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- [00:01]
Matthew Rimsky
I sold my car in Carvana last night.
- [00:02]
Julian Walker
Well, that's cool.
- [00:03]
Matthew Rimsky
No, you don't understand. It went perfectly. Real offer down to the penny. They're picking it up tomorrow. Nothing went wrong.
- [00:09]
Julian Walker
So what's the problem?
- [00:11]
Matthew Rimsky
That is the problem. Nothing in my life goes as smoothly. I'm waiting for the catch.
- [00:14]
Derek Barris
Maybe there's no catch.
- [00:16]
Matthew Rimsky
That's exactly what a catch would want me to think.
- [00:18]
Julian Walker
Wow.
- [00:19]
Matthew Rimsky
You need to relax. I need to knock on wood. Do we have wood? Is this table wood?
- [00:22]
Julian Walker
I think it's laminate.
- [00:23]
Matthew Rimsky
Okay. Yeah, that's good. That's close enough.
- [00:25]
Julian Walker
Car selling without a catch.
- [00:26]
Derek Barris
Sell your car today on Carvana.
- [00:29]
Julian Walker
Pick up.
- [00:29]
Matthew Rimsky
Fees may apply.
- [00:31]
Julian Walker
We've got a very kind of sponsor for this episode, the Jordan Harbinger Show, a podcast you should definitely check out. Since you're a fan of high quality, fascinating podcasts. Hosted by interesting people, the show covers a wide range of topics through weekly interviews with heavy hitting guests. And there are a ton of episodes you'll find interesting. Since you're a fan of this show, I'd recommend our listeners check it out. We have a fair amount of overlap. You know, Jordan recently did an episode on remote viewing and how the US Government spent millions of dollars on this ESP pseudoscience. You might also look up an episod called Saving Bro's Soul from Alt Right Rabbit Hole. Anyway, you can't go wrong with adding the Jordan Harbinger show to your rotation. It's incredibly interesting. There's never a dull show. Search for the Jordan Harbinger Show. That's Harb as in boy I n as in Nancy G E R on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcast.
- [01:36]
Matthew Rimsky
Foreign.
- [01:40]
Derek Barris
Hey everyone. Welcome to Conspirituality, where we investigate the intersections of conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience and authoritarian extremism. I'm Derek Barris.
- [01:52]
Matthew Rimsky
I'm Matthew Rimsky.
- [01:53]
Julian Walker
I'm Julian Walker.
- [01:54]
Derek Barris
You can find us on Instagram and threads at conspiritualitypod as well as individually on Bluesky. And you can access all of our episodes ad free, plus our Monday bonus episodes on patreon@patreon.com. conspirituality. You can also access our Monday bonus episodes via Apple subscriptions. As independent media creators, you are what allows us to do this work and we really appreciate your support.
- [02:26]
Matthew Rimsky
Episode 309 Cry Bully Christians in the White House The Trump Department of Justice's 565 page report from the Task Force for Eradicating Anti Christianity Christian Bias is one of the strangest federal documents in recent memory. It's a crybully tome arguing that the most powerful religious majority in the United States is its most persecuted minority. So today Julian's going to examine the Face act allegations that the document brings up, and also the FBI Catholic surveillance controversy and the selective history propping up the Christian founding thesis. Derek is going to trace the free thinker and second secularist tradition that the report totally erases. And I'm going to track the document's very telling absence anti Communism, because from Eisenhower to Reagan, Christian nationalism has always come bundled with a Soviet enemy and a defense of free enterprise and private property. But the 67% of this document that's about sexuality, gender and reproductive rights shows that the billionaire Jesus class thinks the class war is over. And so all that's left to control is the body itself.
- [03:46]
Julian Walker
All right, so as you said, Matthew, the April 30 report from the Task Force for Eradicating Anti Christian Bias, an Orwellian sounding name if ever I've heard one, is 565 pages. So of course we've each read sections and then we've relied on some summary tools to get at the core ideas and claims that are therein.
- [04:07]
Derek Barris
What are you talking about? I read the entire thing. You did?
- [04:10]
Matthew Rimsky
Fantastic.
- [04:10]
Julian Walker
Yeah, yeah.
- [04:12]
Derek Barris
Put me to sleep every night page turner.
- [04:15]
Julian Walker
They are explicit, though from the very first sentence that this multi agency task force led by the DOJ with 17 principles from across the federal government, has been set up to address and reverse Biden administration policies that it claims represent persecution of Christians. It sets the tone for this with language like weaponization and discrimination in the very first paragraph and then establishes the goal of eradicating and eliminating this victim. Victimization.
- [04:44]
Matthew Rimsky
Let's just note too that the word Biden appears 509 times in this text. So it's actually a task force for eradicating, you know, pro Biden bias or something like that.
- [04:56]
Derek Barris
Do they give him the red letters like Jesus in the Bible?
- [04:59]
Matthew Rimsky
Yeah, you should.
- [05:00]
Julian Walker
It's pretty amazing that someone who they say was just like locked in the basement or sleeping all the time had this much nefarious power over all the
- [05:08]
Matthew Rimsky
porkish who was also just sort of. He was sort of like a mainstream Catholic too.
- [05:13]
Julian Walker
The document, though, puts a lot of gravitas and institutional heft behind what I'm going to argue is a conspiracy theory. It's essentially about how the most oppressed and besieged people in America are conservative white Christians, which is astonishing in two key ways. First, because so much of the rhetoric of MAGA in general, as exemplified by Project 2025, is that it is the left who are obsessed with identity politics. And in this narrative, Democrats are the screaming snowflakes who think every microaggression is a form of traumatic tyranny against them, while Republicans have come to restore the sanity of free speech and meritocracy in which everyone just grows a thicker skin.
