Episode 73
Hey Jerry Falwell! You got your religion in our politics! Hey, your politics embraced our religion! And since they play prominently in tonight's discussion, here's a little mid-80s bumper sticker wisdom: The Moral Majority literally wasn't either.
I'm Spider...
And tonight we are talking about how evangelical faith and the Republican parties found themselves joined together in the bonds of unholy wedlock. It should be a more complicated story than it is, but it just goes to prove how hopelessly impressionable, gullible, and easy to persuade the average evangelical is. This unholy alliance is a lot newer than many evangelicals are taught to think it is.
But first...
I'm leading our Christians behaving badly segment this week with a disclaimer. What you are about to hear is so silly, so foolhardy, so fundamentally toddler-esque and wildly insulting to anything that even closely resembles intelligence, I feel it's only fair to warn you: laughing here is mandaory. If you don't, you'll just scream. Choose wisely. I give you: Pesudo Science Theater 2021 – Anti-Vaxx Edition
[CBB]
So how did evangelicals and Republicans forge this unholy, unpatriotic, and hopelessly toxic relationship they have?
My comments tonight come from the details in an entry on encyclopedia.com about The Moral Majority.
Source: https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/united-states-and-canada/us-history/moral-majority
To begin, it's important to note that protestantism (of which evangelicalism is part) has, in some ways, contributed positively to American society and culture. Take, for example, the contrast between the views of the average protestant and the Catholic Church when it comes to the Bible. Over time, things have changed a little but many Catholics have been brought up to believe that the Bible is only open to clerical interpretation. Reading it isn't necessary. We'll read the most relevant parts to you during the mass.
Protestants, on the other hand, have always believed that the Bible is up for individual interpretation and have also championed and facilitated literacy through a number of programs and channels over the years and expanding literacy is always a societal positive, regardless of the motivation. But there's a problem when you don't contain interpretation of the Bible to a specific person or group of people and that problem is simple: people start thinking for themselves. They develop varying interpretations and draw their own conclusions. This is where splits and the establishment of various denominations comes into play. Early on in its history, Christianity began taking on scores of unique faces and evangelicalism eventually became one of them.
Evangelicalism would start taking on many forms in and of itself beginning in the latter half of the 19th century. From the Baptists to Four-Square Gospel, to Pentecostal Holiness to the Assemblies of God, there were, and are, wildly different interpretations of various parts of the Bible even among Christians who identify as Evangelical.
“Those who would eventually be identified as evangelicals combined a strong Christian witness with belief in the authority of the Bible, the substitutionary atonement of Christ for the sins of the world, Biblical miracles, and orthodox Christian doctrines such as those that were articulated in the Apostles' or Nicene Creeds. These groups included the charismatic, holiness, and other traditions, many associated with African-Americans, which continue to provide considerable theological diversity.”
The spread of religious ideology has looked the same in America since even before to official establishment of the colonies. And one time period illustrates this idea better than any other: the time of The Great Awakenings.
The Great Awakening was a religious revival that impacted the English colonies in America during the 1730s and 1740s. The movement came at a time when the idea of secular rationalism was being emphasized, and passion for religion had grown stale. Christian leaders often traveled from town to town, preaching about the gospel, emphasizing salvation from sins and promoting enthusiasm for Christianity. The result was a renewed dedication toward religion. Many historians believe the Great Awakening had a lasting impact on various Christian denominations and American culture at large.
Source: https://www.history.com/topics/british-history/great-awakening
Oddly enough, evangelicals' influence during the Great Awakenings, led to a few crucial social reforms, some good, some not so much. I'm not giving them credit or placing blame, just stating that they influenced thought (and in some cases influenced law and policy in the following areas and more:
Abolitionism
Opposition to mail deliveries on Sundays
Prohibition of alcoholic beverages
Concerns over prostitution (also monikered white slavery)
Women’s suffrage
Civil rights initiatives
In modern times, some of the key influences and subjects of greatest debate raised by evangelicals have been over the first amendment, prayer in schools, evolution and abortion.
