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1. Embed this notice
   William Lindsey :toad: (wdlindsy@toad.social)'s status on Thursday, 11-Jan-2024 00:52:25 JST William Lindsey :toad:

   David Gushee in the introduction to his new book Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2023) on how "Christians turn out to be among the leading threats to democracy in much of the world" — a damning indictment.

   #Christianity #democracy #authoritarianism
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     William Lindsey :toad: (wdlindsy@toad.social)'s status on Thursday, 11-Jan-2024 00:52:12 JST William Lindsey :toad:

     in reply to

     "Authoritarian reactionary Christianity in the United States and a number of other countries is deeply entangled with white racism. In the United States, white people do not generally accept that this entanglement exists. Many who do see the connection want little to do with Christianity. Some of the hard-core Christian reactionaries, on the other hand, with increasing openness define Christianity in white ethno-nationalist terms."

     ~ Ibid

     #Christianity #democracy #authoritarianism #racism
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     William Lindsey :toad: (wdlindsy@toad.social)'s status on Thursday, 11-Jan-2024 00:52:14 JST William Lindsey :toad:

     in reply to

     Yet this same country has been unable to arrive at a steady practice of fair, free, and full democratic participation rights on the part of those deemed non-white. Neither the Christian nor the liberal principles that helped create modern democracy are capable of being realized in a nation that is founded on racial hierarchy. But the white population of the United States, as a whole, has so far not been persuaded to abandon it. Whenever steps of progress are made, white backlash is fierce."

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     HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴 repeated this.
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     William Lindsey :toad: (wdlindsy@toad.social)'s status on Thursday, 11-Jan-2024 00:52:15 JST William Lindsey :toad:

     in reply to

     "Authoritarian reactionary Christianity turns out to be a global phenomenon, affecting historically Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant lands. Its antiliberalism has very deep roots, and that antiliberalism has intensified in successive waves over the last fifty years. It is in the marrow of hundreds of millions of Christians, and it has been wired into right-wing politics in many countries, such that leveraging its passion can help ambitious politicians gain power."

     ~ Ibid.
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     William Lindsey :toad: (wdlindsy@toad.social)'s status on Thursday, 11-Jan-2024 00:52:15 JST William Lindsey :toad:

     in reply to

     "The United States may offer the most pronounced example of a nation that has never been able to overcome its founding racism, and thus has never realized its democratic principles and aspirations. Overall, the United States has enjoyed remarkable democratic stability. It has never set aside its democracy for monarchy, autocracy, or a new kind of political regime." (continued in /15)

     ~ Ibid.

     #Christianity #democracy #authoritarianism #Jan6 #insurrection
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     William Lindsey :toad: (wdlindsy@toad.social)'s status on Thursday, 11-Jan-2024 00:52:17 JST William Lindsey :toad:

     in reply to

     "January 6 was the culmination of authoritarian tendencies visible from the moment the Trump campaign was launched. It also marked a terrible advance in the radicalization of a significant number of authoritarian reactionary American Christians."

     ~ Ibid.

     #Christianity #democracy #authoritarianism #Jan6 #insurrection
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     William Lindsey :toad: (wdlindsy@toad.social)'s status on Thursday, 11-Jan-2024 00:52:17 JST William Lindsey :toad:

     in reply to

     “When pastors publicly applaud right-wing militias like the Proud Boys, on the eve of the attack on the Capitol, they are not just participating in Christian nationalism. They are inflaming right-wing religious/insurrectionist violence. We have witnessed in our time the movement of some beyond Christian ‘culture wars’ to actual Christian holy violence."

     #Christianity #democracy #authoritarianism #Jan6 #Insurrection #ProudBoys
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     William Lindsey :toad: (wdlindsy@toad.social)'s status on Thursday, 11-Jan-2024 00:52:18 JST William Lindsey :toad:

     in reply to

     “I believe it is now reasonable to suggest that the perceived secular revolution(s) of the 1960s finally created the motivation necessary for the United States to have its first experience of an organized religious (mainly Christian) counterrevolution. That counterrevolution is a force of such power that, for the first time in US history, it threatens not only the original ‘secular state with religious freedom’ arrangements of 240 years ago but also American democracy itself."