- [05:54]
Matthew Rimsky
Christianity is not an identity, though, Julian, it's an essence.
- [06:01]
Julian Walker
Yes, and as we'll hear from Derek later, it's really at the essence of what it means to be American right now. Second, this is gobsmacking, because by playing victim in the way they do, they actually enact a kind of stolen valor from legitimately oppressed and embattled people whose actual equalities and freedoms are those being threatened by a resurgent Christian nationalism after decades of real progress in the other direction. Reading the press release, I couldn't help but think that this was an institutional version of the familiar old Fox News trope. You know, about the supposed war on Christianity. Christmas woke. Liberals get mad if you don't say Happy Holidays, but gosh darn it, we're proud to shove Jesus down everyone's throats because this is America. But as with the administration's claims that DEI measures are actually forms of unconstitutional racism, they're also making the cause of protecting Christians somehow emblematic of religious freedom for all people, said acting Attorney General and Chair of the task force, Todd Blanche. No American should live under fear that the government will punish them for their faith.
- [07:15]
Matthew Rimsky
It's sentences like that that kind of, like, close the reality of what they're talking about into this tight knot. So all Americans have a particular faith. They all need protection from the government that wants to punish them. But there's no sort of. There's no room in a statement like that for any kind of diversity or any kind of, you know, any kind of multiculturalism, any kind of ecumenism at all.
- [07:38]
Julian Walker
Yeah, yeah. And then they only talk about Christians after saying statements like that.
- [07:42]
Matthew Rimsky
Right?
- [07:43]
Julian Walker
And so it's like, first they. For the most powerful religious group, and I said nothing, Eh? But what exactly does this report allege? Well, one claim is that the Biden administration aggressively prosecuted peaceful pro life Christians under the freedom of access to clinic entrances or FACE act, while being less forceful against violent attacks on pregnancy centers. And this is largely presented without evidence or data. So I had to go in search of all of that for myself. The FACE act was enacted in 1994 to protect people seeking reproductive Health Services in reaction to intensifying harassment, blockades, bombings, arson and murders of doctors by anti abortion extremists. Now cut to the first Trump administration. And the available data says that There were only five face prosecutions during that four years. But during the Biden years, there were 25 cases involving 50 defendants prosecuted under the act. And that makes sense because according to the National Abortion Federation, the overall trend in violent incidents at abortion clinics started increasing again in 2017, and it has not stopped since. Now, during Trump 2.0, he has advised prosecutors to only apply the act under extraordinary circumstances. And then he turned around and pardoned 23 people who were previously convicted under it. So my interpretation here, from looking at these facts, is that the Face act legislation that was passed to prevent religiously justified domestic terrorism has been downplayed by the same people who brought us January 6th, while Democrats actually following the law, has been framed as religious persecution. Now, what about the claim of inequity in comparison to pregnancy centers? It turns out that during the Biden years, especially after the Dobbs decision was leaked in 2020, there was actually also a significant uptick in violent incidents at these usually Christian nonprofit crisis centers, which provide resources and use religiously infused counseling to steer patients toward alternatives to abortion.
- [09:59]
Matthew Rimsky
I gotta say, often with deceptive advertising, you know, in other words, concealing that they're actually anti choice orgs through their advertising online. I mean, and this goes way back because I actually remember being in a personal situation in which I had to, ph, own one of these, you know, places to get advice and help with regard to a relationship that I was in. It didn't turn out to be an issue that. That needed to be treated. But I remember the person picking up the phone and it becoming very clear that they were not offering what was advertised, which was kind of like in the paper it said, it said know your rights, you know, or something like, you know, you know, if, if are you in trouble, you know, we can help that sort of thing. Just, just really release nasty stuff.
- [10:45]
Julian Walker
Yeah. So Christian advocacy groups say There were around 64 reported attacks on pregnancy centers and 147 on Catholic churches in the year or so after the Dobbs leak. Most of these involved graffiti and minor vandalism, but about two dozen of these were linked to an abortion rights extremist group called Jane's Revenge or copycat actors. And These did include two firebombings and two cases of arson. Four people were convicted in 2024 by the Biden DOJ for the most serious of those crimes. But the extent to which Jane's Revenge is an actual organized group with significant membership and activity, or largely a bogeyman constructed by right wing media based on blog posts and graffiti is disputed. But the report claims that a two tiered justice system pushed for harsher sentencing for the pro life offenders than the pro choice ones. The explanation for this why it's discrimination against Christians. According to npr, one advocacy group Democracy Forward called this narrative fictitious, cherry picked and a waste of taxpayer dollars, while another justice connection said the DOJ's current leadership textbook Cruelty and Hypocrisy is actually on full display now. Since its 1994 inception, the FACE act seems to have significantly reduced the number of life threatening attacks at clinics that provide reproductive health care, but the current administration has vowed not to apply it except under extraordinary circumstances. Now this of course makes no difference in the 13 states that now have a total abortion ban, but it will likely make staff and patients less safe in the states that people travel to in need for care. Here's an interesting wrinkle. The legislation also applies to places of worship. The FACE act that I mentioned applies as well to places of worship. And so this is the case in that big story involving journalist Don Lemon and others. Remember, they were arrested in St. Paul, Minnesota for protesting back in February at the church where an ICE Field officer also is a pastor. And this is also related to the controversy over the Safe Zone executive order that Zoran Mamdani repealed on his first day in office, replacing it with an order directing the police commissioner to review NYPD patrol guidance to ensure protections for worshippers. And and this is led to some of the large pro Palestine protests we've recently seen right in front of synagogues in New York.
