I'm for Requiring the King James Version in Schools. No Other Translation Will Do

 

I just love Texans for their eternally stubborn naivety. Members of the Texas state board of education just decided that five million Texas school kids, from first grade to seniors in high school, will be required to read selected Bible stories in school. Last year, the same board decided to put the Ten Commandments in every classroom. Naive and bossy. The 15-member board are all elected to staggered terms from distinct geographical districts. Currently, the board consists of 10 Republicans and five Democrats. 

I got a.i. to assemble the approved list of required readings:

Old Testament

• Genesis
  • Noah's Ark
  • Tower of Babel
• 1 Samuel
  • David and Goliath
• Book of Jonah
• Psalms (including Psalm 23)
• Ecclesiastes (Chapter 3, "To everything there is a season")
• Job
• Lamentations

New Testament

• Gospel of Luke
  • The Parable of the Prodigal Son
  • Luke 14:7–11 (the teaching on humility)
• Gospel of Matthew
  • The Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1–12)
  • Matthew 6:25–34 ("Do Not Be Anxious")
• Acts of the Apostles
  • The Road to Damascus (conversion of Paul the Apostle)
• First Epistle to the Corinthians
  • Chapter 13 ("Love is patient, love is kind")

 

I have no problem pushing the early 17th-century prose of the King James Bible on every student as one important ingredient of being truly educated. I'm not so sure about modern translations. The much simplified New International Reader's Version that Texas prescribes for the youngest kids takes away all the magic language of the King James, and so what's the point? The simplified language means you're no longer teaching language arts; you're teaching bullets of cultural mandates and signaling virtue. For me and for the sake of the children, it has to be the King James or nothing. I consider that translation's Book of Isaiah a towering masterpiece of elite philosophy. I go to the Book of Amos for bug-eyed intensity. I can certainly settle down for an hour or two with Psalms, and I recently reread the Four Gospels to see if I could detect any traits in Jesus that would attract the likes of Samuel Alito. 

What we now refer to as the Holy Bible was the literature of a specific monotheistic religion and the culture of a place that arose along the Jordan River. That literature became dogma all over Europe and spread from there all over the world, including to America. How the book has evolved most recently in the hands of political preachers and grifting presidents should and does ignite an opposition to the Texas Bible requirements. The selections favor an evangelical Protestant approach to the biblical text rather than a broadly ecumenical or academic one.

The devil in me wants to make fun of the Texas school board for its attempt to bring all the children to obedience through the Book of Job, but I won't. I think I'd like to be one of those Texas teachers that got to build a lesson plan around what happened to Job and why. There's no Isaiah on the reading list, nor Amos, but yes the Book of Job. Glad to see First Corinthians, but no Revelations? Who would miss that druggie trip!

I was in the 5th Grade in a small, rural Texas public school in the mid-'50s when all the classrooms got wired up for a new P.A. system, and we began to hear from the principal at the start of every day, followed by Bible readings and little sentence prayers, the last two offered by students selected for their good behavior. I was never asked. But, then, I already knew the Bible better than most of my classmates, because of my Pentecostal background. We read the Bible. The King James Bible.

The language gets in your head, becomes a muscle for the way you see the world, see yourself in the world and how you order the universe. Yes, it's culturally specific especially for Anglo Texans, and I air one of those. Which makes me actually sympathetic to the sweet idiocy of the Texas School Board.

 

In Texas, It's the Context, Stupid!

 

Reading about the 5th Circuit's decision in the Texas 10 Commandments case, sent me into reveries about my own experience with religion in Texas public school classrooms. 

ME AND MY SHADOW

I was a student in Texas public schools from 1st grade through high school graduation -- the 1950s through the election of John F. Kennedy. Of course I was indoctrinated. In grade school, first thing of a morning we had Bible readings and prayers blasted into every classroom over a speaker system -- pious little moments to start the school day. They were probably majority Southern Baptist in hue and flavor, if I were betting, but at least pointedly Protestant, not that theology meant squat to me at that age. The Bible readings and prayers -- "devotionals," they were called -- were meant to make us "mindful," quiet and observant, tamed for classroom decorum by Protestant doctrines of sin and punishment. I'm sure those devotionals were tactical for teachers and administrators, who probably preferred their children guilt-ridden and docile.

Though I learned the 10 Commandments at church, not at school, I'll be honest here and say out loud that I don't think the display of the 10 Commandments in every classroom of my upbringing would have hurt me. Actually reading them now could start a lot of arguments, or at least a lot of wide-ranging thought, like when did "Remember the Sabbath day" become "Your butt better be in a pew on Sunday"? The Protestant text of the commandments -- which is actually quoted in the 5th Circuit majority's opinion -- gets me asking all sorts of questions -- like, did the original author of the Commandments -- looking at you, Jesus -- know nothing about human nature? To outlaw coveting things your neighbor has, including his wife and his slaves, guaranteed a pretty universal participation in sin, don't you think? And I have other questions about just exactly what "land" God has given us -- or who is the "thee" he gave it to if not us? And what does honoring father and mother have to do with keeping that land? 