I don't think there are any other issues that evangelicals fight with more ferocity. By way of example, they don't like that evolution is taught in public schools and never have. They won a huge victory in the Scopes trial but not with the general public. Most normal, thinking people thought (and many expressed) that rejecting real science in favor of pseudo-science was not a very good idea.
Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan
A number of people involved in the Scopes trial were basically shamed out of public life, but would find allies in the white house: first in Jimmy Carter, who was evangelical but also a Democrat and very liberal in his interpretation of evangelical faith, then in Ronald Reagan.
While Carter was an outspoken born again Christian, Reagan's tack was a bit more secular. Evangelicals liked him because he kept the spotlight on key moral issues that appealed to evangelical voters. He even claimed to be a Christian at one point and then found himself in hot water when it was found out that Nancy Reagan consulted with an astrologer. This was, of course, far more innocuous than the average evangelical would like you to think it was and boy did it get blown out of proportion during the mid to late 80s.
The timeline is going to jump around a little only because some details warrant jumping a little bit ahead to bring up. I want to back up just a bit and talk about the Moral Majority.
If there's one thing evangelicals really don't like, it's the concept of secularism.
“Starting in the mid-1970s, a resurgence of political activity began to develop among conservative Christians in the United States. Alarmed by what they perceived to be the moral decline of American society, they sought to introduce a new social agenda into American politics aimed at fighting the forces of secularization.”
Christian groups in the United States established a number of organizations designed to penetrate U.S. government and politics with conservative Christian values. The biggest and mot high-profile of these organizations was the good ol' Moral Majority.
“Founded in 1979 by Jerry Falwell, an influential Baptist minister and televangelist, the Moral Majority joined with other political conservatives to promote the restoration of traditional moral values in American society.”
The organization played a huge part in getting Ronald Reagan elected in 1980, and steered many a political conversation into a place of significant public attention on subjects like:
Abortion
Gay rights
Pornography
School prayer
The Equal Rights Amendment
They also “advocated conservative positions on a variety of more secular issues, such as a balanced budget and defense spending.” At just about 10 years in, Falwell disbanded the Moral Majority in 1989 Falwell, basically saying that their work was done. They had accomplished their goal of “introducing support for social reform into American politics.” It remains an oft-imitated model for conservative Christian political activism.
The Moral Majority wanted “to counter the liberal trends that had emerged within American society during the 1960s and 1970s.”
All that free love was a little too much for people caught up in a religion that markets hate as love and love as hate, evidently.
But what is also interesting here is that there came a point where Jerry Falwell realized that evangelicals couldn't hold up the juggernaut for long on their own. They needed reinforcements and they found them in allying with other religious groups that they would never be friends with IRL. Groups like the Mormons, orthodox Jews and... GASP! The Catholics! He got away with it by never making official or legal connections with any organization, including other church organizations or any political party.
Here's the thing: you don't have to be connected to something to endorse it or influence it.
When Jimmy Carter was elected in 1976, he won the white house by capturing the evangelical vote, hence the declaration of 1976 as “the year of the evangelical.” At this point, Evangelicals were not, by definition, hard-line Republicans but they were still largely conservative. Jimmy Carter, on the other hand, was not. The Republicans had earned a lot of distrust close to that election with the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation otherwise the election would almost definitely have gone to Gerald Ford. Carter aligned more with their values but his liberal views on things like gay rights and abortion were too much for conservative voters to take.
Granted, Carter wasn't the best president ever but he wasn't the worst. The worst was yet to come... and I'm not even talking about 45. One of these days I'll go off on a rant about Ronald Reagan, but not tonight.
The '76 election, though, confirmed that evangelicals had a lot of political influence... a lot of influence. So it was a good strategy to lure them back into right-wing politics and with people like Jerry Falwell leading the fray, it wasn't difficult to sway the evangelical vote back around to the Republican party just four years later.
“Protestants began looking for ways to use their newfound political muscle to push the country in a more rightward direction. At the same time, a tightly knit group of conservative political operatives, associated with such organizations as the Heritage Foundation and the Free Congress Foundation and calling themselves New Right or "movement conservatives," were actively seeking ways to enlist this evangelical army into their movement.”