- [13:23]
Matthew Rimsky
And it's very complicated because some of those protests are specifically responding to land auction events held in the synagogues themselves for parcels of land in the occupied territories.
- [13:33]
Julian Walker
Yeah, absolutely. Really complicated, really loaded. Those kinds of land auctions are happening. And you also have people in communities seeking to gain access to their synagogues who are who are feeling pretty uncomfortable and unsafe with lots of people protesting right in front of the doorways, which is why there's this overlap with abortion clinics. So next topic, the task force report also leans into this claim that Catholics were illegally targeted by the FBI based on supposedly biased intel from the Southern Poverty Law center who are having their own crisis right now. They're being accused of wire fraud and money laundering in a lawsuit brought by the Trump DOJ that many legal experts see as weak and performative. But Again, the DOJ appears to be weaponized against enemies, in this case a non profit anti extremism group by the very figure who claimed to have been victimized by the justice system weaponized against them. Now, that aside, here's what the claim in the document is based on. In January 2007, SPLC published an article titled 12 Antisemitic Radical Traditionalist Catholic Groups. They've since continued to track what they call radical Traditionalist Catholicism, citing specific groups and describing their rhetoric. And they've made it clear all along that this strain of Catholicism is rejected by the Vatican and some 70 million American Catholics. These radical Traditionalists reject the liberalizing reforms of Vatican ii. And they're also openly anti Semitic, calling Jews frequently the perpetual enemy of Christ. SPLC reporting showed how key figures in this movement had connections to white supremacist groups. This led to a 2023 FBI internal memo that all of this hullabaloo is about, which concerned a subset of radical traditionalist Catholics and possible violent extremist group recruitment not directed at Catholics generally, but at this particular group as a potential domestic terror threat. In the run up to the 2024 election. This wasn't just a moral panic. A man named Javier Lopez, who referred to himself as a radical traditional Catholic clerical fascist, was arrested in November of 2022 with Molotov cocktails, within some of which he had brewed napalm as well as firearms.
- [16:00]
Matthew Rimsky
So a real Francoist here. I'm just trying to imagine him like attacking whatever he's going while he's like yelling out the traditional Catholic mass refrains.
- [16:09]
Julian Walker
Yeah, pretty scary. It has become public knowledge that Lopez is in fact diagnosed as schizophrenic. But the Richmond Catholic Memo, as it's been called, this document from the FBI was leaked and then held up as an example of religious profiling. And this kicked off a congressional investigation which found 13 documents using the SPLC style terminology internally in the FBI. And. And Republicans then raised a ruckus about Catholics being called terrorist threats because of their religious beliefs. Then In April of 2024, the Inspector General produced a 10 page report that did cite specific problems with the memo and its evidence basis, but found no evidence that anyone ordered investigation of Catholics or that the memo showed malicious intent or an improper purpose is the language there? But here we are two years later, and this episode is now part of the corkboard construction of a case for anti Christian bias in the government. The bottom line here looks to me like the bar for infiltrating and investigating extremist groups with some claim to Christian identity is now much higher, as already evidenced by Kash Patel's FBI policy changes in this area last year. Moving on now to the less complex and sadly predictable accusations against proposed legisl like the Equality act, which seeks to amend civil rights laws to include protection for LGBTQ people around housing, employment, education, and public accommodations like hotels, retailers and restaurants. The report essentially argues that such legislation is part of a trend that impinges on those who want to discriminate against LGBTQ people as an expression of their religious freedom. I'll acknowledge my bias in that statement, but that's what it comes down to. They also focus on Christian parents having the right to opt out of gender ideology, content so called for their kids in schools, and having access to religious counseling, which we could more correctly call conversion therapy for gay and trans identifying kids.
- [18:20]
Matthew Rimsky
I didn't read this section, Julian, but are they specific about, like, how the opt outs would work, or is that just sort of a generalized thing? Because I know that sometimes that language expands in certain educational documents or policies to basically give parents the right to opt their kids out of all sex ed, sort of on a day by day basis. And sometimes the burdens on teachers are incredible. Right? It's like if the teacher's going to bring up something in the curriculum on Wednesday, then on Tuesday they have to send out an email to everybody and get everybody's consent and then find something to do for the kids who are going to opt out. But were they specific about that at all?
- [18:56]
Julian Walker
No, I didn't say anything specific along those lines. They're really critiquing the Equality act that has yet to be passed and saying if this is passed, it's going to be a threat to all of these freedoms that as Christians we are being discriminated against for wanting to cherish. Right.
- [19:13]
Matthew Rimsky
The freedom to have religious counseling in their schooling, the freedom to have conversion therapy in their schooling. Okay, yes.
- [19:20]
Julian Walker
And the freedom to opt out of any content that they disagree with on, quote, religious grounds.
- [19:26]
Matthew Rimsky
I mean, why not opt out of the vaccine unit in biology class?
