
“Our job is to reclaim America for Christ, whatever the cost. As the vice regents of God, we are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government, our literature and arts, our sports arenas, our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors—in short, over every aspect and institution of human society….
“It’s a view that represents what we think of as the culture wars, only on steroids. These are folks who see themselves as warriors for God, fighting to drive secularism and evil and wrong religions (like, you know, Islam) out of all aspects of US life….
“It should be said that plenty of folks within the Christian church are not fans of this stuff–but plenty of others are all too happy to see themselves as warriors for God, and many of those folks are in elected office right now. The Center stays in touch with many of these folks, holding Bible classes for Congress and support for those who are doing God’s work of reclaiming the seven mountains. The Center also gives out an annual award– the Distinguished Christian Statesman Award. You can see the kind of goals these folks support. Past recipients include Mike Pence, John Ashcroft, and Mike Huckabee. They just handed out the 2019 award.
“The recipient was Betsy DeVos.”
Forgive if I don’t applaud. As a Jew and a member of a very small minority, I find frightening this drive to restore the “Dominion.”
I believe in separation of church and state as the bulwark that protects religious freedom. That used to be the American Way, not the Amway.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
One of the past recipients of this award was John Ashcroft–the fellow who put the blue drape over the statue of The Spirit of Justice at the Department of Justice. I thought, when he did this, that being John Ashcroft–being that twisted and narrow-minded and Puritanical and self-loathing–must be its own punishment.
And, just wondering. Imagine that a miracle occurred, Trump was convicted and removed from office, and Mike Pence became the Republican nominee. Would he have to have Mother on stage with him in debates with Elizabeth Warren?
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devos has skated for several years in her position of sec of education for trump admiinistration….wonder if trump loses who the new sec of ed will be…eliz warren/
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Paige, Spellings, Bennett, Duncan, King, and now Ditzy DeVoid–my Lord, what a crew! Elizabeth Warren would make a great president. I would like to think that she would have the sense to ask Diane Ravitch who the new secretary will be. Lord knows that appointing a Magic 8 Ball Secretary of Education would confer on the office more intelligence than we have seen in it in recent decades.
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I believe in separation of church and state as the bulwark that protects religious freedom. That used to be the American Way, not the Amway.
Great line.
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Amen
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nicely understood: and the US now so transparently slipping from the American way into the Amway way of putting pyramid scheme wealth over citizen protections and the common good
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Harvard professor Adrian Vermuele, teaches constitutional law, clerked for Scalia for a year, wants to abolish separation of church and state, preferring the Empire of Our Lady of Guadelupe? His blog, Mirror of Justice, advocates for immigration preference based on religion (7-20-2019). His other views and the referenced sources are at Wikipedia.
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Among the faithful, some probably liken Trump to the flawed Cortés, who brought Christianity to Mexico.
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His sister, Blakey Vermeule, the Stanford literary scholar and author of the breathtakingly well-written Why Do We Care about Literary Characters, seems to be his polar opposite. LOL. Dr. Vermuele writes so brilliantly, beautifully, vividly, engagingly, and insightfully about literature and popular culture that I do hope she will produce a novel or two. Highly recommended.
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LOL?
I was saddened that a constitutional law professor at a school that educates future Presidents, Supreme Court justices, etc. advocated for a policy giving priority to born again Christians, sending Jewish victims of the Holocaust to the back of the line (an analogy).
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The reason for the LOL: I was amused that a family can produce such polar opposites. Emily Dickinson Blake (“Blakey”) Vermeule isn’t this sort of troglodyte.
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Past recipients… the Koch’s Brownback. It’s been reported that Brownback returned to the church as a result of efforts by Fr. McCloskey of the Catholic Information Center in D.C. (the Center recently gave Princeton’s Robert George an award named after the prosperity Catholic’s Pope John Paul II.) Robert George is on the boards of the Catholic League and the Alliance Defending Freedom (misnamed). The Catholic League called Elizabeth Warren’s education plan an attack on the poor.
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Diane It’s good to be reminded (again) of how bad “bad” can get where religious zealotry is concerned.
It’s no wonder more moderate people, and especially those who understand the threat to a free democracy that such zealots represent, react so strongly to anything deemed “religious.”