By the end of the 1970s, Jerry Falwell had fully weaponized both his radio and TV ministries against gay rights, abortion, and any other issue he decided to stamp with the label “secular humanist.” Boy did he demonize that term. I remember it putting a really bad taste in my mouth at the time. It was almost a McCarthy-esque witch hunt with no tangible or corporeal prey – just this.... concept. This was the ineffable monster devouring the morals of America. This was the enemy of Christianity. This was the thing that was sending people to hell and turning them into atheists and agnostics... or worse – homosexuals and gay sympathizers! This thing called secular humanism was the enemy and its principles were sinful and dishonest.
“In 1979, with the encouragement and assistance of New Right leaders, Falwell founded Moral Majority, declaring that it would be "prolife, profamily, promoral, and pro-American." Its stated aims included registering evangelical Christians to vote, informing members about what was going on in Washington and in state legislatures, lobbying to defeat leftist legislation, and pushing for legislation that would protect and advance a conservative social agenda.”
There were a few faces from the news that I recognized on sight in 1980. Keep in mind I was 8 years old. I recognized Jimmy Carter. I recognized Ronald Reagan. I recognized the Ayatollah Khomeini. I recognized Walter Cronkite. Oddly enough, I also recognized Jerry Falwell and I knew what the Moral Majority was. That's significant. Five years before I had any aggressive evangelical influence on my life, I knew this guy and what he represented. And there was a reason for that:
“Throughout the 1980 election campaign and for several years afterward, Falwell traveled extensively throughout the nation, telling pastors, mostly fundamentalist Independent Baptists, that their duty was "getting people saved, baptized, and registered to vote" and helping them organize chapters of Moral Majority.”
It was all very formulaic, wasn't it? Use the evangelical conversion playbook to not only make more evangelicals, but cultivate more evangelical voters. They were hard at work filling their quiver with new babes in Christ – people who were easy to influence and control – and, for a while, had a lot of arrows in it. Voting-age babies they could get to vote the way they said absent of any real knowledge of the candidate or his/her agenda.
“Because of Falwell's attention-getting message and style and his ubiquitous presence on television and in the press, Moral Majority became the best-known representative and symbol of the movement that came to be called the Christian New Right or, more simply, the Religious Right.”
Yep. There it is – that signature evangelical emotionalism and sensationalism. It works so well. Talk about having a strong influence on the weak-minded...
The Moral Majority had a strong influence over the 1980 election and helped Ronald Reagan win the presidency. They also steered state elections into a Republican-majority Senate in 1980.
“The Moral Majority proved to be very successful in building its coalition of like-minded conservatives. By the 1980 election, it included upwards of 2 million members, and perhaps twice that many during its peak years in the mid-1980s.”
But even with all of this momentum, the Religious Right still didn't have the political influence or “organizational savvy” (that's a nice way to say their chapters were run by morons who didn't know their ass from a hole in their doctrine) to win significant support in the White House or congress for its conservative and clearly religiously-fueled social agenda.
Falwell was kind of caught between a rock and a hard place in the mid 80s. His TV ministry was having financial difficulties while Liberty University was actually growing. So what did he do? In pure evangelical grifter fashion, he turned his attention to his own interests and away from the larger political stage. He stepped down as the formal head of the organization in 1987, and was succeeded by Jerry Nims. He stayed visible and active in the organization until officially dissolving it in 1989.
The Moral Majority had two powerful weapons in their arsenal. For starters, they knew how you use and manipulate mass media. This is what you get when your leader is a smarmy televangelist who managed to perfect the art of the grift via various media outlets. Falwell had, in fact, had loads of success in both radio and TV.
