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Category: Religion

Pope laments war in Holy Land on solemn Christmas Eve

Pope laments war in Holy Land on solemn Christmas Eve

Reuters reports: Pope Francis lamented war in the land of the birth of Jesus on Sunday, where Christmas Eve brought only fresh bloodshed and an intensification of fighting across the length of the Gaza Strip. Hours before midnight tolled for Christmas in the Holy Land, Palestinian health officials reported at least 70 dead in an Israeli airstrike on central Gaza. The Israeli military spokesperson’s office said it was looking into the report. Israel reported the highest two-day death toll for…

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Syrians cancel Christmas festivities in solidarity with war-battered Gaza

Syrians cancel Christmas festivities in solidarity with war-battered Gaza

The New Arab reports: Christmas cheer has deserted the streets of Syria’s cities, where the main churches have limited celebrations to prayers in solidarity with Palestinians suffering war in Gaza. “In Palestine, the birthplace of Jesus Christ, people are suffering,” the Syriac Catholic Archbishop of Aleppo, Mor Dionysius Antoine Shahda, told AFP. The northern Syrian city’s central district of Azizia is usually home to a bustling festive market and a huge Christmas tree, while its streets are adorned with lights…

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Pope condemns Israeli attack on Catholic church in Gaza as ‘terrorism’

Pope condemns Israeli attack on Catholic church in Gaza as ‘terrorism’

  BBC News reports: Civilians trapped in a church in Gaza City are living in an “unreal” sense of fear, a relative of one of those confined there has said. Fifi Saba, whose sister is trapped inside the Holy Family Church, said people were scared to move out of fear of being shot. A mother and her daughter were killed inside the church by sniper fire on Saturday, the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem said. Pope Francis condemned the attack. “A…

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Why Christian fundamentalists love Trump

Why Christian fundamentalists love Trump

David French writes: I just finished reading Tim Alberta’s masterly new book, “The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism.” It’s a powerful and emotionally resonant account of the transformation in evangelical politics that has brought us to the current moment: A godless man, Donald Trump, may now possess more devoted support from white evangelical Christians than any other president in the history of the United States. And most worrisome of all, that support…

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The bogus historians who teach evangelicals they live in a theocracy

The bogus historians who teach evangelicals they live in a theocracy

Tim Alberta writes: I had never seen a sanctuary so full on a Tuesday night. The people packed into FloodGate Church in Brighton, Mich., weren’t here for Bill Bolin, the right-wing zealot pastor who’d grown his congregation tenfold by preaching conspiracy-fueled sermons since the onset of Covid-19, turning Sunday morning worship services into amateur Fox News segments. No, they had come out by the hundreds, decked out in patriotic attire this October evening in 2021, to hear from a man…

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Tux-wearing Christian nationalists laugh about their influence, live from Mar-a-Lago

Tux-wearing Christian nationalists laugh about their influence, live from Mar-a-Lago

Rolling Stone reports: Christian nationalists were out in force at Mar-a-Lago on Friday night, once again demonstrating their proximity to MAGA power. Lance Wallnau — the chief promoter of a “Seven Mountains Mandate” for right-wing Christians to seize control over government and culture — was dressed in a tux and streaming live to his 1 million Facebook followers. The black-tie event was the America First Policy Institute gala at Trump’s Palm Beach estate, where the former president was soon to…

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These evangelicals are cheering the Gaza war as the end of the world

These evangelicals are cheering the Gaza war as the end of the world

Talia Lavin writes: On Tuesday, approximately 300,000 people gathered in Washington, D.C., to show their support for Israel in an ongoing war that has claimed the lives of thousands of people. The lineup of speakers at the March for Israel included Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Sen. Chuck Schumer, Jewish-American celebrities like Debra Messing and Tovah Feldshuh, as well as rabbis and cantors. It also included an evangelical Christian pastor from Texas, infamous for his fire-and-brimstone prophecies about the end of…

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The GOP is the party of white Christian nationalism

The GOP is the party of white Christian nationalism

Thomas B. Edsall writes: Mike Johnson is the first person to become speaker of the House who can be fairly described as a Christian nationalist, a major development in American history in and of itself. Equally important, however, his ascension reflects the strength of white evangelical voters’ influence in the House Republican caucus, voters who are determined to use the power of government to roll back the civil rights, women’s rights and sexual revolutions. “Johnson is a clear rebuttal to…

