“This is this is a very serious thing..if you ignore it you do so at the peril of the nation, in the sense that if you look at history, unsuccessful coups that aren’t addressed within the legal framework in a nation of laws tend to be dress rehearsals and  I think that’s what we’re looking at right now in the sense that all of the actions seem to me not to be so much about what happened in 2020 anymore but about in preparation for what might happen in 2024.” Steve Schmidt

According to Elizabeth Dias, “a different, more liberal Christianity is ascendant: less focused on sexual politics and more on combating poverty, climate […]

Source: Liberal Christianity on the Rise | Vance Morgan

You heard that right: multiple members of Congress allegedly helped plan the January 6th insurrection on the U.S. Capitol. So, let’s break down this explosive report.

Source: Congressmembers Allegedly Helped Plan January 6th Insurrection | RepresentUs

The concept has circulated for decades in scholarly circles, where it was more often used in an international context than applied to the United States. But since 2016, it’s become a popular term of art for Christian conservative politics. Georgetown international affairs professor Paul D. Miller defines Christian nationalism as “the belief that the American nation is defined by Christianity, and that the government should take active steps to keep it that way.” Sociologists Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry use six criteria, including belief that the federal government should declare the U.S. a Christian nation and that American success is “part of God’s plan.

“It’s easy to find criticisms of Christian nationalism, which dominate both academic and popular discussions of the subject. It’s far more difficult to locate advocates, at least under that name. Rather than encouraging substantive analysis of specific opinions or proposals, the label functions as a pre-emptive dismissal. To describe something “Christian nationalism” is inevitably to reject it.

That rejection is too quick, though. It’s possible to worry about specific kinds of political enthusiasm without dismissing all religious interpretation of American history or purpose. “Christian nationalism” is simply too broad identify the real problem with some brands of right-wing politics — as shown by the fact that a majority of Americans meet at least one of Whitehead and Perry’s criteria. Christian nationalism, in the scholarly sense, certainly exists in this country. But in its popular incarnation, the phrase often confuses more than it clarifies — and its overuse may undermine one of our best defenses against the real thing.

Source: Christian nationalism is real. The way you talk about it might make things worse. | The Week

I was in Peter’s cabin in southern Oregon, in the summer of 1981. Peter had finished at Crosier Seminary in 1965 and having done a stint as a chaplain in the Navy, or maybe it was the Army, he declined to be ordained, and went to work selling books for New Directions. In 1967, he’d been chatting up bookstores for James Laughlin, and he stopped in San Francisco—took LSD, and tried briefly to become King of the Hippies. Soon realizing there were too many pretenders to the throne, he then retreated to Southern Oregon, where he bought a very small cabin in the woods and went on forays for Amanita muscaria mushrooms every fall and for Amanita pantherinas every spring on the Oregon coast or in the mountains. He’d dry hundreds of them and step into an altered reality most every day, then run ten miles so in his mid-forties he looked like an athlete in his twenties.

Source: James Ross Kelly – Now, Let-Me-Tell-You-This-Story… | The Galway Review