I concur with the 5th Circuit majority in the need to review the actual text: 

I AM the LORD thy God.

Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven images.

Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain.

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land
which the Lord thy God giveth thee.

Thou shalt not kill.

Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Thou shalt not steal.

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house.

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his
maidservant, nor his cattle, nor anything that is thy neighbor's.

The Commandments are a somewhat quaint, historically resonant, very culturally specific document that every kid should know, but having it forced on kids' -- and their parents, not to mention teachers unwilling to be conduits of partisan thought-control -- by state legislators and Ken Paxton, whose motives have little to do with education but a great dealt to do with the winds of conservative orthodoxy and the wielding of power -- that is the context that made SB 10 a threat. 

  

BACKGROUND TO THE LAWSUIT

1. Gov. Greg Abbott signed Texas SB 10 into law in 2025, which mandated the "conspicuous" display of the Protestant 10 Commandments in each and every Texas classroom, from 1st grade to 12th, with "a typeface visible from anywhere in the room." The posters were mandated to be at least 16 inches wide and 20 inches tall. Schools were not required to purchase the posters. They were ordered to accept donations of them. (And if that doesn't sound like a bag job of ulterior motives, I don't know what would!) SB 10 was part of a much broader conservative push since God put Trump in the White House as 2nd Son to censor library books, clamp down on "deviance," and "infuse Christianity into public schools."

2. Some 15 parents of school-age children in certain Texas school districts became the plaintiffs in an ACLU challenge to SB 10, and the parents won in two different Federal District courts, which first halted the law in the specific 15 school districts represented by the plaintiffs and then enjoined it statewide, ruling it was likely, on the face of it, that SB 10 violated the "establishment of religion" clause in the US Constitution. 

3. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, that scourge of God who appears to have been behind much of the push for the 10 Commandments law, appealed to the 5th Circuit in January, and the 17 active judges on the Circuit heard the case en banc. They decided 9-8 that the Texas law is not coercive because it does not require students to learn the Ten Commandments nor does it give teachers authority to undermine students’ religious beliefs. 

But the best reading in the 118-page 5th District ruling are the several dissents appended by the eight judges who know a stinkbug when they see one. 

The Self-Parody of Franklin Graham

 

I have a church history. I sat in a hard wooden pew three times a week from the age of 12 until I went off to college at 18 (and found perdition). I've been harangued as a hormonal teenager by a pastor who demanded I reject worldly ways and turn away from temptation. I've been told by another preacher of the Gospel that I was inviting the Devil into my life by watching TV. I've been electrified by an evangelist who told us, as Christians, that we had every right to demand God smite the wicked wicked world on our behalf, and that if we did not pray with muscle and sweat, we were insufficient in our faith. I've been elated -- transported into the bare rafters -- by a visiting Christian platform performer who embodied the bubbling smug champagne of knowing we're saved and most others are lost.

I freed myself of preachers. I turned to other idols. Great is the God Irony. 

Last Thursday, Reverend Franklin Graham posted on Facebook an hilarious self-parody of the preacherdom I left behind:

I do not believe President Trump would knowingly depict himself as Jesus Christ — that would certainly be inappropriate. I’m thankful the President has made it very clear that this was not at all what he thought the AI-generated image was representing — he thought it was a doctor helping someone, and when he learned of the concerns, he immediately removed the post.

 

It's weak, limping around "that would certainly be inappropriate" with "I'm thankful the President has made it very clear yada yada" -- because, after all, Franklin Graham has been the main one to say that Trump is ordained by God and represents the living hand of Jesus Christ on earth. Which boxes the preacher in. "I do not believe Trump would depict himself as Jesus" is just plain bearing false witness. I chuckled as I read it. Pride goeth. 

 

Taylorsville Pastor Arrested in Peaceful Protest at US Capitol

 

Rev. Joel Simpson

Rev. Joel Simpson, pastor of First United Methodist Church down the mountain in Taylorsville, was arrested in the first of a new round of "Moral Mondays" at the U.S. Capitol in May 2025 while protesting the proposed Republican-led federal budget. He was one of five clergymen detained. Simpson and other clergy members also protested a later version of the budget, dubbed the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," in June 2025. He and the protestors described the legislation as "immoral" and "deadly" due to deep cuts to social programs. About the budget, Pastor Simpson told the Hickory Daily Record he was concerned about the cuts to Medicaid, which he said would "devastate" communities like Alexander County. (AI summary) More recently, The Daily Record headlined a Simpson op-ed in which he criticized the record of Congresswoman Virginia Arbuthnot Foxx: "Taylorsville pastor: 'This federal budget is not just a failure of values; it is a death sentence.' "

Pastor Simpson interviewed with The United Methodist Insight soon after his arrest in May, and he clearly knows what he's talking about. Simpson said:

The Taylorsville House is a memory care facility that currently has 44 residents in Alexander County. If Medicaid funds are cut, Taylorsville House and other care facilities in our community such as Valley Nursing and Rehab (which also has members of my church) will be in trouble....

Even with Medicaid, 9% of people don’t have health insurance at all in Alexander County. That’s over 3,000 people.

