Raising A Government For A Nonexistent God.


Capitol Ministries' February 13, 2018 fundraising dinner at the World Ag Expo.

Capitol Ministries’ February 13, 2018 fundraising dinner at the World Ag Expo.

Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue has joined Ralph Drollinger in his quest to raise the Jehovah government, not just here, but globally. Granted, this effort will go much further here in Amerikka than elsewhere, which is bad enough. It seems the department of agriculture has now turned into a giant “hey, cough up money for gawd! We have to get this religious reich going!”

All the conservative christian lunatics are in on this, stumping away god and guns and every other evil.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue and former Rep. Michele Bachmann were the featured speakers at a Tuesday evening fundraising dinner for Capitol Ministries, the group that sponsors weekly Bible studies for members of the House and Senate and President Donald Trump’s Cabinet. Also offering testimony on behalf of this “special type of ministry” was Rep. Jeff Denham, whose relationship with the group goes back to his days in the California legislature. The show was emceed by Frank Sontag, a Los Angeles-based Christian radio host who voices the audio versions of the written Bible studies that Capitol Ministries publishes every week.

Hundreds of people packed an event tent at the massive World Ag Expo in Tulare, California, the heart of the state’s agriculture industry, to hear Perdue, Bachmann and Capitol Ministries’ founder and leader Ralph Drollinger. Tulare is a reliably Republican area of the state, now represented in the U.S. Congress by Rep. Devin Nunes, a local boy from a farm family. At the event, tables were sponsored by wealthy farming families and an array of agriculture-related businesses, along with Bank of America and local branches of Wells Fargo.

[…]

Some sponsors may be supporters of Capitol Ministries’ mission of encouraging public officials to embrace conservative Christianity. Some may have bought tables based on personal and professional connections to Capitol Ministries board member and event host Rob Hilarides, who heads a dairy operation in the area. Some may appreciate Drollinger’s teachings that “God is a capitalist” and that because of excessive environmental regulations in the U.S., “the economic benefits God intends from private property ownership have been greatly diminished.” And some may have given to express support for the Trump administration’s rollbacks of regulations governing their industry.

Perdue told Capitol Ministries’ sponsors that he is “the beneficiary” of their “investment,” saying he hoped the Capitol Ministries fundraiser would become an annual event. Perdue talked about how God had guided his life and career moves, from the time God told him to give up his veterinary practice and go into agribusiness to his election as Georgia’s first Republican governor. Like Bachmann, Perdue gave an altar-call-like pitch for people to give their lives to God.

[…]

Drollinger is on a mission to recruit public officials at all levels of government to his conservative version of Christianity and his particular fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible. Part of Drollinger’s pitch for his ministry is that Religious Right groups have spent too much time lobbying public officials to change laws. Capitol Ministries focuses instead on “the most influential component in the legislative process: the people who make the decisions and create the statutes.”

Drollinger says he doesn’t lobby, but he does instruct public officials that the Bible mandates adherence to right-wing policy positions on a wide range of issues, including environmental regulation, the death penalty, abortion, LGBTQ equality and more. He says it is the government’s job to quell evil and punish sin. He teaches that care for the poor is meant to be a job for the family and church, not the government, and that entitlement programs have no “biblical authority.” And he says that once “righteous” people hold positions of power in government, they should hire only other “righteous” people.

Drollinger’s efforts should wake everyone up, they are terrifying, and unfortunately, effective. He has a great deal of influence on capitol hill, and like most christian lunatics, his views are that the way things were in Medieval age are splendid, and we should go right back there. He has no use whatsoever for christians who go all Jesus, or think things like compassion and care have a place in life:

Drollinger is not particularly open to other interpretations of scripture. He has called Roman Catholicism “one of the primary false religions in the world.” He has written that liberal Christians are “simpletons.” In a September 2017 Bible study, he wrote that the Social Gospel, a major strain of American Christianity in the 20th century, is a “perversion” or “corruption” of biblical teaching, and “not Christianity whatsoever.” As for Christians in Congress who do not share his conservative theology and right-wing politics, Drollinger wrote, “I believe the biggest deception on the Hill today is this: the religion of the Social Gospel proffers itself as being ‘Christian’ when it isn’t even close to being biblical.”

Last July, Drollinger warned public officials, “Do not be deceived by syncretistic ‘prayer breakfasts’: God only hears the prayers of leaders and citizens who are upright, who live righteously through faith in Jesus Christ.”

This is a man who is fully in favour of an inquisitorial government, in spite of his hate for the catholic church. He’s very much an inquisition and crusades kind of guy. The article at RWW is in-depth and link heavy, lots of important reading there. If liberal/moderate christians find such efforts to be repulsive, you have to stop being milquetoasts on the sideline, shaking your heads. You need to stand the fuck up, and put this effort down. Time to roar. Naturally, all us godless/religionless folk need to roar our faces off, too. This all starts with awareness, so go read, become aware, and start yelling.

The full article is at RWW.

Comments

  1. prostheticconscience says

    For someone so dismissive of other Christian groups, he doesn’t seem to be very knowledgeable of scripture.

    Just then a man came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?”

    […]

    Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

    When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.

    Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
    (Matthew 19: 16-28)

    And again -- God is not a capitalist. God is a homeless person.

    Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”
    (Matthew 8:20)

    https://www.redletterchristians.org/give-it-all-away-could-jesus-possibly-have-meant-what-he-said-about-money/

  2. says

    prostheticconscience:

    Unfortunately, none of that would mean shit to Drollinger, and unfortunately, what he preaches aligns with the way rethuglicans think.

  3. busterggi says

    I wish the one group of True Christians would eliminate all the fake Christians before they turned their attention to the rest of us but I guess they need them as cannon fodder in their war on reality.

  4. says

    Busterggi:

    I wish the one group of True Christians would eliminate all the fake Christians before they turned their attention to the rest of us

    I’d be down with that. I’d settle for all them sitting down and deciding to settle all the fractious divisions between one flavour and the next. I figure that would keep them busy and away from the rest of us for a few centuries.

  5. vucodlak says

    Whenever I worry that the Christian Nationalist/Capitalist baddies in the stories I’m writing are too over the top, I just have to read a few quotes from Ralph Drollinger to assure myself that the peak is still way up there in the clouds. I get chills reading about him, and knowing the lofty position of influence he holds. Not the good kind of chills. They’re like the chills one gets from a bad flu, when you just can’t stop shivering even though your fever’s about to cook your brain.

    I thoroughly agree that he’s wannabe inquisitor. I suspect he dreams of gibbets and red hot irons, and the screams of people he doesn’t like heretics. I suspect he wakes from those dreams with an awful smile on his face and a song in his heart. “Onward Christian Soldiers,” probably.

    The Secretary of Agriculture is the typical “designated survivor,” if I remember correctly. There’s a cheerful thought- President Sonny “I have to fly first class or I might touch a peasant” Perdue and his spiritual advisor, Ralph “the poor deserve to suffer” Drollinger.

  6. toddtomorrow says

    Oh, hear me roar! it sounds like Drollinger does have influence on Sonny Perdue, since the good christian and Secretary of Agriculture, feels there needs to be more of a push to promote work and self-sufficiency among able-bodied adults participating in the department’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Unless you are an Agriculture worker from another country: “The people who come to America to work on farms and ranches are not taking jobs from Americans,” Perdue said. “They are not the ones putting a burden on criminal justice system or welfare system.”

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