- [19:30]
Julian Walker
Yeah, why not opt out of learning anything about evolution? So likewise, they claim that religious freedom is violated by legislation that, quote, minimizes conscience rights in healthcare by forcing Christian providers, forcing Christian providers to participate in reproductive procedures, or having insufficient religious exemptions from. From having to do so. And Christian companies including contraception in their health insurance plans. This is part of a pronounced theme in the report that the Biden administration allowed Christians to hold certain beliefs but not act upon them. Thus putting them in the untenable position of having to choose between living their faith and breaking federal law. Now, the report itself does not actually propose specific legislation. Instead, it claims to identify gaps in religious protection while asserting that the task force can continue to propose executive orders, which is a much quicker way of getting the job done, and legislative action that would better protect religious liberty. So in boxing terms, I see this as a series of jabs that prepare the way for much heavier punches under the broad reactionary banner of fighting Anti Christian bias. If you're a fan of Conspirituality podcast, you're going to love Magical Overthinkers, a show for thought spiralers exploring the subjects we can't stop overthinking about every other week. Amanda Montel, New York Times best selling author and host of the Sounds Like a Cult podcast interviews a brilliant expert guest about a buzzy, confounding subject from the Zeitgeist From Nostalgia to Imposter Syndrome. You got to check out her first episode titled Overthinking about Narcissism, featuring the brilliant psychologist Dr. Romani. From extreme celebrity worship to people with master's degrees basing their real life choices on Mercury's whereabouts, there seems to be a lot of delulu out there these days, complete with open hearted personal stories, thought provoking conversations, and actionable takeaways for how chronically online listeners can get out of their own heads. This podcast is here to make some sense of the senseless, to help quiet the cacophony in our minds for a while, or even hear a melody in it. Magical Overthinkers airs every other Wednesday, wherever you get your podcasts.
- [22:09]
Matthew Rimsky
I mainly want to talk about what's missing from this huge weird document and why that might be. Basically, how has the anti Communism that was the backbone of every Christian nationalist intervention in governmental affairs from McCarthy on, why is it nowhere to be found here? So when I opened the document up I just would have assumed that the same old red scared Jesus would be there flashing the sword of judgment on every page, banishing the commies to hell. But it's not there. He's not there. Anti Communism has given way almost completely to sex panic content, and so what I wanted to do was to dig back through the precedents as I was thinking about why this might be, and my tldr here is that this document is coming at a stage of Christofascist development and maybe self awareness in the US where all challenges to capitalism, private wealth hoarding and imperial aggression are assumed to be defeated and so the only space left to really concentrate on and control is the space of the body. And there are bonus points for anyone who can get the faithful to not think about the economy that's crumbling around them. So I think it's common knowledge at this point that culture wars erase class wars. You know, culture warriors don't ask for wage increases, better housing, or health care. The ruling class pays nothing for those votes if they can get the attention on the right thing or the wrong thing. Meanwhile, the solidarity that might otherwise emerge between the Christian worker and the LGBTQ worker or the poor white evangelical and the immigrant, it all gets displaced by worrying about, literally, like, pee pee and poo poo time in the bathrooms. So that said, I just don't think I've seen this as clearly as in this review. And I compiled some resources to sort of make it clear. So, going back in the record, here's what Eisenhower has to say about the importance of Christianity in American life.
- [24:16]
Julian Walker
The churches of America are citadels of our faith in individual freedom and human dignity. This faith is the living source of all our spiritual strength. And this strength is our matchless armor in our worldwide struggle against the forces of godless tyranny and oppression.
- [24:33]
Matthew Rimsky
Okay, so that is a message that's delivered to the Commission of religious organizations in 1953. We've got another quote here, Derek.
- [24:41]
Derek Barris
Without God, there could be no American form of government nor an American way of life. Recognition of the Supreme Being is the first, the most basic expression of American nature.
- [24:52]
Matthew Rimsky
Okay, so that's from his public papers in 1955. Now, fun fact, Eisenhower probably didn't care about this stuff, like he likely grew up Mennonite. Previous histories used to say that he was brought up Jehovah's Witnesses, but Jehovah's Witness. But it didn't really play a big role in his sort of public formation. So it was assumed that he kind of fell out of practice until he was baptized Presbyterian shortly after his inauguration in 1953, at Billy Graham's urging, and as part of Cold War religious revival, he was all in for. So, you know, the President who put under God in the pledge and in God we Trust on the currency, spent most of his life with no church membership. Another fun fact was that despite all this effort and despite his war record, the John Birch Society was still out there calling Eisenhower a communist.
- [25:45]
Julian Walker
Why?
- [25:46]
Matthew Rimsky
Because he hadn't yet defeated the Soviet Union. So you can just never win against the Red Scare. Smear Graham. Billy Graham was more explicit than Eisenhower. Of course, Julian.
- [25:57]
Julian Walker
Communism has decided Against God, against Christ, against the Bible, and against all religion. Communism is a religion that is inspired, directed and motivated by the devil himself, who has declared war against almighty God.
- [26:12]
Matthew Rimsky
So that was his LA crusade, 1949. We've got another one, Derek.
- [26:16]
Derek Barris
It is here to stay. It is a battle to the death. Either communism must die or Christianity must die. The name of this present day religion is communism. The devil is their God, Marx, their prophet, Lenin, their saint.
- [26:30]
Matthew Rimsky
So that's from Satan's religion, published in American Mercury in 1954. And then we have Trump's pastor, Norman Vincent Peale at Marble Collegiate. He was a little bit more poetic. He switched out communism for big government. And this sort of cues Ronald Reagan in years to come.
- [26:47]
Julian Walker
Yeah, same thing, really. Once we roared like lions for liberty, now we bleat like shame, sheep for security. The solution for America's problem is not in terms of big government, but it is in big men, over whom nobody stands in control but God.
- [27:02]
Matthew Rimsky
You can see why Trump loved this guy so much. Like, listen to that first line. Once we roared like lions for liberty, now we bleat like sheep for security. And then talking about big men. Okay, so that's Peel, 1983. Reagan stitches these themes together at his Orlando speech for the convention of the national association of Evangelicals. This is the same speech in which he called the Soviet Union an evil empire.
- [27:27]
Derek Barris
Derek, Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged.