The impact doesn’t stop there, however. Food assistance is also at risk of being cut, with the House budget resolution calling on $230 billion in cuts over 10 years for the Agriculture Committee, which oversees SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program).

14% of Alexander County is a part of the food stamps program SNAP. This is a little over 5,000 people and it’s still not enough support. Last year, the Christian Crisis Center food pantry in Taylorsville gave almost 15,000 people food and served almost 6,000 families. This was only one of many food pantries in our county. People will be deeply impacted by these cuts.

 

Otherwise what I know about Joel Simpson, I got from the Taylorsville church website: 

Joel Simpson has been preaching at First United Methodist since April 2018, with his first “official” Sunday as Pastor on June 3. He grew up in Morganton, and most recently served as Associate Pastor at Mt. Zion United Methodist Church in Cornelius. He earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing from UNC Charlotte, and completed seminary at Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta.

In my dusty part of Texas growing up, the Methodists were always the most liberal. Lord love 'em!

According to LinkedIn, "He blogs regularly at substack.com/@joelsimpson, Red Letter Christians, and the Western NC Conference of The United Methodist Church." He's apparently known locally for a regular Wednesday morning video chat via Facebook. In those videos he speaks very carefully and clearly as a way of warding off the Devil and never mentioning Trump by name.

Whatley on the Moral Betterment of America

 

Whatley said it was imperative to recruit “moral” people to run for office, because “I’ve never seen someone who became a more moral person after they got elected.”

--Raw Story 

 

Michael Whatley in Gastonia.
Photo Carolina Journal

The intense sinew it must take -- or a total innocence of irony -- for Whatley to keep the negative example of Trump from scrambling his brains while he uttered such sterling religiosity above and just incidentally spread out the truth as it pertains to Trump: the presidency has not improved that man's character. 

July 31st, Michael Whatley, freshly anointed for the Senate race by Hisownself, launched his campaign for the Senate seat that MAGA forced Thom Tillis out of. At the Loray Mill Taproom in Gastonia, the Rev. Shawn Griffith, Whatley’s pastor at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, gave a "nonpartisan invocation," asking for God’s blessing on Whatley and his family.

“We pray that you give Michael wisdom in seeking your will in the decisions he will face,” Griffith said. “We pray that you give him strength and courage to choose and do the right things rather than those that are popular.”

According to Raw Story, Whatley’s 18-minute speech "eschewed religion, but referenced Trump nine times." Meanwhile, the Rev. Griffith was standing aside, listening closely, possibly enjoying his own ironies, for his particular Episcopal Church is woke and proud of it:

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Gastonia describes itself as “a progressive parish” whose members volunteer for programs “to combat hunger, homelessness, racism and other significant issues.” The St. Mark’s website notes that the Episcopal Church embraces “inclusion,” and that “people of all genders and sexual orientations serve as bishops, priests, and deacons in our church.”

Meanwhile, as Chair of the RNC Michael Whatley got his holy-roller on courting the MAGA evangelicals, acting a part that Episcopalianism did not really prepare him for, preying on the naivete and the seduceability of ardent believers.

In Charlotte in 2022, addressing the Salt & Light Conference — hosted by the Faith & Freedom Coalition, led by longtime political strategist Ralph Reed — Whatley said: “I work hard every day to make sure the North Carolina Republican Party is going to be the party of faith … I pray that I can use this platform that I’ve been given by the voters of North Carolina, and the Republicans of North Carolina to be an instrument of God.”

The Raw Story piece makes hay out of Whatley's religious slumming, puncturing it with all the ways the national Episcopal Church has confronted Trump, which doesn't deter Whatley from being very involved in the governance of his local Episcopal church. He's the treasurer for St. Mark's in Gastonia, and previously served as a senior warden on the vestry. So watching the national Episcopal power structure denounce everything to do with raw trumpism, the very policies that Whatley has so fulsomely embraced -- does that make the St. Mark's Sunday morning coffee hour a tense situation? 

Remember this moment at the National Cathedral one day after Trump's inauguration, with Trump sitting in the pews:

The Rt. Rev. Marian Edgar Budde, the Episcopal bishop for the Diocese of Washington, D.C. directly pleaded with Trump to “have mercy” on “gay, lesbian and transgender children in both Republican and Democratic families who fear for their lives.”

Budde went on to admonish Trump that while some “may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals.”

There's show religion and then there's real religion. Seems like Whatley has followed Trump to the showy side. 

Coming to the U.S. Supremes -- Another Opportunity To Destroy the Separation of Church and State

 

St. Isidore of Seville

Amy Coney Barrett has already recused herself from St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School v. Drummond, the church/state case arising out of Oklahoma which the Supreme Court decided on Friday to put on its docket. Oklahoma, even more problematic than my native Texas, has that statewide Superintendent of Schools who wants to include mandatory Bible reading in every curriculum of every public school in the state. No, really. So it's not necessarily shocking that the St. Isidore case would be Oklahoma-born.

