{"id":32379,"date":"2021-09-16T12:21:45","date_gmt":"2021-09-16T17:21:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=32379"},"modified":"2021-09-16T13:28:41","modified_gmt":"2021-09-16T18:28:41","slug":"society-of-charletons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=32379","title":{"rendered":"Society of Charletons"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I mentioned the book Jesus and John Wayne by evangelical truth teller Kristin Kobes Du Mez both on the blog, <a href=\"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=32178\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=32225\">here<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=32233\">here<\/a>, and in one of my <a href=\"https:\/\/duluthreader.com\/articles\/2021\/08\/05\/119002-the-tucker-carlson-fan-club\">Not Eudora columns<\/a> recently.<\/p>\n<p>Last night and this morning I closed in on finishing the book. I&#8217;m 16 pages away but this morning I had to stop before finishing the second to last chapter. It details all the news stories I&#8217;ve heard of cultic Christian Republican ministers who have raped, seduced and betrayed women repeatedly and been outed in the news only to be re-welcomed back into God&#8217;s grace by their fellow rapist religious allies in the Trump orbit.<\/p>\n<p>I had to stop reading but I faithfully used my yellow marker, as I had throughout the entire book, to keep track of the betrayal of the Christian message delivered in the Sermon on the Mount. I was too appalled to continue. I went down to chat with my better half about it and she confirmed the entire book was filled with such vile information that she could only read a chapter a day and keep her sanity.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a page I marked up near the end before that chat.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/51484424309_25ee5c9b32_z.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>It has been a challenge to be judged unfit as a Republican by the people who have taken over the party of Lincoln, the party of my Grandfather, and the party of my father. Even as I joined it as a bit of a contrarian it was being blamed for Richard Nixon&#8217;s excesses. I&#8217;ll give the outlines of just one local example of the people in the party back in the 1980&#8217;s as I struggled with my continuance as a Republican.<\/p>\n<p>This fellow was a minister of a &#8220;conservative&#8221; church. I would see him and his wife all the time for years after I stepped away from the party at the Duluth Symphony where my wife also attended regularly. <\/p>\n<p>He was far right like Rush Limbaugh while the radio &#8220;comic&#8221; denounced and harassed people like me as RINOs to chase us out of the Republican congregation. My first public declaration of independence came when I gave a speech saying if the Party wasn&#8217;t careful it would fall into the hands of people like, and I named him, Donald Trump. <strong><em>That was 1992!<\/em><\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.snowbizz.com\/HWRepublican\/200boos.htm\">Its here <\/a>and you can skip to the 3rd to the last paragraph to find Trump. <\/p>\n<p>A friend of mine told me about this minister. He was a controlling man who ordered his deacons to change the church&#8217;s rules so that he alone, the preacher, could make all decision regarding the church. Why not? He was the preacher with God&#8217;s word on his lips. They did what he said as faithful, credulous, God fearing men.<\/p>\n<p>After the change and a few departures of the less Godly members this all powerful minister was attracted to a woman in his church and made a serious sexual advance towards her. She rebuffed him. Either angered or fearful of being exposed he took the next Sunday&#8217;s sermon to denounce his congregant by name for flagrantly attempting to seduce him. <\/p>\n<p>A short time later the husband of the shamed woman was found after he had hung himself.<\/p>\n<p>These stories from Du Mez are about the contaminate the entire Republican Religious community. Is it any wonder they love and worship Donald Trump?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I mentioned the book Jesus and John Wayne by evangelical truth teller Kristin Kobes Du Mez both on the blog, here and here, and&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32379"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32379"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32394,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32379\/revisions\/32394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}