> In 2017, Rod of Iron Ministries splintered from the Unification Church, a Korean cult founded by Sean Moon’s father, Sun Myung Moon. Adherents are called Moonies and believe that Sun Myung Moon is the messiah. Two of Sun Myung Moon’s sons, Sean and Kook-jin, or Justin, founded Rod of Iron Ministries. The church has many of the same core beliefs as the Unification Church—but it claims that AR-15s are the “rod of iron” that Jesus wields in the Book of Revelation. Perhaps not coincidentally, Justin Moon founded Kahr Arms, a firearms manufacturer that produces a commemorative Donald Trump AR-15.

From a former pastor who knows what the insiders talk about: a warning we would be foolish to ignore.

Sick and tired of all the political content in forums like this? The authoritarians and theocrats are hoping you won't pay attention to how they're organizing to steal the next election.

Since the advent of the Trump era, the evangelical landscape has undergone rapid shifts, often in turbulent and dangerous directions. To be sure, there are still plenty of evangelical premillennialists out there faithfully waiting on the Rapture. But their sequestering, defensive posture is becoming outmoded. Remarkably, the most prominent and powerful new leaders—the ones dedicated to fully recentering evangelical politics on Donald Trump, and who have grown their power and influence through their association with him—are overwhelmingly anti-Rapture. They believe Christians have a more active and forceful role to play in the end of the world.

This is a repost from 2009.

The march to theocracy continues.

There are a lot of good overviews of Project 2025 and the threat it poses to everyone who lives in America as well as beyond our borders. Here's a look at the Christian Nationalist intent behind it.

...pay attention to Leonard Leo. He is the judicial kingmaker responsible for the list from which Trump selected Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Leo has shaped this Court and acted effectively to keep its Republican justices from abandoning his – and their – sectarian-right vision of America.

We're not going to be able to fix these people. The only hope we have is to outlast them.

Just when you thought it was safe to back into the pew.

It should surprise no one that Dominionist Mike Johnson's change of heart on Ukraine was bought by suggesting to him that it could serve his religious agenda.

Daniel Dennett, philosopher, atheist, and one of the tongue-in-cheek "Horsemen" of atheism, died today. He was 82.

Surveillance cameras showed a man walk up to the building soon after 4 a.m. on April 8 wearing a face covering, tactical vest and gloves, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the FBI. The man then ignited an improvised explosive device, threw it at the main entrance then ran away. The bomb partially detonated, resulting in some minor fire damage, authorities said.

FTA:

> The bottom line is that Christian nationalism takes on different forms, and despite organizational or even ideological differences, ideas can penetrate the often porous borders between different camps. Someone who receives the daily email blast from the Family Research Council might also be drawn to Wolfe’s book, for example. On a more unnerving, macro level, major right-wing and GOP figures, including Marjorie Taylor Greene and the CEO of the Daily Wire, the podcast consortium run by conservative influencer Ben Shapiro, have embraced the rabidly antisemitic, Hitler-admiring antagonist Nick Fuentes, who is Catholic but also is accurately described as a Christian nationalist. The increasingly influential Catholic integralist movement, which seeks a Catholic-inflected replacement for the “liberal order,” is yet another unique form of Christian nationalism.

...In 2022, Stephen Wolfe (no relation to William) published a book called “The Case for Christian Nationalism.” The book was published by Canon Press, a publishing house that began as a ministry of Wilson’s church. Stephen K. Bannon, the Trump adviser, reportedly had a copy of the book stacked on his table.

In the book, Wolfe lays out a vision that veers very far into the fantastic — he rails against the advancement of women over the past several decades by using the term “gynocracy,” and describes both the Obergefell decision and the 1965 immigration reform which abolished quotas on national origin as an “imperial imposition.” One chapter, called “The Christian Prince,” advocates for a “measured and theocratic caesarism.” Wolfe has suggested that he’s playing a somewhat coy game here, using “prince” to refer not necessarily to a monarch, but possibly to the aggregate form of American governmental power. Whatever it is, in his version of Christian nationalism the prince would promote “national self-love and a manly, moral liberty.”

Pity the poor unseen majority who shove their religion in our faces every day. Won't someone think of them?

> It's easy to roll one's eyes as the self-serving dramatics of MAGA voters using false claims of victimhood as cover for their ugly views. But, as the threatening language in Greene's tweet shows, this "woe is us" act is deeply dangerous. The hyperbolic conspiracy theories and dehumanizing language serve to convince Republican voters that religious liberty and democracy are simply values they can no longer afford to hold. The message is Christians are so "under siege" that the only way to fight back is by stripping everyone else of basic rights.

They have money, they have influence, they have charisma, and they have technical expertise. And they're using to pursue a theocratic America, even if they have to kill anyone who gets in their way.