Fundamentalist interpretaion of the Bible is Christo-fascist propaganda

 “The madman shouted in the marketplace and no one stopped to answer him. Thus it was confirmed that his thesis was incontrovertible,” Dag Hammarskjöld in 1957, “Markings” 1963.

Once again, Jim Graff, head honcho at Faith Family Church, plays loose and fast with some facts, this time about Charles Darwin and his work on evolution. Graff paints Darwin as a student for the Anglican ministry and that Darin later renounced his Christianity. But Darwin’s family were Unitarians and Darwin failed the entrance exam for the priest track at Christ College, Cambridge. Darwin never sought to be a clergyman. Graff is  launching an outright attack on Darwin, enlightenment, scientific thought and evolution.

“This man, Charles Darwin, later became the father of evolutionary thought and led many away from the faith he had once cherished," Graff asserts, making Darwin, science and intellect enemies of Christo-fascism.

It’s a common propaganda tactic to use literal interpretations of the Bible to misguide those who have healthy intellects. It is a purposeful lie about history and the Bible. If this fundamentalist outlook stays in its lane instead of trying to use the Bible to reject the scientific method and impose its views on others through our government, we’d be safe from the right-wing harm. But in his flock are some with influence and indoctrinating them with an anti-science world view is dangerous. So is pushing these beliefs into the public sphere. The managing editor of the local daily newspaper and our district’s representative in U.S. Congress are part of Graff’s flock. The managing editor has played coy on his politics, but he outed himself in his introductory column and has shaped the Victoria Advocate in his own image. Rep. Michael Cloud has made no secret of his political leanings. I have to wonder if these men are members of the Flat Earth Society.

Literalists believe that Christian faith and science are incompatible. They reject evolution and therefore believe God created the universe and Earth in six 24-hour days. In doing so, for example, the claim that Eve was made from Adam’s rib or the flood and Noah’s story are real events in history. These challenge the records of fossils, dendrochronology, carbon dating and other metrics. It’s a wonder that they even go to the doctor or use any of our modern conveniences.

However, there are ways to resolve this seeming conundrum. First is to recognize that there are various interpretations of the Bible. Second, that the Bible is more of an allegory than precise historical record. Third, explanations of natural phenomena were filtered through their era’s knowledge.

“Inherit the Wind,” the 1955 play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, is important because it debunks the literalism of the Bible. It’s based on the 1925 “Scopes Monkey Trial” in Dayton, Tennessee. State law forbade teaching of “any theory that denies the story of Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.”

Sound familiar? It should —- as the right-wing pushes fundamentalist Christianity into public schools here in Texas and throughout the nation. Can Graff, his flock and other fundamentalist churches deny their Christian Nationalism and their backing of a Christian curriculum?
 

“Inherit the Wind” rebuts biblical literalism using the Bible itself. In Genesis, the Bible states that God created light and darkness on the first day but the the sun and stars on the fourth day, but that meant the prior days could have millions of years in length. That clearly tells me the literalists are misguided. I doubt the Christian Nationalist curriculum will make the play or the two movies of “Inheret the Wind” part of the lesson plans. After all, critical thinking is dangerous to those who seek to control us and how we think.

It is some irony that I wrote this while watching a streamed service from St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, my former parish in Amarillo. Bible literalism always brings to mind a prayer in our baptism liturgy asking God to grace our baptized “[With] ... an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works.”

And this is exactly what the play is about according to Jerome Lawrence. The play was not about science versus religion; it was to push back against McCarthyism. According to Lawrence, "we used the teaching of evolution as a parable, a metaphor for any kind of mind control [...] It's not about science versus religion. It's about the right to think,” as summarized in Wikipedia.

And thinking, critical or otherwise, is an anathema to the right-wing Christo-fascist oligarchy. Why? Because if the populace is educated and thinks critically, the lies and propaganda will be debunked and we have a chance for our to follow the teachings of Christ instead of perverting his message. We need to reject these lies and do that now.

