“We thank you for the upcoming election, Lord — or caucus, as we call it in Iowa,” said Hundley, speaking from the sanctuary of his evangelical Christian church in his slight Texas drawl as his parishioners bowed their heads.

“It doesn’t matter what our opinion is,” he went on. “It’s really what’s your opinion that matters. But you’ve given us the privilege of being able to exercise a beautiful gift. The gift of vote. We thank you for that.”

While Hundley stops short of suggesting to his parishioners which candidate divine guidance should lead them to support, he is among more than 300 pastors and other faith leaders who’ve been described as supporters by former President Donald Trump’s campaign. It’s a message that some members of Hundley’s First Church of God have taken to heart, saying their faith informs their intention to caucus for Trump.

Ron Betts, a 72-year-old Republican who said he plans to caucus for “Trump all the way,” said he felt the former president “exemplified what Jesus would do.”

  • toiletobserver@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    “Iowa’s conservatives pretend their faith says whatever they feel like when voting, and some say it leads them to Cheetos.”

  • Zombiepirate@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Its because they’re Christian Nationalists.

    They don’t think of it as our country, they think of it as their country that was stolen by secularism and “wokeness.” Their version of religion means they must rule at the top of the theocratic hierarchy and force the rest of us to live under a system where women are subservient, sexual minorities are persecuted, and the church writes the law.

    • tacosplease@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      And if they successfully turn America into a theocracy then they’ll start picking other countries to “liberate” for Jesus.

      Not hard to imagine TX sending out “Cruz aides” (say that fast a few times) to spread the love of the Lord. They may need some special inquisitions inquiries to find anyone who undermines their righteous cause.

  • girlfreddy@lemmy.caOP
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    10 months ago

    WWJD?

    According to these people He’d lie, cheat, steal and rape his way to power - then He’d con a few people into beating and murdering others while committing insurrection against a democratically-elected gov’t.

  • ZephyrXero@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    As a former Christian, I still can’t believe how many of these people never even read that book they’re so fond of. Not a god damn clue in their heads if they think Trump is anything “Christ like”. He does in many ways resemble an anti-christ though, so I could see the Armageddon accelerationists being supporters for their own twisted reasons

  • TK420@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Get fucked religious people, I’m sick of your delusional life. Go somewhere else and fuck it all up, you aren’t wanted here.

    • GiddyGap@lemm.ee
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      10 months ago

      Problem is that people can no longer tell the difference between evangelical Christians and the Republican Party. Evangelicals complain that Christians are hated and persecuted. But people don’t hate Christians and they certainly don’t want to persecute anyone. However, many people hate the Republican Party. And when you can’t tell the difference between the Republican Party and evangelicals, they are hit with hate by proxy.

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        10 months ago

        https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/324410/religious-group-voting-2020-election.aspx

        “The AP VoteCast survey shows that 81% of White evangelical Protestant voters went for Trump this year, compared with 18% who voted for Biden. The Edison exit polls estimate that 76% of White evangelicals voted for Trump, 24% for Biden.”

        There might be a technical difference between Evangelicals and the Republican Party, but there ain’t much of one.

      • ghostdoggtv@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        The GOP is a criminal conspiracy to elevate their own figurehead above the reach of politically-actionable law and order. There is no practicable difference between the American Fascist and the partisan Republican. There has not been since the southern strategy. Politicized Christianity is a declaration of intent.

        • TheRealKuni@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          Ask me how many fucks I give. It rhymes with zero.

          Nero? Antihero? Fearow?

          Surely you don’t mean “zero,” rhyming a word with itself is just lazy. ;)

          • TK420@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            You are correct, that is lazy :)

            I still give zero fucks about peoples delusions.

    • TheRealKuni@lemmy.world
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      Get fucked religious people, I’m sick of your delusional life. Go somewhere else and fuck it all up, you aren’t wanted here.

      I actually want all kinds of different people, as diverse perspectives lead to improved outcomes for everyone.

      I just want those people to also accept one another.

      Plenty of religious people I know actually are kind and generous and accepting. Their religion isn’t a cudgel to be wielded to silence and command those who think differently, but rather a guide and solace for their own lives.

      It’s when religion becomes a worship of the religion itself, a veneration of the rules and structure rather than of the beliefs, that it becomes a problem. And unfortunately that’s what we often see in a large portion of religious folks around the world throughout history. Where the religion becomes a tool to control populations, a path to power, a virtue to signal, rather than a living faith.

      But I caution you against hatred of religion for its own sake. We must be intolerant of intolerance, but not intolerant of religion itself.

      • TK420@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        I stand by my comment.

        Religious people can get fucked.

        Plain and simple. I don’t care about your delusions or perspective because it’s based on false information.

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    10 months ago

    I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires. ― Susan B. Anthony

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    10 months ago

    Are American Christians not able to tell the difference between their internal monlogue and divine guidance, or what?

    • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
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      It’s crazy how God is always telling these people the things that reinforce their biases and never things like “Go help Habitat For Humanity.”

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        Finding a definitive answer on whether or not any god exists is way above most of our pay grades.

        But even if I were religious, I don’t see myself thinking “maybe chili tonight for dinner?” And responding “okay, thanks God”.

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          We literally have a scene from a children’s movie here in Sweden from our famous author Astrid Lindgren where exactly that’s the joke, the kid answers their own prayer asking if they can take more cake

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        There is credible speculation that our internal monologue is what started the idea of God in the first place.

    • Laurentide@pawb.social
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      American Evangelicalism is a tulpamancy cult. I was raised Evangelical, sent to a private Evangelical school, and made to attend several Evangelical churches until adulthood. In all of these communities, it was universally believed that God directly speaks to each person through a special voice in their head. I was very strongly pressured to find, listen to, and obey this voice, and made to feel like I was not a “true believer” for being unable to channel it into glossolalia.

      • DominusOfMegadeus@sh.itjust.works
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        Tulpa:

        “Modern practitioners, who call themselves “tulpamancers”, use the term to refer to a type of willed imaginary friend which practitioners consider to be sentient and relatively independent. Modern practitioners predominantly consider tulpas to be a psychological rather than a paranormal concept. The idea became an important belief in Theosophy.”

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulpa

      • skulblaka@startrek.website
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        This is a huge point that should be talked about more. Tulpamancy isn’t pseudoscience, it’s very real and religion, especially Christianity, uses it to great effect. The process of finding and cultivating the “voice of God” is the exact process used to create an intentional tulpa of any number of various other types, there are entire internet communities about it. A little bit of research with this context in mind is extremely eye opening.

    • ghostdoggtv@lemmy.world
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      They shift attribution depending on whatever is politically convenient. Religion is America’s original sin and those traitors know it.

      • BeautifulMind ♾️@lemmy.world
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        Religion is America’s original sin

        It’s worse than that. Religion was co-opted into the maintenance of slavery, and it caused schisms in multiple sects, including the Baptists, Presbyterians, and Methodists

        Generation after generation, Southern pastors adapted their theology to thrive under a terrorist state. Principled critics were exiled or murdered, leaving voices of dissent few and scattered. Southern Christianity evolved in strange directions under ever-increasing isolation. Preachers learned to tailor their message to protect themselves. If all you knew about Christianity came from a close reading of the New Testament, you’d expect that Christians would be hostile to wealth, emphatic in protection of justice, sympathetic to the point of personal pain toward the sick, persecuted and the migrant, and almost socialist in their economic practices. None of these consistent Christian themes served the interests of slave owners, so pastors could either abandon them, obscure them, or flee.

        What developed in the South was a theology carefully tailored to meet the needs of a slave state. Biblical emphasis on social justice was rendered miraculously invisible. A book constructed around the central metaphor of slaves finding their freedom was reinterpreted. Messages which might have questioned the inherent superiority of the white race, constrained the authority of property owners, or inspired some interest in the poor or less fortunate could not be taught from a pulpit. Any Christian suggestion of social justice was carefully and safely relegated to “the sweet by and by” where all would be made right at no cost to white worshippers. In the forge of slavery and Jim Crow, a Christian message of courage, love, compassion, and service to others was burned away.

        https://www.politicalorphans.com/the-article-removed-from-forbes-why-white-evangelicalism-is-so-cruel/

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    Ron Betts, a 72-year-old Republican who said he plans to caucus for “Trump all the way,” said he felt the former president “exemplified what Jesus would do.”

    And lo, did our Lord grabbeth Mary Magdalene by the pussy…

    • EatATaco@lemm.ee
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      This is what bothers me the most. I’ve heard the “he’s an imperfect vessel” before, which is kind of hard to argue with, albeit super convenient that allows you to support whoever you want.

      But this? This is just madness. He exemplified what Jesus would do? How did this guy even get himself to this position? What bible is he reading?

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    I feel like Ron Betts has never actually read any of the Jesus parts of the Bible.

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    Ron Betts, a 72-year-old Republican who said he plans to caucus for “Trump all the way,” said he felt the former president “exemplified what Jesus would do.”

    Nietzche’s The Antichrist apparently didn’t go hard enough:

    One must not let oneself be misled: they say ‘Judge not!’ but they send to Hell everything that stands in their way.

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    Christ does not lead you to Trump, you lying assholes… your own ego leads you to him… your love of yourselves is what leads you around by the nose…

    • tsonfeir@lemm.ee
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      In the book series Incarnations of Immortality, the devil, in the absence of a participating god, started putting up billboards with sexy demons promising you everything you want and more of you choose Satan. Just sign up! Just vote for Trump!