by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist
Mike Flynn, a convicted felon who is also a retired Army general and Trump's former National Security Advisor, is currently traveling across the country as a part of the "Reawaken America" tour, an traveling assemblage of right-wing nut jobs airing views on a variety of topics. Yesterday in San Antonio Flynn made a statement that posed a direct challenge to the First Amendment and came across as bizarre, even for a guy who recently worried aloud that COVID-19 vaccines are possibly being added to salad dressing. Flynnn told his audience:
"If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion. One nation under God, and one religion under God."
One country and one religion. I think we can all agree that Flynn is not talking about a Jewish nation, or a Muslim nation, or a Hindu nation. In fact, the old criminal is proposing a Christian nation - and not just any Christian nation, such one that might tolerate Christians with liberal points-of-view, but a Christian nation steeped in right-wing, fundamentalist and authoritarian ideology.
How convenient would that be? We could hear the same government-approved sermons, cheerfully pay government-mandated tithes, and fill our schools with books from the government/church approved reading lists. We could even vote in the churches where church employees could check our ballots to insure that they had been marked in a godly manner.
Flynn is an old military man who likes the notion of discipline and order, especially if he is in the cohort that is imposing the discipline and giving the orders. A strong central church would add to the ability of our "leaders" to impose structure over a divergent society. Laws could be written and enforced with the authority of the state as well as the implicit backing of God. A challenge to the state is one thing, but to openly defy God is quite another!
Conflating politics and religion - more than they already are conflated - would strengthen the control that the nation has over its citizens, and that is something that authoritarians like Mike Flynn lust for. Our Founding Fathers recognized the dangers of a state religion, and that is why they addressed it in the First Amendment to the US Constitution. The United States was to be a nation of independent thinkers - and not a gigantic sheep pen!
The right to worship as we please is a cornerstone to our freedoms as Americans. The fact that Mike Flynn and people like him either do not recognize that right, or choose to ignore it, poses a serious threat to our basic freedoms.
1 comment:
And the largely unspoken irony of this nonsense is that Flynn, the #Demongelicals on that stage, and in that crowd quit worshipping Jesus Christ at least five years ago.
These idolaters bend knee and adore Donald J. Trump. Definitely not a religion I will ever join, even on pain of death.
Meanwhile in many real Christian churches the faithful heard this passage from the Gospel of Mark 13: 5-6: Beware that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray.
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