- [27:33]
Matthew Rimsky
Yeah. Also, what does Nancy's astrologer say? And should I deliver this speech now? Right. So with Graham, Communism is Satan's religion. Christianity must defeat it or die. For Eisenhower, God is the foundation of Republican government. And that makes the Cold War into a spiritual struggle. Peel is kind of a business coach oriented guy. So individual enterprise forms Christian manhood against state dependency or effeminacy. And then we have Jerry Falwell, who might be the pivot point towards a kind of internal moral enemy. I think he can probably tell which way the wind is blowing. He knows the Soviet Union is collapsing, and so he turns his attention to the inner being of the moral person. Secularism. You know, how do they feel about abortion? Are they secretly gay? But he keeps up with the free enterprise and defense framing. So here's how he combines all of these together as he talks about his moral majority.
- [28:33]
Julian Walker
We have 50 states organized now. Hopefully we can make a tremendous difference in influencing this country back to moral sanity, back to a strong free enterprise system that is fast deteriorating, and back to superior national defense, which in my option is the best deterrent against war.
- [28:51]
Matthew Rimsky
So he was able to say all of that shit on PBS in 1980. So moral sanity, free enterprise, military strength.
- [28:58]
Julian Walker
I thought he was a religious leader. Like what?
- [29:01]
Matthew Rimsky
Yeah, so Reagan integrates all three of these and then adds the freedom slipping away eschatology that is visible in this 2026 report. So between Reagan and now, a number of concerns evaporate. One is literally evaporated because the Soviet Union collapses.
- [29:21]
Julian Walker
And so, I mean, I wonder, Matthew, if that's one big reason, Right? I guess you're saying this huge for why we don't see McCarthy type rhetoric in this document because it's been, what, 30, 36 years or something?
- [29:34]
Matthew Rimsky
Yeah, except that it's available in many other forms of discourse. It's specifically in this sort of religious dialogue that it doesn't seem to have any meaning anymore. There's plenty of red scare stuff out there. But I'm just wondering, why did the preachers just sort of feel like it wasn't important anymore? And I think it's because you don't have an active enemy in their view. And so you really have to prove yourself on your own merits. Right. Like in that way, it makes sense to turn religious attention even further away from material conditions because Fukuyama's end of history does not make economic inequality or the 2008 crash go away. And when you don't have external enemies, the crises are on you. You. So there are advantages then to sharpening your focus on gay people or trans activists with blue hair. So commun Communism is gone, as is the defense of free enterprise as a Christian duty. Because I think that's all just sort of. We accept that that's obviously how things should be. So even as the Cold War Christians are dying off, freedom must still always be dying in America. So who's killing it? Abortion providers and queer people and the think tanks that have dominated since Reagan. So focus on the Family Alliance, Defending Freedom, Federalist Society. They've prepped for this with their incessant focus on sexual and gender issues, which are more reliably rallying than property rights discourse for the current majority base of suburban evangelicals, traditional Catholics and Hispanic Pentecostals. And by the numbers, because I think this is really fascinating to get some hard data on this. On this document, 67% of the docs issue content concerns sexuality, gender and reproductive rights. Gender ideology as a term appears 34 times. Abortion and reproductive rights are referred to 221 times. LGBTQ and sexual orientation approximately 209 times.
- [31:39]
Julian Walker
And so you can, you can probably just bundle those and say it's 243 times for the, for the general topic. Right. Between gender, ideology and lgbtq.
- [31:48]
Matthew Rimsky
Right.
- [31:48]
Julian Walker
It's a lot.
- [31:49]
Matthew Rimsky
So I just want to close by saying this is a super paranoid and creepy and creeper in the sense of like it's, it's sexual obsessions document. And as such, it really throws Pope Leo's interests into sharper light. Because it just so happens that on April 23, on a flight back from his 11 day Africa tour, during which he condemned colonialism and religious bigotry, Leo was asked whether continuing to permit the same sex relationship, blessings and the expansion, the modest expansion of gay rights for Catholics would harm the unity of the global church. And so here's what he answered. Quote, the unity or division of the church should not revolve around sexual matters. We tend to think that when the church is talking about morality that the only issue of morality is sexual. And in reality, I believe there are much greater, more important issues such as justice, equality, freedom of men and women, freedom of religion. That would all take pride priority before that particular issue.
- [32:53]
Julian Walker
That's magnificent.
- [32:54]
Matthew Rimsky
Yeah, I mean, it's a farce that his church is still obsessed with abortion, which is a freedom and poverty issue that Catholic doctrine just can't handle, at least at this point. Or at least, you know, the sort of centrality of Catholic doctrine can't. I think there's theologians who are working on that all the time, but otherwise, you know, this guy's out there teaching the Marxist gospel of liberation theology every day in which the sole focus is on the material conditions and, you know, the issues that the DOD J really wants to pray away.
- [33:32]
Julian Walker
It is one of the greatest unresolved paradoxes of American history that religion has come to occupy such an important place in the communal psyche and public life of a nation founded on the separation of church and state. The tension between secularism and religion was present at America's Creed. A secular government independent of all religious sects was seen by founders of diverse private beliefs as the essential guarantor of liberty of conscience. The descendants of passionate religious dissenters who had fled the church state establishments of the old world in order to worship God in a multiplicity of ways were beholden to a godless constitution. From the beginning of the republic. This irony laden and profoundly creative relationship produced a mixture of mixture of gratitude and unease on the part of its beneficiaries.
- [34:23]
Derek Barris
That's atheist and secular journalist Susan Jacoby from her 2004 book Free Thinkers, a history of American secularism. I read her book when becoming interested in better understanding the growing argument that America is a Christian nation. While there is indeed some strains of it throughout our history, including during the Founding, Jacoby points out that a diversity of thinking and beliefs was baked into our founding documents of limited range, obviously given it was confined to white Europeans. Still, secularism, deism, and even atheism are also part of our heritage, though you wouldn't know it reading the document that we've been discussing today. While the writers do lean on the fact that early colonialists were given freedom of expression and belief, they also frame the nation's colonization as Christian in nature. I want to look at two examples in the text and discuss its propagandistic framing. Okay, so first they write.