     ~ Ibid.
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     William Lindsey :toad: (wdlindsy@toad.social)'s status on Thursday, 11-Jan-2024 00:52:19 JST William Lindsey :toad:

     in reply to

     "This reveals the double-edged power of despair over the loss of a close election by their guy/their side, and a demonized reading of the Democratic Party that has swept through many conservative Christians. It was a counterrevolutionary effort to win this battle once and for all. It also reveals a substantial fringe of reactionary Christians slipping free of the constraints of our democratic system and the rule of law."

     ~ Ibid.

     #Christianity #democracy #authoritarianism #Jan6
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     William Lindsey :toad: (wdlindsy@toad.social)'s status on Thursday, 11-Jan-2024 00:52:20 JST William Lindsey :toad:

     in reply to

     “It is a documented fact that the January 6th, 2021, US Capitol insurrection and the preliminary efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election contained a sizable conservative Christian presence, and had the acquiescence, ‘prayerful support,’ and fondest hopes of many Christians."

     ~ Ibid.

     #Christianity #democracy #authoritarianism #Jan6 #insurrection #WhiteChristianNationalism
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     William Lindsey :toad: (wdlindsy@toad.social)'s status on Thursday, 11-Jan-2024 00:52:21 JST William Lindsey :toad:

     in reply to

     "It is not fundamentalist Muslims who today are serious candidates for federal and statewide offices in the United States. It is Christians who are positioning themselves to remake our 240-year-old democratic and church/state arrangements."

     ~ Ibid.

     #Christianity #democracy #authoritarianism #Muslims #evangelicals
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     William Lindsey :toad: (wdlindsy@toad.social)'s status on Thursday, 11-Jan-2024 00:52:22 JST William Lindsey :toad:

     in reply to

     “It can be documented easily that in multiple countries conservative Christians have demonstrated susceptibility toward or active support for political authoritarianism as just described."

     ~ Ibid.

     #Christianity #democracy #authoritarianism #fascism #nationalism
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     William Lindsey :toad: (wdlindsy@toad.social)'s status on Thursday, 11-Jan-2024 00:52:22 JST William Lindsey :toad:

     in reply to

     “It is interesting that the main group in the United States expressing fears that the US Muslim community constitutes a threatening antidemocratic population are the far more numerous fundamentalist and evangelical Christians who could pose a much more profound threat to democracy."

     ~ Ibid.

     #Christianity #democracy #authoritarianism #Muslims #evangelicals
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     William Lindsey :toad: (wdlindsy@toad.social)'s status on Thursday, 11-Jan-2024 00:52:23 JST William Lindsey :toad:

     in reply to

     "The slide away from democracy and toward right-wing authoritarianism in nations including Russia, Poland, Hungary, Brazil, and the United States today, and other nations in the past, is connected to and exacerbated by the historic and contemporary attitudes of a substantial part of the Christian populations of these lands. There are ‘Christian’ versions of populism, fascism, authoritarianism, and nationalism."

     ~ Ibid.

     #Christianity #democracy #authoritarianism #fascism #nationalism
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     William Lindsey :toad: (wdlindsy@toad.social)'s status on Thursday, 11-Jan-2024 00:52:24 JST William Lindsey :toad:

     in reply to

     “This crisis of democracy is far more than merely a US trend. Despite national differences, the characteristics of what I will call authoritarian reactionary Christian politics are widely shared. This is a global phenomenon.”

     ~ Ibid.

     #Christianity #democracy #authoritarianism
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     William Lindsey :toad: (wdlindsy@toad.social)'s status on Thursday, 11-Jan-2024 00:52:25 JST William Lindsey :toad:

     in reply to

     "[T]his book is a reflection on the era associated with former president Donald Trump—especially with the shocking events after the November 2020 election, when avowed Christians, acting for explicitly Christian reasons, were at the forefront of those who sought to prevent the certification of Joe Biden as the 46th US president. Their dangerous attitudes were seen most strongly in those who violently breached the US Capitol building on January 6, 2021.”

     Ibid.

     #Christianity #democracy #Jan6
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