“In 1956 Falwell also began broadcasting his sermons on a radio program, the “Old-Time Gospel Hour.” Six months later the program began appearing on a local television network; eventually it went into national and even international syndication and claimed more than 50 million regular viewers.” Source: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jerry-Falwell
TV preachers were a popular thing in the 50s and 60s, but they had virtually become a cultural phenomenon by the 1970s. The decade of decadence also fueled their popularity, despite the fall of Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker. Yes, those things were a bit of a setback, but it didn't exactly cripple the movement. The Word-Faith televangelists in particular had (and apparently still have) a signature charisma that seemed to transcend both scandals at the time and allow charlatans like Benny Hinn, Kenneth Copeland and Frederick KC Price to continue to draw massive crowds and amass huge followings. And right there in the middle of the fray was the ever-present Jerry Falwell, who had a distinct talent for tapping into a huge segment of mass media: The News.
The news media saw in Falwell, “an articulate and readily accessible spokesman for the religious right. Through the extensive news coverage that Falwell received, particularly during the national political campaigns of the early 1980s, the Moral Majority became the leading symbol of the religious right's new political influence.”
The other weapon I mentioned was the organization of an extensive grassroots network with many chapters.
“These organizations sought to implement the agenda of the Moral Majority at the local level through their involvement in political races and community issues, and they represented the primary vehicle through which the movement's followers became involved in its activities.”
These two strategies are typical to evangelicals and evangelical organizations. After all, the vast majority of televangelists have been evangelical, with a smattering of Catholic and mainline protestant representation. And the concept of multi-chapter representation follows the same principle as church planting. Establish as many places you can, attract as many people as you can, and make them all think like you. I liked the idea of church planting back in the day. The new energy and excitement of establishing faith communities has the same appeal as NRE.
“Although their impact was not as conspicuous as that of the move-ment's national leaders, the local chapters had a lasting influence on religious conservatives by demonstrating the effectiveness of local political action. Local strategies thus became widely adopted by former members as they continued the work of the Moral Majority after it was disbanded in 1989.”
Now... Falwell claimed, officially, that he disbanded the Moral Majority because it had achieved its goals. Now let's look at the real reasons...
Since we deal in truth around here, the truth is that there were a few things that contributed to the end of the Moral Majority. It wasn't a robust organization doing great things for humanity. At the end, the movement was on life support, pure and simple.
First, the organization was rightly accused of attempting to impose its own moral and religious views, which is what evangelicals do best and why would they even try to deny it? It's foundational to the Great Commission. Political liberals and moderates saw and spoke up about what they observed.
The Moral Majority even came under fire with some conservative Christians and conservative Christian organizations for its involvement in secular politics. Believe it or not, there are “smart” evangelicals out there. I've always been smart and I was one for 20+ years. And there were evangelicals as well as other conservative mainstream protestants and protestant denominations that actually liked the idea of preserving separation of church and state.
Then there was that time when Pat Robertson decided to show his crazy to the world on the American political stage with a presidential run in 1988. It was a bit of a circus sideshow if memory serves. Even I thought he was a loon, as did most of the people in my circles. He made evangelical politicians look bad, pure and simple.
It is important to remember, though that, “Despite its relatively brief history as a formal organization, the Moral Majority had a major impact on America's political landscape and, more broadly, its popular culture. It played a key role in reintroducing religion to the realm of public debate, not just by addressing explicitly religious issues, such as school prayer, but by asserting the validity of religious belief as the foundation for public policy decisions, as in the controversy over abortion.”
Their stand on some issues, however, caught backlash from people who supported women's issues like feminism and reproductive choice and social issues like gay rights. They were cornered into making a valid defense for their views and couldn't since, well, only people who believe in the Bible give two shits what the bible says about anything and they had no better or even sensical authority to point to.
But the most dangerous thing they did, in my opinion, is attach their views like a virus to every social issue out there and to this day there is no all-reaching vaccination or cure. Evangelical thought is still applied in alarming degrees to all kinds of social issues, like Burwell v. Hobby Lobby and the list of things we discussed last week.
Fighting Secularization
Even before the Moral Majority, evangelicals had become – and I love this term - “politically energized” (that's one way of putting it) by any issue they regarded as promoting and advancing secularization in American culture.