- [35:25]
Matthew Rimsky
As one scholar has described, the American Founding brought forth neither a procedural republic nor a democracy committed to neutrality toward competing conceptions of the good, but a constitutional republic dedicated to political liberty grounded in the laws of nature and nature's God. I would like some footnotes with definitions for all of the transcendental signifiers there.
- [35:50]
Derek Barris
There's a lot of footnotes, but I don't think they're going to explain their, their grammar or, or their sort of backhanded way that they use jargon because the density of right wing writing is often used to conceal more than it reveals at first. It's true that some colonialists were in search of freedom to practice forms of Christianity that were prohibited and persecuted in Europe. That said, there were no uniform origins of the founding. As Jacoby repeats throughout her book, throughout the colonies, varying degrees of religious freedom were practiced. That's why a framework was eventually created to protect diverse religious beliefs within what she argues was a secular government. Plus, a number of colonialists didn't care about religion much at all. They came for commercial ventures. The writers of this document give a head nod to plurality, but ultimately they frame America as Christian in intense. Perhaps more incredibly, they fail to bring up the atrocities of the faith, such as Franciscan missionaries condoning violence and coercion as the only viable method of bringing American natives under Christianity. Perhaps more laughably, they position Christianity only in a positive light when it comes to civic issues, they write, for nearly
- [37:09]
Julian Walker
all of American history, Christianity and religious conviction have inspired some of the most significant advances in civilization rights, from promoting the abolition of slavery, to expanding suffrage to women, to advocating for the equal treatment of racial minorities because they were created equal, even if the law failed to treat them as such.
- [37:27]
Matthew Rimsky
Can I just point out, as a Catholic, when you say Franciscan missionaries condone violence and coercion as the only viable method of bringing American natives under Christianity. I'm like, not the Franciscans. They're so nice. They have brown robes. They love the birds. Don't they do the swallows at Capistrano. And then I'm like, yeah, of all of those. All of those missions and orders have their issues and have their terrible histories.
- [37:55]
Derek Barris
I just learned about a new PBS documentary this morning which takes to task the idea that there's such a thing as Southern hospitality, and they're doing it by going to the antebellum houses that are tourist destinations. And actually, it's supposed to be a really psychological look into what the south represents. So I would imag. There's some similar dissonances to what you just express about the Franciscans.
- [38:24]
Julian Walker
Yeah.
- [38:25]
Derek Barris
Let's return to Jacobi, who points out that the expanding white Southern homogeneity and hegemony of faith is an.
- [38:33]
Julian Walker
In.
- [38:33]
Derek Barris
An infallible God led inevitably to a moral and utilitarian justification for slavery. She then quotes from journalist W.J. cash's the Mind of the south south, detailing what role Christianity played in the slave owning mindset.
- [38:50]
Matthew Rimsky
Every man was in his place because he had set him there. Everything was as it was because he had ordained it so, hence slavery. And indeed everything that was was his responsibility, not the South's. So far from being evil, it was the very essence of right. Wrong could consist only in rebellion against it.
- [39:16]
Derek Barris
I like your Southern accent, but Cash was actually a journalist. He wasn't promoting this.
- [39:21]
Matthew Rimsky
Oh, no, I was trying to bring out the capitals. Yeah, I wasn't trying to do South. No, no, no.
- [39:27]
Derek Barris
Okay, okay, okay. Good job on the capitals. Yeah, there's a lot of. A lot of. He's there now. Rewriting all of this material was not the best for Cash's mental. Mental health because he sadly committed suicide shortly after publishing this book. So the content might have affected that. Now, to return to the quote from this government document we're talking about today. They are right that the Declaration of Independence includes religious languages citing nature's God, a creator, and divine Providence. What it does not do is attribute those phrases to Christianity specifically. And it unsurprisingly fails to mention the influence of Enlightenment philosophy. The founders drew from Rousseau, Newton and Locke, while deists at the time argued that human experience and rationality determine the validity of human beliefs, not religious dogma. There was even a proto culture war going on during this time. Some scholars argue that the founders were religious rationalists or Unitarians, while evangelical writers claim Most held orthodox beliefs. Jacoby and others have noted that they were predominantly theistic rationalists. And as it turns out, there's no evidence that any Founding father claimed that they intended to create a Christian nation in any private correspondence or any other document. The Declaration's primary author, Thomas Jefferson, even published his own edited Bible in which he stripped away all of the miracles, the metaphysics, and the resurrection. Resurrection. Pretty sure most Christian nationalists today would call such a move blasphemous. But then again, they voted for Donald Trump, so who knows? Perhaps more importantly, the Constitution avoids any hint of Christian language and is deliberately secular in nature.
- [41:19]
Matthew Rimsky
So I just want to say, with Jefferson stripping out those quotes, I can just imagine. Has anybody, like, fact checked the Trump Bibles to see if he's inserted things like advertisements for stakes or things. Things like that, or like coupons for ties or.
- [41:32]
Julian Walker
The main difference here is that Jefferson actually read books and, and, and wrote a lot.
- [41:38]
Derek Barris
He edited it himself. Yes.
- [41:40]
Julian Walker
Yeah, yeah. He took out all the supernatural parts and said, what do we have left in this document?
- [41:46]
Derek Barris
Let's check in on the other quote that I mentioned earlier from this document, which actually tells us to forget about the founder's personal beliefs, because Christianity drift from all the founding laws.
