“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.”
Are American Christians not able to tell the difference between their internal monlogue and divine guidance, or what?
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.”
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.
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.
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.”
There is no difference. They think there’s a difference. Got it backwards.
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”.
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.
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.
“It’s A bible”
I guess it makes sense that a religion full of rape and incest would lead them to Trump??
Religion is just a cultural affectation. None of these people actually believe in anything outside themselves.
What a coincidence! So do brain damage and/or lead poisoning.
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…
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!
hateful, racist assholes. the whole lot.
I feel like Ron Betts has never actually read any of the Jesus parts of the Bible.
If your conscience and your religion lead you to an idiotic, misogynic and xenophobic fraud with obvious delusions, you don’t actually have the former and the latter is irrepairably broken.
What kind of shitty ass god would choose Donald J Trump as their prophet?
A white supremacist god
“I listen to the voice in my head, and it tells me to vote for the one that promises to fulfil my basest desires.”
That’s because they’re morons.
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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.
How dare you insult their imaginary friend!
Ask me how many fucks I give. It rhymes with zero.
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. ;)
You are correct, that is lazy :)
I still give zero fucks about peoples delusions.
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.
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.
When “take the wheel Jesus” affects a whole country and not just one self
