How (And Why) The Right Stole Christianity – SOME MORE NEWS

Executive Producer - Katy Stoll
Hosted by Cody Johnston
Directed by Will Gordh
Written by Erik Barnes
Edited by John Conway
Produced by Jonathan Harris
Associate Producer - Quincy Tucker
Post-Production Supervisor - John Conway
Researcher - Marco Siler-Gonzales
Graphics by Clint DeNisco
Head Writer - David Christopher Bell

Follow us on social media:

Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
03:18 – Why People Are Leaving The Church
07:50 – Does "He Get Us"?
11:57 - Christian Nationalism
17:42 - Segregation and the Religious Right
22:53 - Evangelicals Get Involved In Politics
26:04 - The Right Discovers Abortion
29:20 - Bedtime For Bonzo
38:42 - Bible Study
47:50 - Being Leftist and Christian?

[cherrypopscile]

There's something insanely funny to me about the trump worship.

Like, when I was a Christian years ago, I was told "The Anti Christ" would pretend to be the savior, prophet, and Christ reborn while being worshipped by people who were deceived.

That legit sounds like trump.

[eddieford]

Fun fact about Bob Jones University: When Bob Jones Sr. was asked if students would ever be allowed to kiss on campus, he said, "Over my dead body!" He is now burried on campus, and yes, students have made out over his dead body.

[christophermcknight]

I grew up in the evangelical church, and vividly remember the beginning of my deconstruction: our head pastor took a sabbatical for the summer. Our church prided itself on diversity, and was motivated by mending racial relationships in the church. Our head pastor decided to bring in guest pastors from various all black churches in the area to fill his spots while he was away.

On his first Sunday back, he started off his sermon with a massive stack of prayer cards (little notes people can fill out and drop in the offering bucket) and began reading them. All of them were some variation of " shouldn't preach." He was quick to admonish, shame, and tell anyone in the congregation to leave immediately if they felt this way, but they had no way of proving who wrote what.

It didnt matter what my pastor felt, our even how the staff felt. The fact that my church, one that prided itself on social progress had such a large, rotten and disgusting group of people who would write such things instantly turned me away from church and ministry altogether. If the "fruit" of believers indicates their faith, how can I still believe when most of the fruit is rotten?

[bradiedean]

Absolutely infuriating that the same people who kept telling me that a rich man will never enter the kingdom of heaven are now treating the archerypal rich guy constantly bashed in the new testament as gods gift to America

[livesofthefreemasons]

Still looking for the Bible verse that says, “Only help people if you personally deem them worthy of it”.

[wineoneone]

Oh my god it finally happened.

Hi! I'm a survey researcher on religion. You actually cite stuff I worked on/wrote.... that's wild. Just wanted to let you know that cellphone data report is pretty laughed at by a lot of scholars in the field. The methods are pretty wonky and don't consider a lot of additional situations. It's also based mostly on 2019 GPS data. Very scary concept though!

anyway, love your stuff and if you ever have questions about reading survey stuff, lmk.

[ImTopin]

One of the last things I said to my right leaning hardcore Christian sister before we were officially estranged was "I don't know if I believe in God, but I know I don't believe in yours."

[Mae_forrest]

I am a Christian theologian, and a leftist. It was the Bible that got me to be as progressive as I am, and it is faith that keeps me going. It is beyond horrifying to see the words and energy of my religion being used to prop up a fool's gold idol like Trump, and it is honestly sickening how people I once respected now support these horrible things. I'm part of a progressive church, and even though I'm transgender, i've received nothing but welcoming support. The good ones are out there, but they also share your sentiment that our society can still do good things without the religious part animating it.
In any case, this is a very good video, and well argued. Religion is a difficult issue to tackle, and the American Right Wing is beyond evil. It's good to see people fighting against it.

[nico]

It's a sad state of affairs that so much of American Christianity can be summed up with "There's no hate like Chrisian love."