St. Isidore, owned by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, would become the nation’s first religious charter school, plus it would be entirely online, and its curriculum "would embed [Roman Catholic] religious teachings throughout lessons, including in math and reading classes. As a charter school, it would be run independently from traditional public schools. But public taxpayer dollars would pay for the school, and it would be free for students to attend" (Troy Closson).

The Archdiocese made application to the 5-member state board of education in June 2023. It proved controversial. The board ultimately voted 3-to-2 to approve it, but the Oklahoma Supreme Court blocked its creation:

"Justice James Winchester wrote in the majority opinion that state law requires a public charter school to be nonsectarian, arguing that the Oklahoma Constitution prohibits the state from using public money for the benefit or support of any religious institution. A 2016 ballot measure in the state would have repealed that measure, but voters rejected that effort." (OSV News)

So now it's before the Alito Court (who is himself Catholic), supported by all kinds of people who see no problem forcing the Christian religion into people's faces. Barrett was previously a law professor at Notre Dame who recused possibly because she is close friends with a Notre Dame law professor who has helped advise the St. Isidore team.

The Drummond who's defendant is Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond.

"Keep Clear of People Like That"

 

Video produced by Evangelicals for Harris. Not all evangelical Christians have been fooled and corrupted.

Religion in Schools

 

By Jack Yordy, guest-posting:

She who would be Superintendent
of all NC Schools -- Michele Morrow

Religious schooling is familiar to me. As a graduate of Christ The King (CTK) Catholic High School in Huntersville, North Carolina, religion wasn’t just in my school. It was the central idea of my schooling. The core tenet of CTK’s teaching philosophy was "faith through reason." 

Teachers and students alike had difficulty grappling with that ideological framework. In my first year at CTK, we learned about the Big Bang and the theory of evolution in history class. The next class of the day was Theology, where our teacher did not just call those ideas into question but claimed that they were unequivocally false. Between claims about homosexuals infiltrating the Church, he also liked to discuss the difference between Christianity and Catholicism, highlighting with vigor the "heresies" of other Christian doctrines and biblical interpretations, and of course, his belief that god put dinosaurs on earth to "test our faith." 

One day in my Junior year, after I had come out and was known to be gay by both my peers and professors, my history teacher decided to spend an entire class session talking about homosexuality. He asked us, “Well, why would gays want to get married? What’s the point other than getting government benefits?” and claimed that gay people knew they weren’t truly married if they weren’t married in the church. He finished this diatribe with a point directed at me and my mother, who was also the biology teacher at the school, saying in front of my classmates, “If you let your son be homosexual, it’s the same as letting him jump off a bridge." One of my classmates brought this to the administration, who decided that my history teacher was speaking within Catholic doctrine and therefore was not in the wrong. 

On Thursday, June 27th, the Oklahoma State Superintendent mandated that the Bible be taught in Oklahoma public schools. As a person who went to a Catholic school, these are some of the questions that I believe must be asked when we’re thinking about teaching religious doctrine in schools: 

• Which doctrines and interpretations of the Bible are we going to teach?

• Will we allow or encourage teachers to contradict scientific claims that are universally accepted but are in conflict with the Bible?

• Does it mean vilifying queer students and students of other religious and cultural backgrounds who don’t fit into a teacher’s interpretation of the Bible? 

• If a student disagrees with a teacher’s Biblical interpretation, will their grades be affected? 

  
  

These are not rhetorical questions. When voters go to vote in North Carolina’s state superintendent election this year, they should be asking these questions because the Republican candidate Michele Morrow is not thinking of them at all. She will likely try to implement the Oklahoma state policy in tandem with other Republican states regardless of the chaos in classrooms that will follow. Voters in this election must consider if they want to live in a state where these questions need to be answered and where their tax dollars are spent, through private school vouchers ("Opportunity Scholarships"), to confuse and punish students without the same religious views as their teachers.

The Holy Man Said

 

Most interesting sentence from this Christian nationalist: "I'm not telling you to vote for him...."

That's a crack. That's a small cloud the size of a man's hand, which could bring a flood. Pardon me while I remember the Bible verses of my youth:

1 Kings 18:44

The seventh time the servant reported, “A cloud as small as a man’s hand is rising from the sea.” So Elijah said, “Go and tell Ahab, ‘Hitch up your chariot and go down before the rain stops you.’ ”

Ahab's on trial, and the Pharisees don't like it.

This Preacher Gives Preachers a Bad Name

 

You've heard, right? Rev. Mark Harris is attempting a political resurrection from the grave he put himself in during the elections of 2018. 

You remember. 

Harris, pastor of a Southern Baptist megachurch in Charlotte and a leader of the 2012 evangelistic push to punish LGBTQ people for being LGBTQ, had beaten incumbent Republican Rep. Robert Pittenger in the 2018 primary, then ran against Democratic Marine golden boy Dan McCready (not all bright visions come to pass). Harris appeared to win over McCready by 900 votes. That's when the world got to know Leslie McCrae Dowless, a character out of the novel about NC politics that Damon Runyon never wrote.