- [41:59]
Matthew Rimsky
While the founders remarks on personal faith shed some light, their statements about the nature of American law and society and their decisions on how to structure American governmental systems are the clearest evidence available of what role they believed religion should play in government. In the public square. Christian beliefs and biblical texts pervaded America's colonial origins, provided justification for the American Revolution, and informed early state constitutions and rationales for passing the Bill of Rights. The relevant historical inquiry revolves less around the personal beliefs of the founders and framers, not about their denomination, creed, personal piety or level of devotion. It's great they're shifting the goalposts here, right? But instead around what they said about the nature of government and how they shaped contemporaneous local and state governments interactions with religious life. There is an unbroken history of official acknowledgement by all three branches of government of the role of religion in American life, life from at least 1789. As the Supreme Court described. We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a supreme being named Vishnu.
- [43:12]
Derek Barris
If you're going to create a document this long, I guess you're going to shift the goalposts a lot. And that's, that's the thing about all of this, is that they can just point to different sections when they want to make different arguments. I think that's part of the slipperiness of what they're doing.
- [43:25]
Matthew Rimsky
Yeah.
- [43:26]
Derek Barris
Focusing on policy instead of personal belief is a sound pivot, given what I said a few moments ago about those beliefs. But there's a problem here as well. The writer, writers loses focus and immediately pivots to the claim that Christian beliefs and biblical texts pervaded colonial origins and provided justification for the American Revolution. This is far beyond an institutional structure because it's discussing an intellectual history. But that's how this sort of propaganda works, Works. Let me say something seemingly reasonable and then immediately muddy the waters. And again, we run into the pluralism problem as they would never invoke the influences of Enlightenment thinkers. Also, again, the document treats the founders as a sort of monolithic group when, for example, Madison and Henry disagreed about whether Virginia should fund Christian ministers, and Jefferson and Adams expressed profoundly different views on their relationship of Christianity to Republican government. Our last piece here on that long quote that Matthew read. But we have to discuss the two Supreme Court quotations that they use. And one thing I noticed throughout this document is this weird selective reasoning. So just as one example, one of the top key findings. This is at the very beginning, page one and two of this entire document was this.
- [44:45]
Julian Walker
The Biden Department of Education focused its enforcement actions against Christian universities, levying enormous fines that dwarfed the penalties for Larry Nassar's and Jerry Sandusky's sexual assaults.
- [44:59]
Derek Barris
I mean, the vibe shift tracks when you consider these people are actually arguing for Christianity being the reason for advances in civil rights. But that was such a egregious use of what about ism? Like, I'm going to bring up this college sex scandal and compare it to Biden's Department of Education.
- [45:17]
Julian Walker
It's so woke. It's so woke.
- [45:18]
Matthew Rimsky
Well, what they're saying is, I mean, concealed in there is, is that the Biden administration didn't prosecute Epstein. Right. What they concentrated on was persecuting Christians. And so, you know, bringing up Larry Nassar and Jerry Sandusky, even though they're sort of a separate, you know, realm of criminality. I think that's what they're trying to point to. It's like, it's like the Biden department wanted to prosecute Christians and they wanted to let the pedophiles free, like Trump, I guess.
- [45:45]
Julian Walker
Yes, Matthew, but, but they're also saying these, these, these unjust actions against Christian universities have not been held up as being as important as these sexual assaults. That, that somehow. So they're, they're, they're, they're simultaneously minimizing the horrific sexual assaults of these two predators while comparing them to some supposed persecution against Christian universities that no one has been held accountable for. 4. Right, right.
- [46:18]
Derek Barris
So they quote two Supreme Court cases, as I said. So the first is lynch versus Donnelly, and that's the unbroken history quote that Matthew read a moment ago. And that came from a 5, 4 decision about a nativity scene.
- [46:32]
Matthew Rimsky
Right? Yeah.
- [46:33]
Derek Barris
So, right. They're arguing that Christianity is baked into America's founding by looking at a nativity scene. Treating the majority's framing and in a closely divided ceremonial display case as settled historical facts overstates the authority of the court and its Christian influence.
- [46:50]
Matthew Rimsky
You know, and it's so incredible. I mean, I don't know where the nativity scene was, but, you know that this was a very small court case in some little town somewhere in the Midwest where somebody wanted to put up a nativity scene and then, you know, wanted to sort of, I don't know, breach the establishment clause with it in some way, and then it goes all the way up to the Supreme Court and then it winds up in this document.
- [47:14]
Julian Walker
I bet it was on federal property, right? Or some.
- [47:17]
Matthew Rimsky
Probably right.
- [47:18]
Derek Barris
And it was in Rhode Island.
- [47:20]
Julian Walker
Yeah.
- [47:20]
Matthew Rimsky
Okay. All right. But it's like. It's like, man, you have these little town church mom disputes that end up writing policies or informing policy in the White House. Right, Exactly.
- [47:34]
Derek Barris
It was actually the lead defendant was the mayor of Pawtucket, Rhode Island.
- [47:38]
Matthew Rimsky
Yeah, so.
- [47:40]
Derek Barris
So there was some government intervention interference going on in that case.
- [47:44]
Matthew Rimsky
Is that where the groundhog is?
- [47:45]
Derek Barris
No, that's Patocky. That's in Pennsylvania. That I know. Patoxy Phil. Oh, God. I'm gonna get comments from readers or listeners on this one, but yeah, you are right. Okay, the second quote, the we are a religious people people. Right. That comes from Zorak vs Clawson, which was a 1952 case that ruled that students are allowed to leave public school for part of the day to receive religious instruction. Right. So if they're in a public school, they want to leave, they want to go to church, whatever, they can come back that could be part of their education. That's what the court decided. Now, there was a dissent by Justice Black, and he pointed out that because 18th century Americans were a religious people divided into mass many competing fighting sects, they were given a constitutional mandate to keep church and state completely separate. Ironically, the same historical premise that Americans are deeply religious was used by dissenters in the same case to argue for strict separation. So this document that we're covering today uses the majority's version without acknowledging the dissent's competing use of the same history, which again is just really representing a diversity of thought being compressed into one activist narrative. Gonna wind it down with one more quote from Jacoby in Free Thinkers.
