How (And Why) The Right Stole Christianity

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$2000 savings allowance seems very mean. And yes, by 3rd World standards most of us are rolling in gold. So if this "rich but pure of heart" defense turns out to be wrong, we're all going to be roasted for eternity. Thank God I'm an atheist.

At this point, the IRS is not going after churches for anything. I don't know the precise reason for that, but it's ridiculous because churches are not only breaking the rules, but they are flaunting it. And what is the result of that? White Evangelicalism has become so intertwined with Republican politics that it's the religion is darn well near unrecognizable at this point. Some of these churches have services that are just political advertisement at this point.

I'm pretty outraged at everything churches get away with, from keeping abuse hidden and not even punishing abusers, to meddling in politics to unconstitutionally enforce their religion on all of us, to "faith healing" and discouragement of medical treatment (and when religious parents deny their children the care they need) to the whole prosperity gospel scam. I just... UGH. Something needs to be done. I just don't know what.

This reminds me of a thread I saw on WP a few years ago. Someone asked, why has Evangelical Christianity stolen the Right?

He was corrected several times over. Evangelical Christianity has not stolen the Right. It is the other way around.

This is the group who, in the past would say "We're not concerned with worldly matters like earthy governments, for our kingdom is not of this earth." And so they avoided politics.

They didn't take over politics. Politics took over them. But why?

While I don't think Evangelical Christianity contains any ill-will or malice that would require it to subvert politics, it has a massive vulnerability.

It says that God is absolutely perfect and everything he says is perfect. He cannot possibly be mistaken and he never lies. So when God says something you can be 100% percent positive that's absolutely true. There's literally no chance it could be wrong.

So when the (self-proclaimed) man of God says "God says this, God says that". You know it must be true. 100%

Never mind if God didn't tell you the thing in person. Maybe God was too busy. Or maybe God only talks to important people like your pastor.

Fortunately your pastor in his generosity and wisdom deigned to tell you that "God told me to tell you this thing".

And you know it must be true. 100%. Because God would never lie to anyone, let alone a pastor.

And so it never occurs to you that it could be the pastor who's lying. Maybe God didn't tell him to tell you. Maybe God has never spoken to the pastor at all, in spite of the pastor's claims otherwise.

So this is the vulnerability. When you teach people from early childhood that there's a 100% perfect authority like God and that us mere imperfect humans can act as his messenger, you create a vulnerability to manipulation.

When it's just the pastor doing it, it's almost harmless. Most of the time.

But when the politician also says he's a man of God... Well, how could God's messenger lie? You know that God is perfect.

If it was just the pastor you'd be relatively safe. He doesn't want to hurt you (much). And he doesn't want to scam you out of more than a tithe of your income.

(a tithe to be calculated based on your gross income, not your net income. Remember that point very carefully or your blessed pastor may start quoting 1 timothy 5:18)

When Sony implemented a rootkit on their audio CDs, they didn't want to damage your computer (much). They just wanted root level access to your computer to stop you from ripping their CDs.

The problem was that once Sony had gained root level access to your computer, other malware could also use it to access your computer's deepest levels.

Likewise once pastor has gained root level access to your brain, other malevolent actors like politicians can also use it to access the deepest levels of your belief.