By the end of November 2018, Joe Bruno, a reporter for WSOC, first mentioned the name Leslie McCrae ("McCrae") Dowless, and began to find a history of allegations of ballot fraud going back years. McRae Dowless, a gun for hire, a Democrat when they had power and then officially a Republican after they took over. An opportunist with certain skills, which turned out to be outright forgery and fabrication of bogus absentee ballots (which -- let's be fair -- may never actually have come close to turning an election but nevertheless tainted the one sufficiently in 2018 to end Mark Harris's political career, at least until now). Dowless faced criminal charges. Somehow, Harris skated. The Wake County D.A. said there wasn't enough evidence. But the State Board of Elections (SBOE) refused to certify Harris's election based on provable fraud, and then voted unanimously (including the two Republican members) to invalidate the 2018 election and call for a new election in 2019 (which Dan McCready lost again, this time to that horse's patoot Dan Bishop). All of which culminated in an escalation of revelation, first his denial that he knew anything about Dowless's activities (hardly credible that this preacherman didn't perceive exactly who McCrae Dowless was). But from denial, he was soon sobbing in public at the SBOE inquest while his son testified against him, said he himself had warned his father about the apparent corruption of Dowless. Harris ended his testimony abruptly, withdrawing his candidacy and conceding that a new election was called for, considering the evidence.

That was 2018. Now, in yet another election year, Harris is back as a striving Christian warrior trying to save America -- or at least the 8th District of NC -- and denying that any of 2018 ever happened. He now says he was the victim of a manufactured ballot crisis, that Democratic officials conspired against him to "steal" his election. Is the Trump shtick of God's own martyred hero going to suffice for Harris's comeback? Dunno. Time will tell. Someday soon I might get around to profiling Harris's primary opponents, and how they're treating him.

Tim Funk published a revealing profile on The Assembly's website about Harris's current plan to make his comeback in March's primary against several other Republican contenders. Well worth signing up for The Assembly. 

Take a Handgun To Church

 

As of a week ago, it's lawful to take your handgun into a house of worship in North Carolina. Senate Bill 41, “Guarantee 2nd Amendment Freedom and Protections,” also eliminated gun permits entirely.

Nearer, my Walther, to Thee!

Red Flag

 

Mike Johnson (R-La.) on his wife Kelly not being in attendance for his ascension to House Speaker: “She’s spent the last couple of weeks on her knees in prayer to the Lord. And, um, she’s a little worn out.” That's slamming the doors to the Kingdom of Heaven ... in our faces. But, you know, privilege of ownership.

Jesus gave advice: "And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men."

Maybe Mark Robinson Is Just a Big Dope

Mark Robinson's blowhard and ill-considered proclamations keep reappearing out of the not-at-all-distant past, like the clip below from 2018. (It's an interview from "The King's Report," a podcast of peculiar origin, which may also rank on whatever scale you personally maintain for Most Bizarre Host of a podcast. "The King's Report" is hosted by Rev. Hyung Jin "Sean" Moon, the son and successor to the Rev. Sun Myung Moon. In the podcast, Sean Moon is wearing camo and a crown fashioned from high-caliber bullets. King of the world indeed.) 

It's an hour-long podcast meant to showcase and celebrate the grassroots fightin' genius of Mark Robinson, private citizen at the time, whose recent bravura speech before the Greensboro City Council protesting any restrictions on gun shows had gone completely viral in conservative circles. Robinson was and is an amazingly effective and fluid speaker. When he's in his groove and feels particularly self-righteous, he does not stumble nor hesitate. He's a natural-born preacher, really, and his text is always the unjust shenanigans of pussy liberals who threaten the freedom of born-again Christians. With the volume of his voice and the certitude of his pronouncements, Robinson symbolizes and embodies the fighting spirit that made Donald Trump such an avatar. Robinson, recall, was rising to speak at the hearing in Greensboro during the first two years of the Trump presidency, when pugnacious truculence was becoming the prevailing style. 

The independent news-gathering blog "Charlotte Stories" was the first to unearth a pretty remarkable performance by Robinson soon after his star-turn in front of the Greensboro City Council. Robinson went on Rev. Sean Moon's podcast as an enthusiastic amen-er for that militant version of Christianity, which doesn't emphasize so much the loving arms of Jesus as the iron scourge of right-wing purity. According to Moon, most government (at least all of it not run by Donald Trump) and "the elites" are nothing more than tools of Satan who must be confronted by armed resistance if necessary (which explains the crown of bullets, the camo, and the high-capacity assault rifle sitting prominently on top of Moon's desk). When Moon runs out of breath for his bursts of resentment against the godless elites, Robinson throws in his own Gospel that "leftists hi-jacked liberalism," that they have been leading the blind into greater dependency on government, which means greater power for Democratic politicians. Moon applauds all of that but has his own fish to fry. It's not until the 50:37 mark on the podcast that Moon gets around to the evil of "banks" and "bankers," "Soros and the Rothschild group," appearing to make this very logical connection: that Hitler had to do genocide of the Jews to "pay back" the Jewish bankers:

“When Hitler genocided all those folks -- the Jews and the gypsies, etc., -- in Germany, the national debt of Germany actually went down. It didn’t go up. It went down. He was paying back the bankers.”