[vincentmatamoros]

The last time I went into a church was around a year ago for mothers day with my grandma. I haven't believed since I was like 10 so I usually avoid churches like the plague. Thankfully, I didn't burst into flames upon crossing the threshold, but the entire sermon still haunts me. They kept talking about the hate and mass shootings and generic bad stuff going on (FYI my grandma had just experienced a walmart shooting like a week before) and at the end the pastor just goes "but it's okay, because Jesus will raise his faithful to join him in heaven and leave the earth behind to burn with the sinners" like they're solution to every possible thing is just to wait for God to fix everything and everyone who doesn't go to church regularly will burn. I cannot express how fucking baffled I was, trying to keep a straight face while I was internally screaming. No wonder younger folks leave the faith in droves.

[TFCrunchyFrog]

The funny thing re: Catholic Church's stance on abortion is, the famous medieval German abbess Hildegard von Bingen, theologist, medical doctor and mystic, _who was beatified and later canonized by the Catholic Church, _ was among other things famous for her medical skills and wrote detailed herbals with illustrations (which are still in print today). Her herbals contain multiple entries for plants who can be used for abortions, with detailed instructions and wanrings how to use them without poisoning the pregnant woman. Medieval nuns knew a lot about abortions... three guesses why.

[MaddieS]

My mother is an Orthodox Christian, and it terrifies her to see the amount of evangelicals who are weaponizing Christianity for hatred and turning away from the actual teachings of Jesus because "they're too weak"

[kevinw]

I recall seeing a tweet several months ago from a more progressive minded christian pastor, he was talking about how some of the much more conservative members of his congregation angrily approached him after one of the sermons going "so where'd you get all the liberal talking points?", and what they were referring to it turns out he was literally just quoting some scripture as is from the bible.

[Lucas-tojc]

Unfortunately, that's not just on USA. Here in Brazil we recently had ex-president Jair Bolsonaro become almost a religious figure in evangelical spaces. Some meetings would just spend all the time discussing politics. It got to the point where people were posting stuff like "Bolsonaro is my Messiah" and comparing him to Jesus. Really scary.

[floataway]

I grew up in a pretty progressive church, and while I stopped believing around 20 or so, kept going from time to time when I was back home for my family's sake. Our choir director had just come out as trans and some of the elders in the congregation were throwing a fit. My pastor just very calmly got up there in front of every one, said "All are welcome in God's house." And then stared at some of the more outspoken members, before continuing on with the service. That is to say, church was always a community more than a religion to me, and that community is what gets destroyed when people try to co opt the message to spread hate.

[corvus]

I am a liberal and I am also a Christian. When I started to take my faith a bit more seriously and began to grow in it I started evaluating the world around me and started noticing things I, for some reason, never noticed before. Those things tended to be that almost without fail, everything conservatives believe in is antithetical to Christ’s message. To this day I don’t really understand how people who claim to be Christians AND conservatives can reconcile the fact those two belief systems are in opposition. Christ says to take care of the poor, the sick, to love, especially your enemies, not to judge, to reject the pursuit of wealth, to welcome refugees, to be of service in whatever way you can etc…. basically all of those things conservatives actively hate or at best, ignore. It just didn’t make sense to me, and then I realized they don’t actually believe in the same Jesus I believe in, they have formed some sort of opposite Jesus and worship him. That was before Trump, now that Trump is around I seriously think he is their god, their plump golden idol. If the real Jesus were to appear to them and point out this dissonance, I’m pretty sure they would call him a communist terrorist and throw him in jail. I fear them and yet I fear for them too.

[scottbrayton]

"Saying "jesus fucking christ" isn't taking the lords name in vain, starting a hateful and bigoted war against minorities in his name is taking the lords name in vain" ~ Cj the X

[thehypoxic.]

I UNZIP THE TROUSERS OF THE NEWS AND AWAIT A FULL LOAD OF INFORMATION!

[TomSka]

You've got a dead pixel in your sensor (stage right of Cody's mouth) that I can't look away from. Begging you to apply a slight blur on that specific area in the grade.

[dena]

As someone who went to Catholic School from k-8 and Islamic School... I missed the class on 'Let's just hate that one person that we don't like' in both schools.