“They were particularly troubled by Supreme Court decisions in Engel v. Vitale (1962) and Abington v. Schempp (1963), limiting devotional exercises in public schools on the basis of the establishment clause; many evangelicals favored a constitutional amendment to overturn these decisions. Others were concerned with what they perceived to be the nation’s moral decline as represented in cases like Roe v. Wade (1973), which liberalized abortion laws, and a myriad of decisions that liberalized the publication of obscenity and pornography. Rev. Jerry Falwell unsuccessfully sued Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler magazine, for intentional infliction of emotional distress resulting from a defamatory parody that he published.”
There is also precedent to the Moral Majority when it comes to forming alliances. Evangelicals had a habit of playing the strength in numbers card just like Jerry Falwell did and allied with the Catholic Church, the Mormons and various Jewish groups who held the same or similar opinions to their own. All of a sudden, belief doesn't matter anywhere near as much as getting their way.
More of that awesome childlike faith...
“Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson were among those who rallied voters by appeals to right-wing causes. Evangelical lawyers increasingly began to view their own profession as a calling that could aid the cause, and a host of legal advocacy groups were formed, including the American Center for
Law and Justice, the Christian Legal Society, the Rutherford Society, and others...”
[“Freedom Under Fire”]
Jesus, those names even sound like the names of ministries... except maybe The Center for Law and Justice. Sounds like the Foundation for Law and Government. Any Knight Rider fans out there?
During the era of the moral majority, evangelical lawyers shifted their focus. For years the emphasis of their efforts revolved around the free exercise of religion. In the early 80s, that emphasis shifted to Free Speech and they were successful in a number of high profile cases:
access public university facilities in Widmar v. Vincent (1981)
the right for religious student groups to obtain funding from student fees in Rosenberger v. Rectors and Visitors of the University of Virginia (1995)
pushed for the adoption of the Equal Access Act of 1984.
“They also spearheaded efforts that led to the decision in Lamb’s Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free School District (1993), which granted churches equal access to school facilities after hours, evangelicals were also influential in getting adoption of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000.”
“In Christian Legal Society v. Martinez (2011) evangelicals suffered something of a setback when the Supreme Court allowed Hastings College of Law to exclude evangelical groups that did not open its leadership to nonbelievers. Lisa Shaw Roy suggests that this decision might prompt evangelicals to reconsider using greater reliance on the free exercise clause rather than the free speech provisions of the First Amendment (2011).”
The article then mentions Burwell vs. Hobby Lobby and the ramifications of that ruling, which we discussed in detail last time around. I mention it here again because it shows just how far things have come in such a short period of time.
When you think about it, it really is remarkable. The majority of evangelical influence in Republican politics began in the 80s. And while I still feel old thinking about how long ago 1980 was, in terms of history it's not that long. And it amazes me how much of this came down to just one guy and an idea.
Jimmy Carter gets elected. Evangelicals are largely responsible. Even then, though, right wing conservatives spoke their language better and when Jimmy said things like “gay rights” it took the proverbial evangelical jump to the left another step to the right. And step by step they made their way into a place of unsettling loyalty to the Republican party.
Last week I teased two questions that we intended to answer in this episode: What is it about the religion of Love Your Neighbor that finds appeal in a group of people whose goals and objectives couldn't be further from that concept?
And...
What could happen if we don't keep pulling back the curtain on evangelical lies, hypocrisy, and alarmism and keep lessening their influence over U.S. politics?
Here are what I think to be the answers to those questions.
For starters, “love your neighbor” is nothing more than a platitude. It was nothing more when the words were written and as I've said before, love is a word evangelicals like to weaponize but don't even remotely understand.
Nothing that the Moral Majority did or the aftershocks it created has the first thing to do with love or concern for anyone outside their religious strata. The organization embodied the kind of selfishness, narrow-mindedness, and nearsightedness that is signature to everything evangelical organizations do.
They saw an opportunity to forge long-term alliances with conservative political bodies that have had the effects over time of electing presidents and other governmental officials at federal, state, and even local levels.
So the answer, I think, is obvious. Christianity in general is the perfect cover for things like misogyny and bigotry because it goes great lengths to teach and promote these things and always have. And what we've learned about the Republican party tells us that conservative ideology and what passes for Christian morals and ethics are very compatible bedfellows. And for as long as they are allowed, they will continue combining their efforts to undermine the Constitution and weaponize the first amendment on every point. What does the religion of Love Thy neighbor have in common with American conservatism? Everything. Every last racist, homophobic, xenophobic, and misogynistic thing. And that's a problem. A big one.