To which bizarre enunciation of anti-Semitism Mark Robinson only mumbled, “mmhmm, mmhmm, yeah.” 

Burning Question Number One: Why would Robinson go on this podcast with this particular influencer? I mean, why? Because he had only just begun to be famous, and he was clearly infatuated by all the praise Moon heaped on him as a fighter for guns and godliness. After the Greensboro speech -- which incidentally Moon includes in its entirety at the beginning of this podcast (if you've never seen it), Robinson was enamored of his own sudden notoriety, eager for more media hype, and he didn't mind the reputation of whoever would give him air. Now that he's a successful politician running for higher office and clearly being coached to rein it in, I doubt he'd go on the "King's Report."

Burning Question Number Two: Charlotte Stories wanted to use Robinson's reaction to Moon's anti-Semitism as proof of Robinson's anti-Semitism. I think Robinson's mmmhmm, mmhmm, yeah was probably more indicative of "I haven't got a clue what you just said." That moment, not to mention the whole hour-long production, just screams dumb chump. Had Robinson done any research on Moon and his movement? Dunno. Maybe he didn't care. Maybe he only focused on going off as he likes to go off, in that blustering, preachy style of his, and Sean Moon was clearly dee-lighted with the Black man going after the white socialist elites. Was Mark Robinson so ambitious for more notoriety that he'd jump on a crazy train? Or did he really agree with all those Moon pronouncements?

Limits to Proselytizing for Jesus

 

Aurora Pro Services in Greensboro, offering HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and roofing services and repairs, has settled with two former employees who were punished and fired for refusing to attend company prayer sessions, and not just any kind of prayer sessions. Pretty aggressively evangelistic services (and if you've never attended one, believe me, it can get uncomfortable like prickly heat). One of the employees who sued had declared himself an atheist but was nevertheless asked point-blank to lead a group prayer. Saying "no," especially when Jehovah is involved, creates acid.

That plaintiff alleged that the religious meetings came to last 45 minutes and the other plaintiff said they were becoming "cult-like." 

The owner of Aurora Pro Services told [the 1st plaintiff] “he did not have to believe in God, and he did not have to like the prayer meetings, but he had to participate” before the worker refused to attend the meetings altogether and was fired over it in the fall of 2020.... (Julia Marnin)

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued the company on behalf of the fired employees, and the company avoided trial by paying out a settlement of $50,000 (mainly back wages), divided between the two employees (EEOC news release). 

Mark Robinson, In Mufti and Out

 

I watched the video that Politico put up of Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson's speech at the Faith and Freedom Coalition convention yesterday (in which he preached warfare and total obeisance to the warrior king Donald Trump), which made me more acutely aware of the personality switcheroo that Robinson started trotting out the night he gave a pre-taped rebuttal to Gov. Cooper's state-of-the-state address back in March -- a coached and stage-managed personality remake wherein Robinson seemed less the bombastic preacherman ready to dictate everybody's behavior than a policy wonk arguing the law. That's the new Mark Robinson, at least while he's in North Carolina. But on the national stage he's still the overbearing, holier-than-thou authoritarian.

Back in March, via pre-taped video, Robinson talked calmly. None of his signature shouted exhortation, and he even eschewed the politics of division and anger. Or at least claimed he did. That's the new Robinson in campaign mode for governor, as though independent voters are gonna buy that act. The real Mark Robinson, whose delivery is like every hellfire preacher I heard growing up, always laying down markers about other people's behavior and quoting scripture as a flail to unholy backs -- I don't want that anywhere near the governor's office. 

The Super-Christians Offer Testosterone Booster Shots

 

Nearer, my God, to Thee

Nearer to Thee

E'en though it be a cross

That raiseth me

--19th Century Christian hymn 

At the Faith & Freedom Coalition's annual conference yesterday in DeeCee, founder Ralph Reed announced that his 14-year-old religious pressure org was there "to give our candidates a little bit of a testosterone booster shot," because some Republican office-holders and wannabes were showing visible nerves about banning abortion. Don't be shocked or even amused by Reed's metaphor, because he was merely preaching the New Testament Gospel. The First Epistle of Peter the Apostle, supposedly written from Rome by St. Peter hisownself and addressed to new Christian converts suffering persecution, contained an intriguing suggestion to "gird up the loins of your mind," by which you're supposed to envision men in jock straps (so to speak) and thereby ready for battle. I heard that phrase "gird up your loins" (never with the rest of it: "of your mind") in many a sermon wherein we were harangued to keep the faith even unto death. Life is a battle against the forces of Satan, and you best be girded for it.

I understand evangelicals. I was raised as one. I was raised understanding that worldly people needed saving, that hell is very real, and that God is watching me like a chicken hawk. Yes, evangelical, and therefore brave enough to gird up my loins and march over to our neighbor lady's house to "witness" to her about the saving grace of Jesus. She was known to us for disappearing into a whiskey bottle about every 6 months, and I thought in my budding Christian arrogance that I could save her. Or I ought to at least try. Didn't happen. I was a total washout as a litigator of other people's behavior.

