As someone who grew up as what the New York Times called, “Religious Royalty,” I know something about religion.
I fled the evangelical movement. I fled the ugliness of the religious right. I’m a progressive activist, artist, and writer these days.
When Amy Coney Barrett was appointed to the Supreme Court by Donald Trump, what people overlooked, was not her Roman Catholic upbringing, but the fact that she is part of a cult called, “People of Praise.”
What no-one foresaw, and what is being lost in the news of the pandemic, Trump refusing to leave office, and all the rest of it, is a major story that broke when Amy Coney Barrett was the tipping point vote in the Supreme Court which just ruled in favor of religious organizations and churches being exempt in the state of New York –and of course the whole country in the precedent that this sets– from health regulations having to do with the COVID Epidemic.
This is a huge event. It means that Amy Coney Barrett and the conservative majority on the Supreme Court have now openly declared that Americans play by one set of rules, and religious Americans play by another set of rules.
This means that religious organizations and churches don’t have to have the compassion, the empathy, the public spiritedness, and the patriotism of ordinary Americans.
Religious organizations are now allowed to meet and endanger the health of you and me and everyone around them by becoming super spreaders and breeders of disease in this pandemic, and the next, and the next.
While those of us who are ordinary, patriotic Americans play by one set of rules, Amy Coney Barrett and the other religious fanatics on the Supreme Court have decided that “religious liberty” and “religious freedom” means that religious organizations don’t have the civic responsibility that you and me do.
They are laying the groundwork for a theocracy in this country where religious organizations can exempt themselves.
In the name of religious civil liberties, I warn you; I tell you I see this coming; a First-Class Citizenship is going to be bestowed on religious people and organizations that other Americans are bereft of.
This is a disaster.
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Here I was afraid Islam would gain ground and we’d all be living under Sharia law if we weren’t careful. How could I possibly express how much I despise religion.
Important freedoms are being lost for women, LGBTQ and society overall to religious cults. Women and children will suffer terribly. And especially people of color.
What would we do without your insight and talent Mr. Schaeffer? Thank you for sharing your gifts with us.
Four out of the five justices were men, Frank. Was it latent misogyny or just plain political prurience that moved you to literally focus on Justice Barrett? And “spread disease?” How Freudian a headline. Please get help, Frank . . . or at least give yourself a Christmas break.
It is such an utter travesty that the Christian church is taking such a beating because of Right wing politics. Julia, I am a Christian and Christianity is not something you should despise. What Jesus taught is not being followed by the right wing politicians we see in politics. The left isn’t always correct either, but the shame of the right wing is that they pretend and they actually believe, they are following Jesus. I have studied the Bible. I have read the New Testament about a hundred times and the Old Testament many times. Right wing politics is not representing what Jesus taught us. They are often representing the exact opposite of what Jesus taught us.