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‘This war is prophetically significant’: Why U.S. evangelical Christians support Israel

‘This war is prophetically significant’: Why U.S. evangelical Christians support Israel

The Guardian reports: It didn’t take long for many evangelical Christian groups in America to show their support for Israel. Hours after Hamas attacked the country on 7 October, killing more than 1,400 people, Christians United for Israel, an evangelical lobbying group which claims to have more than 10 million members, posted a message to on X, formerly known as Twitter. “To the terrorists who have chosen this fight, hear this, what you do to Israel, god will do to…

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The Christofascism of Mike Johnson

The Christofascism of Mike Johnson

Noah Berlatsky writes: It took Mike Johnson just a couple days last week to rise from a relatively obscure Louisiana congressman to House speaker. Suffice it to say his background and policy positions did not hold up well under their first exposure to national attention. Johnson is an opposition researcher’s goldmine. Even over the weekend, news reports and video clips steadily trickled out exposing the new speaker for embracing views that are far out of step with mainstream America. In…

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Speaker Johnson’s mission is to align America with God’s laws

Speaker Johnson’s mission is to align America with God’s laws

Katelyn Fossett interviews historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez: Katelyn Fossett: I want to talk to you a little about Mike Johnson’s worldview and the belief system that has shaped him. Kristin Kobes Du Mez: He is incredibly standard in terms of being a right-wing, white evangelical Christian nationalist. Fossett: Tell me a little more about what makes someone a Christian nationalist. Does he use that phrase to describe himself? Du Mez: I don’t know that he uses that. But I…

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The new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, wants to make America a Christian theocracy

The new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, wants to make America a Christian theocracy

David Rothkopf writes: The most dangerous movement in American politics today is not Trumpism. It is Christofascism. With the election of Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, the organized effort to impose the extreme religious views of a minority of Americans on the entire country, at the expense of many of our most basic freedoms, took a disturbing step forward. Despite Speaker Johnson’s claims of being a constitutional “originalist,” via his elevation by a…

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Pope Francis lambasts climate change skeptics and ‘irresponsible’ Western lifestyles

Pope Francis lambasts climate change skeptics and ‘irresponsible’ Western lifestyles

CNN reports: Pope Francis has made his strongest statement yet on the accelerating climate crisis, pinning blame on big industries and world leaders as well as “irresponsible” Western lifestyles, in a blistering statement on Wednesday. “Our responses have not been adequate, while the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point,” the pontiff wrote in a 7,000 word encyclical called Laudate Deum (“Praise God”). “Some effects of the climate crisis are already irreversible, at…

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Pope Pius XII knew about the Holocaust early on

Pope Pius XII knew about the Holocaust early on

Reuters reports: Wartime Pope Pius XII knew details about the Nazi attempt to exterminate Jews in the Holocaust as early as 1942, according to a letter found in the Vatican archives that conflicts with the Holy See’s official position at the time that the information it had was vague and unverified. The yellowed, typewritten letter, reproduced in Italy’s Corriere della Sera on Sunday, is highly significant because it was discovered by an in-house Vatican archivist and made public with the…

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What really happens when Americans stop going to church

What really happens when Americans stop going to church

Daniel K. Williams writes: Millions of Americans are leaving church, never to return, and it would be easy to think that this will make the country more secular and possibly more liberal. After all, that is what happened in Northern and Western Europe in the 1960s: A younger generation quit going to Anglican, Lutheran, or Catholic churches and embraced a liberal, secular pluralism that shaped European politics for the rest of the 20th century and beyond. Something similar happened in…

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The California megachurch pushing public schools to the far right

The California megachurch pushing public schools to the far right

The Daily Beast reports: Outside the California State Capitol last month, a fitness trainer turned school board president fired up the crowd at a parental rights rally, telling them they were all fighters in “a spiritual battle” for their kids and must answer the call from God. Sonja Shaw, who was elected to the Chino Valley Unified School District board of education last November with an assist from a local megachurch and its Christian nationalist pastor, didn’t equivocate in naming…

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