Showing posts with label Christian Nationalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christian Nationalism. Show all posts
Sunday, July 19, 2026
Monday, June 8, 2026
Lex Anteinternet: Sunday Morning Scene. Religion in the military. The back currents of religion in the Trump administration and the New Apostolic Reformation.
Lex Anteinternet: Sunday Morning Scene. Religion in the military.: The Department of Defense scaled back its list of recognized religions. There were 211, now there are 31. Here is the full list: Agnostic...
So, in our last installment of this, we sort of defended Pete Hegseth's Department of Defense. But we have to ask, is there more to this story?
Probably not. The classification is correct. Mormons are in fact not Christians in the fashion that Christians would define the faith. Mormons of course disagree, which is there right.
And some feel that more is going on.
Under new military guidance from Pete Hegseth, the LDS Church is officially classified as a non-Christian religion. My fellow Saints, you can love these Christian nationalists all you want, but they will not love you back.
"Dem Saints" is a really good and irreverent group made up of Mormon Democrats.
Yes, there are Mormon Democrats.
Branding their irreverence is the use of the "Dem Saints" name, which is really borrowing from Louisiana Catholics, whom minstrels' lampooned with the line "Who dat, who dat, who dat say dey gonna beat dem Saints?" In the second half of the 20th Century it got picked up as a line boosting the New Orleans Saints football club.
That there are Democratic Mormons shouldn't be surprising. In most regions of the country they are actually a little known faith, but where they are strongly represented they are in all walks of life and all stations of education. Most Mormons are fairly conservative of a rule, but in no way shape or form does that mean they're all part of the far right. "Dem Saints" are probably what used to be regarded as middle of the road Republicans in the West. Of those I know fairly well, all are in the GOP but none of them are in the far right.
Dem Saints aren't the only ones taking note of this. Deseret Mike Lee, whose radical right wing political positions are highly informed by his being a devout Mormon is absolutely freaking out, noting:
I’m a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints My church membership is inextricably intertwined with my Christianity, as it is for 17 million other Latter-day Saints Regardless of what the Pentagon thinks
Lee has absolutely hitched his wagon to Donald Trump. I've written about him here before, but his views are radially different than Dem Saints, and probably for the most part radically different in terms of religious views. We've discussed Mike Lee in that context before, and won't replough that ground, but a good guess is that Lee, like Mike Johnson and Pete Hegseth, is highly informed and often extremely motivated by a unique religious view of the United States and its mission, as he conceives of it. He'd fit into a minority group of Mormon's in that sense, just as Hegseth and Johnson do as to Christians. The difference here is that his view, if I'm correct, and I may not be, would be vastly different than the overwhelming majority of Americans, and probably the majority of Mormons.
Hegseth in particular has been the public face of the New Apostolic Reformation and there's no place for Mormons in it. For that matter, there's no place for Catholics or Orthodox in it either.
The question is whether Deseret Mike is too besotted with Trump to realize that. Based on his surprise to this reclassification, which likely isn't motivated by people like Hegseth viewing Mormons as really not counting, it would appear so.
Lee just totally freaked out and posted over 37 time over 24 hours on Twitter. Eventually he got an audience with Trump on the telephone, and reported back.
I just got off the phone with President Trump We discussed the Pentagon’s “Christian list” I won’t speak for him, but I’m thrilled about where this is heading We’re most fortunate that President Trump (1) loves Latter-day Saints, and (2) is our commander in chief Stay tuned
Based on that, Trump will probably issue some babbling change to the list, but the wake up call should already be there.
Trump isn't a religious man. Trump loves himself and at this point Mormon's don't really matter to him most likely. He shouldn't presume that Trump "loves Latter-day Saints" or members of any other religion. And we're not fortunate that he's the commander in chief. If he's going to order the list changed, it's to gain a little support from a group right now that's likely shocked, and frankly to address a situation in a state, Utah, that has shown a surprising willingness at the grass roots level to rebel.
But now Lee is out there. If his shameless sycophantly doesn't pay off, it's a lesson for people who think that Trump is carrying water for you. He isn't, you are carrying water for him.
And in terms of the back channels in the administration, it's the view of Doug Wilson on what sort of religion the Latter Day Saints is that may matter more than what Trump thinks, who doesn't really have any deep thoughts about religion at all.
Wednesday, February 18, 2026
CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 119th Edition. Comments on Culture. A Galwaywoman's comment on men and women, Rubio's comments on Western Civilization, and Hegseth hosts a Christian Nationalist.
