POLITICALLY-CORRECT CHURCHIANITY

      After this Easter's debacle of JD Vance forcing himself onto Pope Francis' deathbed for a photo-op, the Churchian contingent of the New Right sprung into action with a counter-move to keep the clickbait flowing. Bubble-headed Attorney-General Pam Bondi and cult leader Paula White unveiled yet another new directive, encouraging Federal employees to denounce co-workers who express 'anti-Christian bias.'

     Here we naively thought that only Liberal Democrats encouraged reporting others for Thought Crimes. Thought Crimes; Political Correctness: that's exactly what a directive like this amounts to. I don't think that many of us doubt that the definition of anti-Christian is going to be about as narrowly interpreted as the New Right's definitions of anti-Semitism and anti-American are.

      This latest round of cultural rot began in the Department of Veterans' Affairs. which is run by Doug Collins, a former Pastor of a Southern Baptist Church and a trial lawyer who defended several known dangerous criminals. It is somewhat ironic that SBC doesn't allow the ordination of women and has condemned the Prosperity Gospel, but Collins is doing the bidding of Rev. Paula White; however given the SBC's recent history, his experience as a defense lawyer demonstrates his flexibility in putting politics above principle. As a Congressman, Collins certainly had no issue with Beltway lobbyists; most of them of the Revolving-Door variety.

   

        These are the sorts of characters tasked with ferreting out (and presumably enforcing) Churchian ideology in the US Government; and it is a stark reminder of why our Founding Fathers wisely separated Church and State. They'd had lots of experience in Europe will Official (and nominally-unofficial) State Religions to understand the danger of entrusting leadership roles to ideological fanatics and political pastors. The Divine Right of Kings---which people like Vance seem to admire---is a political, not a theological, ideology; and it's a short step between an ecclesiastical tyranny and a political one. 

      The distinction is more than a subtle one. When Religion and State are combined, the sociopolitical debates turn from a basis in discourse and political philosophy to one of faith-based submission. In the days of the institutional Church, opposition to the Ruling Elite became equivalent to Heresy, and many political reformers died for challenging such beliefs. 

      Could such a religious tyranny happen here under the direction of a cult? The possibility shouldn't be dismissed lightly. Americans have already been softened up by decades of Speech Codes, Political Correctness, and other forms of oppression which have met with little to no resistance. The New Right simply is re-packaging and reselling the same policies under different labels; and effete American Trash Culture being what it is, we're likely to see the same kinds of people who denounced others for using misgendered pronouns last week denouncing others for expressing scepticism against Christian Nationalism this week. 

     The real danger in this variant of Political Correctness is that it not only discredits Conservatism, it also discredits Christianity. Due to the massive media presence that the Churchian Right has---along with the big-money megachurches---those who don't come from a religious background tend to conflate Christianity with the Hollywood version of it being promoted by marketing hucksters and political fanatics. Mainstream religious leaders need to understand that we can't have it both ways: as Christ said, "You cannot serve both God and Mammon," and likewise taught that Christianity is not to be spread with the sword. That was the way of the Dark Ages, and it led to a spiritual revolt that has never fully been healed. We don't want to make the same mistakes as our forefathers and go down the same road again.