And to Linda: Again, “yada, yada, yada” about the Catholics. Here’s to THAT point: ““It should be said that plenty of folks within the Christian church are not fans of this stuff–. . . count me in on that one, along with plenty of others. But for full disclosure, the rest of the sentence says: but plenty of others are all too happy to see themselves as warriors for God, and many of those folks are in elected office right now.”
The problem is that reactionaries (like Linda) are ONLY reactionary–meaning they cannot make distinctions and understand nuances, and where they cannot hear less-noisy voices, and where doing so would put the truth of their own arguments in far better stead . . . instead of sounding like Catholic-bashing–over and over again. BTW, as a Catholic from it’s more moderate tradition, I get a chill when I think of Pense being so close to the political power of the White House. CBK
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Threats to public education- summarizing my blog comments which initially diverged from mainstream comments and posts-
(1) SETDA
(2) Democratic Rep. Susan Davis
(3) CAP (BPC)
(4) Catholic League – Elizabeth Warren’s education plan is not “an attack on the poor”
My opinion- American leaders and influential members of a religion who use the religion to have impact in support of the agenda of the rich against the common good and against separation of church and state, should be exposed. I expect commenters at this blog to note the political activities, the names of the national and state influencers, what they are doing similarly on the international front and the background of their efforts historically so that there is the prospect of stopping attacks against democracy.
I understand that there are those who think privatization is solely a function of greed or that it reflects misguided altruism. Those people likely find comments to be less discomforting if limited to generic discussions about a distant collective of billionaires. I am not offended by those people but, I don’t think their view has much hope of moving the needle.
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Linda Anyone who is attentive to my posts here knows that I have often said that the more pervasive and long-term threat is to curriculum; (and absences from it) especially by religious zealots who do not understand that they are shooting themselves in the foot, and it’s the more so because, as you say, greed more often takes the headline. CBK
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Idle curiosity, Catherine-
Do women often stand up in the church and say we oppose bishops spending $2.5 mil. on clinics that limit birth control methods to a method that fails 25% of the time? Do they often publicly announce that they disagree with the bishops committee that promotes the removal of the Blaine amendments from state law?
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Linda Yada, yada, yada. CBK
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Linda: Is this about abortion now (did you change the goalpost?), or about hindering curriculum? Also, anyone here is welcome to check the website below. Here also are some examples from that site:
http://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/how-we-teach/evangelization/go-and-make-disciples/our-goals_go_and_make_disciples.cfm Here are some examples:
“51. Our joy in this heritage calls us to offer it as a legacy, a treasure God would bestow on everyone who, touched by the Spirit, begins to respond to God’s call. The tools that have been developed over time and the Catechism of the Catholic Church will help us pass on this legacy to others.
“52. This first goal calls us to an enthusiasm for all that God has given us in our Catholic faith. It also fosters ongoing conversion within the Catholic Church, which, as an institution and a community of people, continually needs it. Not only must each of us live the Gospel personally in the Church, but also our faith must touch the values of the United States, affirming what is good, courageously challenging what is not. Catholics applaud our nation’s instinctual religiousness, its prizing of freedom and religious liberty, its openness to new immigrants, and its inspiring idealism. If our society were less open, indeed, we might not be free to evangelize in the first place. On the other hand, our country can be faulted for its materialism, its sexism, its racism, its consumerism, its individualism run wild, its ethic of selfishness, its neglect of the poor and weak, its disregard of human life, and its endless chase after empty fads and immediate pleasures. . . .
At the same time, we Catholics cannot proselytize—that is, manipulate or pressure anyone to join our Church. Such tactics contradict the Good News we announce and undermine the spirit of invitation that should characterize all true evangelization. . . .
“59. Seeing both the ideals and the faults of our nation, we Catholics need to recognize how much our Catholic faith, for all it has received from American culture, still has to bring to life in our country. On the level of truth, we have a profound and consistent moral teaching based upon the dignity and destiny of every person created by God. On the practical level, we have the witness of American Catholics serving those most in need, educationally, socially, materially, and spiritually.” CBK
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“Do women often stand up in the church and say we oppose bishops spending $2.5 mil. on clinics that limit birth control methods to a method that fails 25% of the time? Do they often publicly announce that they disagree with the bishops committee that promotes the removal of the Blaine amendments from state law?” Neither women nor men interrupt the weekly mass—a ritual following a liturgy, with celebrants’ participation consisting of singing, choral response, the taking of communion—to make pronouncements of any kind.