A series of posts on viewpoints that aren't related. . . well maybe there are.
The first one is from Chloe Winter's vlog, which is one of the agricultural ones that we link in here. Ms. Winter is a married Galway greenhouse farmer (that's how I'd put it) in her very early 20s (maybe actually 20) who took up greenhouse farming when a close friend of hers died. Galway is very rural Ireland and Galwegians are very rural Irish. I've actually heard them referred to as "Bog Irish" by other Irish. The county is one of the few areas of Ireland where there are bonafide Irish Gaelic speakers and it has its own accent, which Ms. Winter very thickly has.
This entry was surprising, in a way in that its very anti first wave feminist, but in a really genuine way. It may actually be fourth wave feminist. If released in the US (I believe most of Ms. Winter's followers are Irish), it'd create some sort of firestorm in some social medial communities.
Having said that, she isn't wrong.
And her vocabulary and manner of speech is delightfully Irish.
This flat out puts Rubio in the National Conservative movement and is their thesis to the core. It doesn't say anything, you'll note, about religion at all, it's all about culture. You can perhaps read more into that if you want, any many would, but this is pretty much the Dinneen/Dreher/Reno thesis.
Two different right wing cultural views emerged from Trump servants so far this week. What's interesting in part about them is that many commentators aren't able to realize that they actually express radically different world views, which shows how poorly people are informed and educated in some things.
The State Department, which still calls itself the Department of State, posted a photo of Marco Rubio with this entry, summing up his recent deliveries to European figures:
You can pretty much rest assured that its not the Trump thesis. Trump just isn't smart enough or interested enough to grasp something like this at all.
Rubio has endorsed Vance for 2028, but it's probably an endorsement of convenience. By doing this, Rubio has raised his flag in the National Conservative camp. This, moreover, may actually be what Rubio believes.
Rubio is drawing a lot of attention, and getting a lot of excitement, in Reaganite and other genuinely conservative camps. He's not a populist. The big question is whether he can overcome the stench of having been associated with Trump. A secondary question is whether contemporary American culture, less than half of which is all that conservative, sees itself in this fashion very deeply.
In contrast is Pete Hegseth, who will never overcome the stench of Trump.
The Department of Defense posted this item about its activities this past week:
We have gathered at the Pentagon for our monthly worship service.
We are One Nation Under God.
First of all, the Department of Defense has no business whatsoever having monthly prayer meetings. The United States may be One Nation, Under God, but this basically is a forced acknowledgement of a certain type of Christianity, that being a minority branch of it by far, over every other religion. Yes, I'm a Christian, and a member of the original Christian faith, but not every soldier is, and no doubt there are soldiers who have no religion at all.
Moreover, this is Doug Wilson, who appeared here in an earlier discussion. He's a Calvinist who holds really extreme views. You can be rest assured that considerably less than half of the American population wants a Puritan Calvinist regime in the U.S. Indeed, a couple of people responded to this Twitter post with:
Christopher Hale@ChristopherHale 13hDoug Wilson routinely mocks the pope and the Catholic Church.It’s beyond shameful that @PeteHegseth allowed him to lead taxpayer-funded anti-Catholic worship services.
Hale a Democratic Catholic blogger who has a pretty good blog dedicated to Pope Leo that you can also find on our blog lists. He served in a prior Democratic administration and I'm still waiting for him to explain how an insider Democrat reconciled that with the Democratic Party's support of abortion. That's an side, but that issue is one of the ones that keeps people like me from being Democrats, even though we aren't voting for very many Republicans any more.
Jim Stewartson, Decelerationist 🇨🇦🇺🇦🇺🇸@jimstewartson 13hListen. Doug Wilson is one of the most disgusting revanchist monsters on Earth. He doesn’t think women should vote, wants slavery back, and believes the U.S. should be a theonomy—Government by God. He runs a cult in Moscow, ID.This is wildly unconstitutional & deeply immoral.
I don't know who Stewartson is, but describing Wilson as a revanchist is correct. Monster might be a bit much, but he doesn't think women should vote and does think that the U.S. should be a Calvinist theocracy. I don't know what he thinks about slavery and I'm not going to look it up, but Wilson is articulate and extreme.
And that's why Hegseth's actions here are really disturbing. Rubio is trying to stake a claim for Western Civilization as special, something the National Conservatives hold and which a lot of people disagree with. Hegseth is here advancing Christian Nationalism of a type that holds a very peculiar view on the United States' place in the world.
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