I was not only evangelical but also Pentecostal, which put me in a stark minority among my Baptist school mates. Most of them weren't particularly religious in any overt sense, while I was, and couldn't partake (or wasn't supposed to) of certain pleasures of the mid-'60s, like dancing, like movies (especially the drive-in variety), like any music but hymns. My mama didn't even like me watching TV, which caused me to spend more time at my friends' houses.

As evangelical Pentecostals, we felt persecuted because we did energetic stuff in our services that other denominations didn't do, and we knew they made fun of us. If you feel persecuted, it's a salve for your hurt feelings to also and simultaneously feel superior to the rest of the world, at least in the arena you've chosen for yourself. Yes, evangelicals judge (and rather harshly) everyone else. 

But we differed from the Ralph Reed evangelicals in that we tended to withdraw from the world. We certainly never engaged in politics (except once to protest the activities at a dance hall directly across the street from our church building). The new evangelical project of the Faith & Freedom Coalition and other such groups is the opposite of separation from the sinful world but rather its intended conquering. The government is the target for conquest, and rest assured -- it's a crusade. Reed is all about the drawn sword and talks blithely and without a hint of irony about dosing Republican politicians with testosterone. "Takes a real man to get a girl pregnant, and to keep her that way!"

Depend on the Southern Baptists

 

There is a movement in the Southern Baptist Convention, a denomination that is often a bellwether for evangelical America, to purge women from its leadership.

-- "Southern Baptists Move to Purge Churches With Female Pastors," NYTimes

Rick Warren

No one seems to know exactly how many Southern Baptist churches have female pastors, associate pastors, sub-pastors, youth pastors, etc. Some estimates go as high as 2,000 different churches. Five of those churches, including the famous Saddleback Church in Southern California (made famous by founding pastor Rick Warren and his bestseller, The Purpose Driven Life), have been expelled from the denomination. Warren had retired as pastor and named a husband and wife team as his replacements, a dangerous precedent that the fundamentalists can't countenance:

The right wing of the Southern Baptists, the largest Protestant denomination in America, is now — like conservatives more broadly — cracking down on what it sees as dangerous liberal drift. Most people in the denomination have long believed that the office of head pastor should be reserved for men. But an ultraconservative faction with a loud online presence is going further, pressing for ideological purity and arguing that female pastors are a precursor to acceptance of homosexuality and sexual immorality.

Wow. Whatever else, Southern Baptists are now not only tops in membership but tops at driving away young people. 

The annual Southern Baptist Convention is going on this week in New Orleans, and a proposed amendment to the S.B.C. constitution would further restrict the role of women. The amendment sez a church can be Southern Baptist only if it “does not affirm, appoint or employ a woman as a pastor of any kind.”

Tops at driving away educated women too, especially at a time when the whole church is under federal investigation for concealing and allowing widespread pastoral sexual abuse.

What's the polemical temperature of the "messengers" at the convention this week in New Orleans?

On Tuesday night, Mr. [Rick] Warren made that appeal [to have Saddleback Church reinstated in the denomination] from the floor of the convention to more than 12,000 delegates who would vote on whether to readmit his church.

“If doctrinal disagreements between Baptists are considered sin, we all get kicked out!” he said, noting that the S.B.C.’s theological statement is 4,032 words. “Saddleback disagrees with one word,” he said. “That’s 99.99999999 percent in agreement! Isn’t that close enough?”

The crowd shouted back at him, “No!”

The trumpian psyche in religion. But by their fruits you shall know them. Perhaps not incidentally, yesterday the Convention voted against allowing back into the denomination Saddleback Church and one other in Louisville that had allowed the ordaining of women.

What's In Their Hearts?

 

Two prominent members of the far-right Freedom Caucus in the NC House showed their asses in the last few hours, as though they needed even more product branding after their attacks on the rights of women in the state.

Rep. Jeff McNeeley (Iredell Co.) interrupted -- interrupted -- Rep. Abe Jones, who is Black, and asked him if he could have gotten into Harvard if he wasn't Black or an athlete. Okay, McNeeley, said "if you weren't a minority or an athlete," but I think everyone knew exactly what he was implying. Abe Jones does indeed have a law degree from Harvard. (McNeeley apologized, but as we know the harm was already done.)

Keith Kidwell

Before that display of uncooked racism, Rep. Keith Kidwell (of the mean eyes) heckled Rep. Diamond Staton-Williams during the debate on the abortion law veto override. While Staton-Williams was tearfully telling her own personal experience with abortion, even though she had grown up "in the church," Rep. Kidwell quipped, "she means the Church of Satan" loud enough for nearby staffers and House pages to hear him. Will Doran, the reporter for the News and Observer, also heard him.

If Kidwell has ever apologized to Staton-Williams, he's kept the apology well out of sight.

The Devil in the Software

 

Ever striving to stay up with the latest technology, I'm here to inform you about the newest "ChatBot" that can quote scripture. "Chatbots are computer programs that are capable of maintaining a conversation with a user in natural language, understanding their intent, and replying convincingly in the way a human would behave as a conversational partner" (Wikipedia).

