Think it's safe to say that many (most?) of them were willing to overlook Trump's "foibles" because he'd promised them the Supreme Court which they believed would allow them to overturn "Roe v Wade".

As an aside, in a prior life I had a number of lawyers reporting to me and even the most liberal of them always agreed that the underpinning of that decision was weak, at best, and it was just a matter of time before someone brought the "perfect" case forward.

Oklahoma lawmaker wants to fire teachers who offend students’ religious beliefs
Teachers who break the law could face a $10,000 fine and lose their jobs
by HEMANT MEHTA

A newly proposed bill in Oklahoma from State Senator Rob Standridge would punish any public school teacher who promotes any position “in opposition to closely held religious beliefs of students.” Which — let’s face it — means the bill would punish any public school teacher.

Senate Bill 1470 was prefiled this week by Standridge, a MAGA cultist who made news last month when he filed a different bill to ban all books with sexual content (especially ones that affirm trans identities) from public school libraries. On Monday, he posted on Facebook about his desire to ban Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye from schools because it contains a rape scene.

But it’s the more recent bill that’s gotten plenty of attention online because it allows students and parents with irrational religious views to override the curriculum decisions of trained professionals.

A biology teacher who explains evolution could be ratted out by a Creationist who’s failing science class. A health teacher who educates students about different forms of birth control won’t be in that classroom for very long if an abstinence-promoting teenager is on the roster. A history teacher who correctly describes the Founding Fathers as a mix of religious and non-religious individuals could be a target of ...

https://onlysky.media/hemant-mehta/okla ... s-beliefs/

The first thing that came to mind was this

R'amen

The Netherlands just made the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster an official religion
DeadState Staff

The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is now an official religion in the Netherlands and members worldwide are celebrating with a bowl of pasta.

According to the Inquisitr, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or Pastafarianism, is a social movement that emerged in 2005 and quickly went on to become ...

https://deadstate.org/the-netherlands-j ... -religion/

MO Gov: I only nominate people with ‘Christian values’ to positions of power
Gov. Mike Parson’s remarks suggest he has a religious litmus test for government officials.
HEMANT MEHTA

Governor Mike Parson of Missouri insisted this week that he would only ever appoint someone who shares his “Christian values,” suggesting he has a narrow religious litmus test for positions of power in his government.

The situation ensued after Parson’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Senior Services, Don Kauerauf, was effectively killed off by Republican senators who refused to hold hearings for him. The Republicans weren’t fans of Kauerauf because, even though he’s against COVID vaccine mandates, mask mandates, and abortion rights, they still felt he wasn’t conservative enough. That’s because Kauerauf made the mistake of saying vaccines were effective and that Missouri’s low vaccination rates were “atrocious.” (As we know all too well by now, acknowledging scientific reality offends Republican sensibilities.)

But it’s what happened next that caused the real stir.

Parson took to Twitter to defend his nomination — how dare you accuse ME of not being conservative enough?! — and claimed he would only ever ...

https://onlysky.media/hemant-mehta/mo-g ... -of-power/

I'm going to cross post this in the Election thread as well

Christian nationalism drove Jan. 6: Now it's embraced the Big Lie, and wants to conquer America
America has a choice between democracy and Christian nationalism, says author of new report: "We can't have both"
KATHRYN JOYCE

Earlier this week, a new Pew survey found that the share of Americans who believe Donald Trump was largely responsible for the violence of Jan. 6, 2021, has declined by nearly 10 percent over the past year, while the percentage of people who think he bears no responsibility has increased by almost as much. On Wednesday, the Freedom from Religion Foundation and the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty released a new report that helps explain that shift: The same Christian nationalism that served as the unifying principle behind the Jan. 6 insurrection is also driving efforts among the faithful to rewrite the history of that day.

As two of the report's contributors, scholars Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry, co-authors of "Taking America Back for God," noted in a launch event on Wednesday, Christian nationalist support for Jan. 6 rioters has doubled in the past year, while support for prosecuting those rioters has declined by 20 percent. That suggests, said Perry, "that this ideology is powerfully connected to a reinterpretation of these events" in a way that could become "a powerful motivator for future potential violence."

At more than 60 pages and drawing on the work of a number of academics, journalists and researchers, "Christian Nationalism and the January 6 Insurrection" is the most comprehensive account to date of the role of the movement in the attack. Within the political and cultural universe of Christian nationalism, America is a special place: It was created as a Christian nation and its founding documents were divinely inspired. Christianity should and must have a privileged position in public life, and "true Americans" are understood to be "white, culturally conservative, natural-born citizens."

That ideology, argues the report, served both as the unifying theme for the various factions that joined in the assault on the Capitol as well as the "permission structure" that allowed participants to justify their violence. To call those fringe ideas is misleading: Surveys repeatedly find that close to ...

https://www.salon.com/2022/02/11/christ ... r-america/

Greg Locke’s witch hunt is even worse than it looks
Greg Locke talks about witches for the same reason most pastors talk about Satan: to scare people into compliance
HEMANT MEHTA

Over the weekend, Christian hate-preacher Greg Locke, fresh off his book-burning bonfire, began a literal witch hunt at Global Vision Bible Church. He told his congregation that he knew of six witches who were members of his church… and he planned to expose them.

Video of his rant at source


While many online joked about how Locke was laying the groundwork to reject possible allegations that may one day come out against him (for which there’s no evidence), there’s something much more sinister at play here.