- [49:10]
Julian Walker
What the many types of freethinkers shared, regardless of their views on the existence or non existence of a divinity, was a rationalist approach to fundamental questions of earthly existence. A conviction that the affairs of human beings should be governed not by faith in the supernatural, but by a reliance on reason and ev adduced from the natural world.
- [49:31]
Derek Barris
Something the writers of this propaganda would never consider. But I couldn't have said it better myself.
- [49:36]
Matthew Rimsky
Okay, so I have a question for my American Atheist colleagues. I know and respect. I understand the establishment clause arguments. I find that all of the reasoning that comes down through these court cases is very interesting. And it's all attempting to tell people that they really have two different types of life, right? They have a civic life and they have a religious life. And really the most you can do or what you really want to do is to try to keep those separate. And I'm wondering just how provocative that is. Down through the ages to the religious psychology, it seems like these battles will never, ever resolve and that as soon as you tell a particular type of religious person, you know, hey, once you cross over onto federal property, you know, you can't bring your ten Commandments and, you know, make a display or something like that, they're going to feel as though you are asking them to, I don't know, split themselves apart from the most important part of their. Of their lives. And yeah, I just wonder what you think about. It feels like it's a necessary, noble, valid attempt at something that also really pushes against something very fundamental that human beings try to do, which is they try to bring the parts of their lives together.
- [51:02]
Julian Walker
As someone who didn't grow up here, I don't know, I mean, ultimately I feel like the attempt to separate those things is a way of protecting minority groups from having religion imposed upon them.
- [51:14]
Matthew Rimsky
Yeah, right. And that's why it's total, absolutely necessary. Because we see what happens when that's not there. At the same time, it's like, wow, is anybody going to come to sort of any kind of acceptance about that?
- [51:29]
Derek Barris
I think it'll be very difficult. And I'm a listener on our Patreon had recommended, after listening to one of my briefs or bonuses, a book by Luke Kemp called Goliath's Curse. And I'm almost done with it, it is a fantastic, one of the best anthropological books I've ever read. Very much in the, in the vein of a David Graeber and even contesting Jared diamond in a lot of ways in terms of his understanding of how societies form and culture collapse, which is the focus because he took a much broader data set than, than diamond did. Although he, he does respect Diamond's work. And I, I bring that up because what he points out is that anytime societies start to scale you're going to start to have separation of classes. He actually this was something that might interest you, Matthew. He, he points to these sort of foundations of capital capitalism 7,000 years ago and shows that as soon as you start to scale societies you have all the fundamentals of what would eventually become that capitalist system inherent within the economies that happened. Now I'm extrapolating from, from that to say when you try to bring people together under with religious or spiritual beliefs, you're going to get the same sort of friction that's going to happen. You're going to start and he points out like what happens when leaders start assuming the role of ideas, a godhead for example, and then starts to separate. And this is represented in the physical structures that happen in these, in these valleys where people start living on higher land than others. And so all that is to say that when you have large groups of people, my belief, and this is even more strengthened after Kemp's work, is that the best you can do is create a diversity of options for people, people so that they can feel free within that society. And as soon as you start to impose any sort of thing that can be, you know, seen as authoritarian in any way, whether that's an economy or religious belief, there's going to be tension and friction that exists from people who don't agree with that particular way of being. So America at its founding is an attempt to correct some of those long standing wrongs. Just as is, as I've always argued with media. The New York Times was an attempt to try to have some objection when it comes to investigation of culture and society and reporting. And I don't personally think any, it's ever going to be perfect, but we can keep trying. But that's gonna, that's gonna rely on not having those 10 Commandments in, in federal property because you're alienating people who don't see the, the same reality that you do.
- [54:18]
Julian Walker
Well, this is America, so they should love it or leave it. But speaking of, of corruption and capitalism and abuses of power, news broke yesterday, which for listeners will be Monday, before this episode comes out, that a new, what is being called a slush fund by many people was announced. And this was announced as part of a settlement involving Trump's dispute with the. With the irs because they. They released his tax returns. It's so crazy, but it is in the amount of 1776, so. 1776. $1,700,000,076.
- [54:56]
Matthew Rimsky
What? They just. They just created it? They just chose a symbolic number?
- [55:00]
Julian Walker
Yep. They chose a symbolic number for a huge amount of money that now represents a fund that people can make applications to receive remunerations from if they allege that they were victims of weaponization under the Biden doj. And that's going to include people who. Who have grievances based on this document, as well as potentially January six people.
- [55:21]
Derek Barris
And Trump himself will get no money from it, but is going to get a formal apology from the government that he fucking runs.
- [55:29]
Matthew Rimsky
Does he just stand in the mirror and just say sorry?
- [55:33]
Derek Barris
I don't think that word comes out of his mouth.
- [55:35]
Julian Walker
I want it from Obama. Obama has to give it to me. And Doug. There's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with. With Liberty Mutual, even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show. Hey, everyone.
- [56:09]
Derek Barris
Check out this guy and his bird.
- [56:10]
Julian Walker
What is this, your first date? Oh, no. We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together. We're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.
- [56:18]
Derek Barris
Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.
- [56:20]
Julian Walker
Anyways, get a quote@libertymutual.com or with your local agent. Liberty, Liberty, Liberty, Liberty.