Nor is the RC church a democracy where membership gets to vote on how the USCCB distributes grants. Hey, they can always leave, right? And many do. The more pertinent Q to me is how does Trump admin get to funnel $5million in Title X congressional appropriations– public tax money which citizens cannot by choice refuse to contribute—to these same “clinics,” which under the law are supposed to be “family planning” clinics. Under no stretch of the imagination do Obria clinics qualify, as they do not distribute contraception products ! This speaks to executive branch manipulation of funds to exert “extra” power, & congressional failure to maintain its constitutional power of the purse – through lack of oversight of the executive branch. A good choice for activism.
The Blaine amendment Q is dicier, & USCCB can be expected to be oppositional purely on the basis of its history (even tho we know that’s all about getting public $ for Catholic schools). I look at it this way: Blaine amendments are a poor excuse for proper implementation of Article I. They represent the failure of an amendment which would have clarified Article I to specifically exclude public funding of religious schools. The public was not fully behind that measure then, & they still aren’t, which means the state substitute (Blaine amendments) will continue to be assailed by religious organizations, school-choicers, etc. Just the way it is.
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Catherine, thanks for taking on Linda’s anti-Catholic broadsides in your usual succinct manner [wish I could see forest for trees as well as you!], & thanks especially for this link which makes a very clear distinction between ‘spreading the good news’ [Catholic] & pressured prosyletization [Prot Evangelist]. Tho the distinction is clear, the Catholic position is quite nuanced, & that underlies my frequent point that RC is a huge umbrella [hence its US all-over-the-map voting pattern] while Prot Evang is politically narrow & very very red.
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A single theme- inadvisable political influence and how it can be stopped- no one sacrosanct, not Gulen, not evangelicals, not billionaires, not bishops nor lay religious organizations like the Acton Institute, Catholic League, National Prayer Council, etc.
Jefferson about religion – “Their sway have tried upon me all their various batteries of pious whining, hypocrisy and slandering.”
John Adams- “But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of clearest proof, and you will find…hornets will fly into your face and eyes.”
On the internet there are collective quotes from the founding fathers about religion’s threat to civil government. They provide important insights.
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My first teaching post, many years ago, was in an all-girls’ high-school run by Sisters of Charity. All the faculty were nuns, with the exception of one brother, who taught religion, and me. I had not myself attended Catholic school, and I was familiar with the horror stories about petty, humorless, narrow-minded religious smacking kids with rulers. Nothing could have been further from the truth. These women were smart, dedicated, hard working, intellectual, and incredibly compassionate and giving and kind. They were so very generous of themselves. Blew me away. They walked the talk. They also, btw, had great senses of humor. As anyone who reads my posts here knows, I am a proud snowflake. I loved those women and think of them, often, with gratitude and joy and wonder at their vast reserves of kindness.
It’s important not to paint with too broad a brush.
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And, you concluded the same is untrue of schools who have evangelical teachers, schools which are linked to Gulen, Wiccans etc.?
Interesting view- favorite religions- the ones where their members are our neighbors, friends, spouses, co-workers and part of our families.
The broad brush is indeed what the founding fathers had in mind in their call for separation of church and state?
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I made no such claim, Linda. I believe that there are good people of many different religious persuasions (including atheists and agnostics). Neither did I make a claim that all religious positions except these nuns’ Catholicism were equivalent, nor equivalently bad, which your comment appears to imply. And, ofc, I didn’t espouse any beliefs of my own in my comment. However, if you are interested in those, feel free to read what I have written on the subject: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2014/03/27/the-vast-unseen-and-the-vast-unseeable-2/
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Linda Please understand that all religious groups are made of people, where some understand why their own religious freedom depends on the secularity (separation) that we all enjoy; but where some fail to understand the dangers of the “at any cost” kind of religious totalitarianism. This is true particularly of the Catholic faith, which has been around a long time (it’s what the “protestants” protested against). And they have a long intellectual tradition which some do, and some do not, partake of.