Here we are

 I have been writing about the right-wing stealth takeover of our nation for five years — which was when I became aware of “Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America,” by award-winning Duke University historian Nancy MacLean. Dr. MacLean’s exposure of the far-reaching conspiracy should be required reading for every journalist in this country. That’s not to say others shouldn’t read. I point this out because a scan of the media ecosystem informs me the of Fourth Estate’s surprise and confusion at the Trump administration’s blitzkrieg on the federal government.

Co-president Elon Musk and Co-President Donald Trump are only the face of this right-wing libertarian movement. The radical attack on the progress in the Twentieth Century had its seeds planted with the white supremacy elites of the former Dixie states rebelling against the famous SCOTUS 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling. It struck down school segregation by calling separate equal unconstitutionally unequal. God forbid that the children of the scions of former slave owners should rub shoulders with our Black brethren.

Fast forward to the 1970s, thanks to MacLean, we learn an obscure economist named James McGill Buchanan put forth “public choice theory,” a theory that essentially says “political decision-making and public economics. Traditional economic theory explains in great detail how consumers make decisions regarding purchase of goods, choice of work, product investments etc. In a series of studies, Buchanan has developed a corresponding theory of decision-making in the public sector. His best-known work is Calculus of Consent (1962), written in collaboration with Gordon Tullock,” according to www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/1986/buchanan/facts/>.

The bottom-line was to change was to make governments smaller and to change the rules of the governing game, particularly the U.S. Constitution. And while Buchanan, who died in 2013, eventually was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1986, he got the attention of Charles and David Koch in the 1970s. While plenty of right-wing movement occurred in the 1960s and 1970s, the real push came when Charles Koch and Buchanan teamed up.

MacLean’s book as a key paragraph that describes how Koch saw the world:

“That sense of intellectual and even ethical superiority to others may help explain why Charles Koch bypassed Milton Friedman to make common cause with the more uncompromising James Buchanan. Koch referred to Friedman and the rest of the post–Hayek Chicago school of economics he led, as well as to Alan Greenspan, as ‘sellouts to the system.’ Why? Because they sought ‘to make government work more efficiently when the true libertarian should be tearing it out at the root.’ They actually tried to help government deliver better results, which could only prolong the disease. Koch believed that only in its ‘radical, pure form,' without compromise, would the ideas ‘appeal to the brightest, most enthusiastic, most capable people.’ (Is it any wonder, then, that his allies would now rather bring down the government than improve it?)”

That paragraph explains what we’re seeing now. Yes, the radical right wants to destroy government and Trump and Musk are pawns of the billionaire class — willing pawns, of course — but only the tip of the iceberg. You can flesh out the story with these other books:

“Dark Money” by Jane Mayer; 

“Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right” by Anne Nelson; 

“The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism” by Katherine Stewart; 

“Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation,” by Kristin Kobes Du Mez; and, 

“Hiding in Plain Sight” and “They Knew” by Sarah Kendzior.

There is no way I can summarize these six books into a cohesive whole. I can only lay out the information and emphasize that the media and Democratic Party have failed us. This long-term strategy needed strong pushback and full exposure in the 1960s. Instead, the juggernaut rolled on. And here we are. There will be no compromises from these fascists. The billionaire class has this country right where it wants it: on the ropes in a cold civil war. The endgame is a Convention of the States under Article V of the United States Constitution and rolling back our foundational document to the 1850s. It will leave only two functions for government — militarized law enforcement and national defense. 

An Important Sermon

 

While visiting YouTube, I stumbled across Washington the National Cathedral Feb. 9, 2025 Holy Eucharist. The sermon by The Very Rev. Randolph “Randy” Marshall Hollerith is brilliant. Please take the few minutes to listen to it as he subtlety and accurately condemns the fundamentalist-evangelical version of Christianity.