A new Christian chatbot that knows the King James version of the Bible -- backwards, forwards, sideways -- was recently test-driven by Sarah Posner who published her experience on Talking Points Memo. She "spoke with" ChatKJV (get it?) about a number of hot-button social issues dear to the generous Christian hearts of conservatives. 

Here's what ChatKJV said about abortion:

“The Bible does not explicitly state that an abortion is wrong, and ultimately, it is up to the woman to weigh the risks and implications of any decision she makes.” 

Gender identity:

Verses from Romans and Galatians “indicate that we should treat all people equally, regardless of their gender identity.”

When I asked ChatKJV if taking away the rights of transgender children honors God, it said, “it is not God’s desire to take away the rights of any person, especially a child. God wants us to come together in love and acceptance so that everyone can feel included and safe.”

Posner engaged in a lengthy exchange with ChastKJV about justice:

Our conversation progressed to this point through a discussion about justice. ChatKJV wants to know how you’re feeling, so I asked it about my concerns and fears about threats to democracy (in which the Bible has been wielded as a weapon, but we didn’t get into that). ChatKJV is not very worried about rising authoritarianism, nor is it worried, presumably, about whether the Department of Justice is working speedily enough to bring those who assaulted our democracy to justice. [ChatKJV is also very firm on homosexuality, that it's a sin, and can't find a text anywhere that condemns slavery.] Only God can ultimately dispense justice, ChatKJV says, and we must trust in God to carry out justice. The bot leaned heavily on Romans 12:19 (“Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord”) to assure me God will “always” bring justice “in due time.” When I fretted that perhaps those who had committed wrongdoing would not ultimately be held accountable, the bot reassured me several times with Philippians 4:8 (“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”) That verse, it said, encourages me to think about “the positive” and “let go of bitterness.”

Hardline on some topics, suspiciously soft on others. Clearly, ChatKJV may know the Bible, but it doesn't know the Trumpist preachers.

Republican Bosses in NCGA Think Women Will Just Take It

 

Multiple articles appearing right now warning us that secret groups of Republican lawmakers in the NC House and Senate are crafting new limits and restrictions on abortion, to be sprung in the General Assembly this spring. Here's one such article. 

North Carolina Republican lawmakers are, if nothing else, as tediously predictable as the return of spring ticks, once the weather warms. They're marching in the same rut -- driving down women -- that Republican majorities in other state legislatures are, making new law to restrict women's rights. In NC, Berger/Moore don't think they can ban abortion outright, like in Alabama, but by Gawd, they can make it harder -- "it" being a private medical decision.

And why shouldn't Berger/Moore cinch the chastity belt tighter? The last election proved to them that they can be as mean and cruel, do their worst with the social safety net, and still come out ahead with voters. NC Republicans won seats last November. They've now got a veto-proof majority in the Senate, and they're just one vote short of that majority in the House. Plus in other news, North Carolina voters opted for an anti-abortion, chuckleheaded good ole boy for the US Senate, and they gave a rabidly conservative Supreme Court chief justice a solid majority to rule Republican legislation "constitutional" in the near future. The 19th Century has never looked better nor seemed more attainable!

Will North Carolina women (and the men who recognize them as equals) stand for this? Do we tolerate the forcing of religious dogma onto the levers of State power? Dunno the answer to that. I've learned the hard way that you actually can underestimate the capacity of ordinary people to accept punishment they don't deserve.

Garland Pierce

The Republican leadership in Raleigh seems to think they've got one or more Democratic weak links in the NC House who'll vote to override Gov. Cooper's inevitable veto of an abortion bill. Rep. Garland Pierce, who represents Scotland and Hoke counties, is one of those possible Democratic votes. He's been in the General Assembly for two decades, entrenched in a safe district. (I checked: during all the Republican gerrymandering of districts in the last several years, Republican map-drawers have left Garland Pierce's 48th House District strictly alone.)

Sara Pequeno profiled Pierce a few days ago:

He’s a Baptist minister and army veteran and sided with Republicans on the 2019 bill [Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act] and 2021 bill [Human Life Nondiscrimination Act]. When commenting on the born-alive bill after Cooper vetoed it, Pierce said he “decided to side with the surviving baby.” He then voted to override Cooper’s veto, a move that ultimately failed. [Ah! The good ole days when it took more than one Democratic vote to override a veto.]

Pierce also voted for HB2, the notorious trans-persecution law. I'm afeared of several things. High on the list is theocracy, and the authoritarianism ("Thou shalt not!") that comes as a side-dish for some religious dogmas.

Incidentally, the Republican bosses in the NC House have also just changed their own rules and eliminated the "notice of veto-override," thus tacitly promising to call on Garland Pierce's vote to override a veto on new abortion restrictions suddenly and without notice, like while just one pro-choice Democrat is absent or Rep. Deb Butler goes to the restroom. That's the dishonest sneakiness we've come to expect from Berger/Moore. And apparently accept, if last November's Democratic performance is any indication.