What you think of SOME is true, but certainly not of all, even in many formal publications. Your hyper-focus on that negative aspect of Catholicism today is what I mean by broad-brushing Catholics. You only show your hyper-criticism of Catholics as ignorant and small-minded. CBK
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The first paragraph was posed as a question.
As follow-up, do some commenters at this site singularly defend one denomination while attacking others?
If a similar charge was leveled at me, I would defend my targeting as the political activities carried out by those identifying the actions as those of the denomination.
I would refrain from disparagements of denominational beliefs like Christ rides a dinosaur.
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I don’t agree. Christ is said to have lived from around 4 BCE to around 30 CE, and those dinosaurs that didn’t become birds died out about about 65 million years ago. I think that we are fully within our rights to deny obvious falsehoods and to present the evidence for those being falsehoods.
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Bob-
Religion-ranking based on criteria like story accuracy (the subjectivity of doing so in totality?) makes for a dubious outcome, IMO.
I limit myself to the political activities aimed at influencing specific civil government decisions. I post comment about the activities of a group or individuals identifying by faith, Catholic League and Adrian Vermeule, by political party, DFER, by employee association, SETDA, TFA, AFT, etc. Omitting a group’s religious identity when it is in the group’s title or is obvious in their preferences (the Empire of Our Lady of Guadeloupe) seems duplicitous. And, deletions ignore the significance of an organization’s base e.g. hedge funds and DFER.
CBK- “sheesh” “please understand” “ignorant” “small minded”. I ask you the question you asked, Do you hear yourself?
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Linda the earlier part of your note is a good example of “selective attention” to the content of your earlier notes, where the better definition is “Catholic bashing;” the later, unremarkable. CBK
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Sadly, so many of this so-called pious Christians do not apply the principles to their daily lives. It is not Christian to take advantage of working people as Amway has done. It is not Christian to exploit needy people trying to get an education as the college loan business has done. It is not Christian to turn a blind eye to children being put in cages. It is not Christian to caste LBGT children out of their homes and families. Many of these Dominionists are garden variety hypocrites that pervert the teachings of Christianity to suit their own end.
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correction: cast out
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People like DeVos are NOT Christians….they are religious zealots. They walk a fine line of being categorized as domestic terrorists.
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I so agree with this. DeVos hides behind her simpering dumb-blond facade a steely Calvinist tenor & membership in a church that is 1st-cousins w/ Dominionists– whose mantra “Our job is to reclaim America for Christ, whatever the cost” is 1st cousins w/violent fundamentalist Muslim sects.
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In prepared remarks from a speech she gave in May 2018 — published on the U.S. government’s website (link BELOW) — Secretary Devos made no bones about how she feels about how Christianity should dominate the U.S. government and society.
At one point, she spewed her hatred of the Blaine Amendments, and other copy-cat Blaine Amendments which enshrined the “separation of church and state” in schools for the last 150 years or so. She insisted that this Blaine-codified separation of church and state “should be assigned to the ash heap of history and this last acceptable prejudice should be stamped out once and for all.”
That’s pretty unambiguous.
https://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/prepared-remarks-secretary-devos-alfred-e-smith-foundation
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Unambiguous like the Catholic U.S. Bishop Committee on Religious Liberty.
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Wow that’s a powerful link. My takeaways:
1.”There are many in Washington who seem to think that because of their power there, they are in a position to make decisions on behalf of parents everywhere. In that troubling scenario, the school building replaces the home, the child becomes a constituent and the state replaces the family.”
What a way to characterize public education, which is simply the pooling of community money to ensure basic, adequate education to all its members. Just 6 hrs a day. The home/ family runs the other18hrs (for better or worse), & [where democracy still prevails] has a say via local govt how those 6hrs will be spent.
2.”That’s why we can’t mistake our preferential option for the poor as a preferential option for government. A top-down solution emanating from Washington would only grow government… a new federal office to oversee your private schools and your scholarship organizations. An office staffed with more un-elected and un-accountable bureaucrats tasked to make decisions families should be free to make for themselves. Just imagine for a moment how that might impact you under an administration hostile to your faith!