Even if you think, as I do, that Locke is just trying to ...

https://onlysky.media/hemant-mehta/greg ... -it-looks/

In an email Locke clarified that two of the witches are men

Atheists sue WV school district over controversial religious revival assembly
The assembly featured Nik Walker Ministries and prompted a student-led walkout days later
HEMANT MEHTA

Weeks after teachers in a public school district in West Virginia forced students to attend an in-school religious revival, the Freedom From Religion Foundation has filed a federal lawsuit against the Cabell County Board of Education.


The religious revival assembly
In case you missed the backstory earlier this month, all of this blew up after an assembly at Huntington High School featuring Nik Walker Ministries. Walker has long made clear his desire to proselytize in public schools; he’s bragged on Facebook about giving talks at local high schools with an intent to convert kids and believes that if students invite him to their school, he has a license to preach. After his visit to Huntington, he even bragged that “50 students gave their lives to Jesus at their voluntary club meetings!”

Except it wasn’t voluntary at all. (It’s not like Walker visited an after-school Bible club.) He was the focus of an assembly that took place during the school day. Students also told local news channel WSAZ that the assembly wasn’t voluntary, with some saying they “had to attend” the assembly. Parents weren’t even required to sign a permission slip.

The school appeared to agree with ....

https://onlysky.media/hemant-mehta/athe ... -assembly/

A majority of Americans are no longer 100% confident in God’s existence
The bad news? Nearly half of all Americans are still absolutely sure God exists.
HEMANT MEHTA

The percentage of American adults who say they absolutely know of God’s existence and have no doubts about that whatsoever has dropped below 50% for the first time in recorded memory. That’s according to recent data from the General Social Survey.



Christopher Ingraham, a data journalist who first pointed out this nugget at The Why Axis, wrote that “Back in 1993, two-thirds of American adults” said they were absolutely certain of God’s existence. Even in 2008, the number “topped 60 percent.” But that number has now fallen to 49.66% (at least if you include the standard caveat about margin of error).

While this ought to be good news and another sign that the country is heading in a more secular direction even as ...

https://onlysky.media/hemant-mehta/a-ma ... existence/

#235

If Allah and Jehovah weren't included the survey is skewed, IMO.

Robertson lost his marbles years ago.

No question

Surely he has lost some of his charm at 91.

Are you suggesting he ever had any?

Never could understand why anyone could listen to him let alone believe anything he said.

Just a little sarcasm in the same vein. Whatever he had that charmed those old ladies out of their dollars must have diminished some.

Three Decades Ago, America Lost Its Religion. Why?
“Not religious” has become a specific American identity—one that distinguishes secular, liberal whites from the conservative, evangelical right.
Derek Thompson

The idea of American exceptionalism has become so dubious that much of its modern usage is merely sarcastic. But when it comes to religion, Americans really are exceptional. No rich country prays nearly as much as the U.S, and no country that prays as much as the U.S. is nearly as rich.

America’s unique synthesis of wealth and worship has puzzled international observers and foiled their grandest theories of a global secular takeover. In the late 19th century, an array of celebrity philosophers—the likes of Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud—proclaimed the death of God, and predicted that atheism would follow scientific discovery and modernity in the West, sure as smoke follows fire.

Stubbornly pious Americans threw a wrench in the secularization thesis. Deep into the 20th century, more than nine in 10 Americans said they believed in God and belonged to an organized religion, with the great majority of them calling themselves Christian. That number held steady—through the sexual-revolution ’60s, through the rootless and anxious ’70s, and through the “greed is good” ’80s.

But in the early 1990s, the historical tether between American identity and faith snapped. Religious non-affiliation in the U.S. started to rise—and rise, and rise. By the early 2000s, the share of Americans who said ...

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... us/598843/

The Duggars used to represent wholesome family TV. Now, almost 20 years and a jail sentence later, it’s time we take a closer look at the Christian Patriarchy and Quiverfull movements that spawned the Duggars.

He says this like it's a bad thing

Parents lack of biblical worldview puts children at 'spiritual disadvantage': Barna warns
6 out of 10 US parents don't view the Bible as a 'reliable and accurate source of God’s truth'
By Ryan Foley

A prominent Evangelical researcher has warned that the lack of a biblical worldview among parents of preteens puts youth at a “spiritual disadvantage.”

The George Barna-led Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University released the first report of its American Worldview Inventory 2022 Tuesday, which analyzed “the worldview dilemma of American parents.”

The report was based on a survey of 600 American parents with children younger than 13 conducted in January. The respondents were asked several dozen worldview-related questions that “measure both beliefs and behavior within eight categories of worldview application.”

While 67% of parents with children younger than 13 identified as Christians, just 2% of those surveyed subscribed to a biblical worldview as defined by the researchers. According to the report, a biblical worldview “emerges from accepting the Bible as a relevant and authoritative guide for life.

Among the two-thirds of parents who identify as Christian, just 4% of them possessed a biblical worldview.

“A parent’s primary responsibility is to ....

https://www.christianpost.com/news/pare ... barna.html

Thought I'd post this here since the similarities between this and right wingnut churches is disturbing.

'I regret going': Protester says he spent life savings to support 'Freedom Convoy'

A protester who joined the so-called Freedom Convoy, which occupied downtown Ottawa for much of February, says he regrets taking part after he lost $13,000 and his home protesting something he never really "had a stance on."

"I regret going,'' said Martin Joseph Anglehart, who spoke to CBC via Zoom from Hope, B.C.

Anglehart said he has "nothing left" after spending his life savings on gas and food for the occupiers, who disrupted Ottawa's downtown core for more than three weeks.

More----> https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/o ... -1.6394502

It seems to me that aheism is a young person's game. The older you get, the more you want to hedge your bets.