Supporters of the idea that the US should be a Christian country have a foothold in politics – and are growing bolder
In the Alabama state supreme court case that dubbed embryos “extrauterine children” and imperiled the future of in vitro fertilization (IVF) in the state, the first reference to the Bible arrives on page 33.
“The principle itself – that human life is fundamentally distinct from other forms of life and cannot be taken intentionally without justification – has deep roots that reach back to the creation of man ‘in the image of God’,” the Alabama supreme court justice Tom Parker wrote in an opinion that concurred with the majority. Attributing the idea to the Book of Genesis, Parker’s opinion continued to cite the Bible as well as such venerable Christian theologians as John Calvin and Thomas Aquinas.
For experts, Parker’s words were a stunningly open embrace of Christian nationalism, or the idea that the United States should be an explicitly Christian country and its laws should reflect that.
“He framed it entirely assuming that the state of Alabama is a theocracy, and that that is a legitimate way of evaluating laws and policies,” said Julie Ingersoll, a University of North Florida professor who studies religion and culture. “It looks like he decided to just dismiss the history of first amendment religious freedom jurisprudence at the federal level, and assume that it just doesn’t apply to Alabama.”
See, this sort of thing is where it’s hard to call these people Nazis because the Nazis would have been extremely into IVF as a form of eugenics. And that’s the biggest schism between MAGA’s theofacsim and old school Nazis: the hostility towards intellectualism and knowledge/science and the embrace of ignorance, stupidity, scaffolded on religion. It fuels hate based on something intangible (religious belief rather than science) which is protected as sacrosanct by the First Amendment, can’t be reasoned or argued with or disputed by fact, and is the one and only mental illness not allowed to be called out as one.
And that’s what makes it so much more dangerous than Naziism.
Might wanna double-check your knowledge of theology and Nazism. We’re still in the early stages of the third Reich, maybe somewhere around the Beer Hall Putsch: religion was still regarded as a powerful tool to influence useful idiots.
Never forget: “it’s a bible.”
Oh, no, by no means am I one of those “Nazis were atheists” people. I’m well-aware of their reliance on a sort of perverted Christian nationalism as a sort of mythos, although that got pretty twisted with other gothic and Nordic symbolism as the war and Hitler’s meth addiction waged on… that dude was batshit.
BTB about his drug addiction was one of the most epic exposees I’ve ever heard
After figuring out what BTB (Behind The Ba$tards) stands for, I think it’s time for me to check this podcast out. Seems highly praised by a lot of folks.