(a)She’s assuming publicly-funded privatized schools a priori, then doubling down: sorry, taxpayers have no say as to how those schs will be run [i.e., how their $ will be spent], cuz that means [horrors] oversight — which = ‘growing the govt!
(b)scare-mongering: just imagine a govt hostile to your faith!… Translation: if you believe Jesus rode dinosaurs, it’s OK to teach that– & you should get govt funding to do it!
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The Dominionists are already leading their own Inquisition to rival the Spanish Inquisition, and if they achieve their goal and rule the country and all the states, they will shift their inquisition into high gear rivaling the horror of the Christian Inquisitions of the Dark Ages.
Re-education prisons, executions, torture, et al. And Donald Trump is more than willing to be their President for life, the Chosen One.
Why Trump – and some of his followers – believe he is the Chosen One.
https://religionnews.com/2019/08/23/why-trump-and-some-of-his-followers-believe-he-is-the-chosen-one/
Trump’s new trade war rationale: ‘I am the chosen one’
“The president turned to look at the sky as he made the claim, using language that some Christians might consider offensive, because in Christian theology Jesus Christ is the “chosen one” and the savior.
“Trump made the comment during a rambling question-and-answer session with reporters on the White House South Lawn that lasted 35 minutes. The “chosen one” claim marked a departure from his past trade war rhetoric and came as he mainly recycled several oft-repeated statements.” …
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/21/trumps-trade-war-the-chosen-one-1674796
“POTUS Sheild: Trump’s Dominionist Prayer Warriors and the ‘Prophetic Order of the United States’
“In the early morning hours of November 9, 2016, God told Frank Amedia that with Donald Trump having been elected president, Amedia and his fellow Trump-supporting “apostles” and “prophets” had a new mission. Thus was born POTUS Shield, a network of Pentecostal leaders devoted to helping Trump bring about the reign of God in America and the world.” …
https://www.rightwingwatch.org/report/potus-shield-trumps-dominionist-prayer-warriors-and-the-prophetic-order-of-the-united-states/
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Crux (a Catholic publication) 7-6-2017, “The Archbishop of Baltimore who heads the U.S. Bishops Committee on Religious Liberty said the real end game is to see the Blaine Amendment removed from state constitutions all across America”.
The PR started a while ago with media portraying Blaine as anti-Catholic. The campaign trotted out the same playbook used prior for privatization- anti-privatization equals anti-black.
Dominionists have no lower bar on ethics and morality.
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I have a slightly different fear. A dominionist Christian version of the “social credit” system that China is putting in place. Not a Christian? You don’t board a flight or a train, get your kids into school or get a decent job.
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Don’t move to China. There are 195 countries in the world. Why don’t you try out North, Saudi Arabia, Korea or Venezuela? There are so many choices.
Instead of attacking another country, fight to save this one, that is if you are a citizen of the United States.
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Many of the followers of Trump are part of a religious cult. This is why he can never do anything wrong. “… he [Trump] is God’s man in the last days, who will help to bring Christ back to Earth…”
It’s hard to imagine anyone further from being a person who will bring “Christ back to earth” for the last reckoning which separates those who are going to heaven with Jesus…and the rest of us who will go to hell for an eternity.
There are definitely some sick people in this country.
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I believe the Dominionists are the topic of the Netflix documentary series, “The Family.” Scary stuff.
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The Paul Weyrich training manual posted at Theocracy Watch is scary stuff…parallel schools to destroy public education. Weyrich founded the Koch’s ALEC and Heritage Foundation and, the religious right.
I assumed he was an evangelical but, I was wrong.
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The award recipient list looks like they lumped together Catholics and evangelicals.
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If Betsy is an example of godliness I’ll stick with atheism.
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“stick with atheism” while your tax dollars fund religion so that the foundation of the nation can be eroded. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Paine, etc. understood the threat posed by religion’s leaders.
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Linda Your assumption is that all Catholic or other religious schooling (K-12 and University) is all about religious propaganda–it’s not. Sheesh . . . . CBK
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CBK
You believe my focus is too narrow so, I have hope that Bob or Bethree can understand the parallel concerns between the spending of tax dollars by schools allegedly associated with Gulen and diocese spending of tax dollars.
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