And what could happen if they go unchecked? I dare say we're already seeing it. A Supreme Court that says it's OK to be bigoted against gays and that it's OK to impose your sexual morals on thousands of people just because you sign their paychecks is a clear indicator. The juggernaut that was 45's 2016 campaign was another.
Even before the election all the problems I mentioned a minute ago were making their way to to the surface like so much dross, especially racism. And in the four years we spent in the hell that was the 45th presidential administration, we watched the Supreme Court become even more corrupt and some of the worst examples of racists, homophobes, xenophobes and misogynists in our federal government went out of their way to protect every vile, underhanded, treasonous, seditious thing their “leader” did.
Muslim bans and banning transsexuals in the military and a long list of civil and human rights rollbacks, not to mention out and out BANNING of diversity training on systemic racism all happened during 45's administration (and most within a matter of months). It's ok to hate people over their religion. Trans people aren't normal. Racism isn't that big a deal. These kinds of thoughts will continue gaining ground and they have the potential to shape the cultural zeitgeist for years to come.
And if you think even for one minute that that is an overstatement, please try to understand this: the alliance between the Republican party and evangelical christians came about largely because of one person – a good marketer and a good persuader who, in the course of only about six or seven years, managed to weave evangelical ideology so deeply into the fabric of American government and lawmaking that unraveling it could take decades. Or longer.
Jerry Falwell knew how to use mass media so well that he had representation in nearly every state in the union. Those people were identified when they steered the vote in favor of Jimmy Carter. They were conditioned on how to think about hot-button issues like abortion and gay rights by the Moral Majority and other smaller like organizations. They were told how to interpret the first amendment, and, most importantly, they were told how to vote and they obeyed. That, in a nutshell, is how it happened. It amazes me how little it took and how fast it happened.
And if religion – any religion – can have that kind of influence over a secular society, it is a dangerous religion indeed. Especially when it's a religion that never learns its place, asserts too much dominance over society and teaches far too toxic principles about most social issues.
To the ex-evangelicals who spent years voting Republican... it's OK [ad lib]
This is normally where I make my call to action for awareness, activism, and involvement but I feel like that gets repetitive. We know what the solutions are but the problem is, thinking about what it would take to achieve them is daunting. It's tiring. It's frustrating as all hell.
Their numbers are dropping.
Their influence is waning.
It's happening slowly, but it is happening.
Try to take some encouragement from those few simple, observable truths. Maybe it'll make those calls to action a little easier to swallow and maybe, by being proactive, motivated, and armed with what we know about ourselves as a people, those of us who champion ideologies like secularism and humanism (terms that are wildly positive and not even remotely scary to me now) can start increasing our influence and help a few more people get and stay unbound.
CHRISTIANS BEHAVING BADLY
NY Times Newsletter
I'm going to preface this segment with something I read in the New York Times Newsletter this morning. The primary segment was by David Leonhardt, about the COVID vaccine and the rise of the Delta Variant. Deaths are rising among the unvaccinated, but that doesn't mean that vaccinated people are safe; the virus mutates the longer it cycles in a population. And one-third of the eligible population has not taken the vaccine or are hesitant.
And the anger is rising among the vaccinated. The longer these holdouts of unvaccinated people continue, the longer it takes before 'normal life' resumes. The CDC is thinking of advising that certain populations start wearing masks again. Schools with high volumes of children too young to be vaccinated are becoming more reluctant to open. And the vaccine mandates are coming.
While it will never be a nationwide mandate for various reasons, certain workplaces, hospitals, colleges and schools are considering vaccine mandates. Of course there will be exception for religious beliefs, which annoys me of course, but the mandates are coming. Learn what you can learn about the vaccine, get over it, and get it. If you don't, you're going to pay a price. You could lose access to school, your workplace, or other places where you could infect other people.
And with that, let's talk about two of the dumbest anti-vaxxers around:
We'll start with radical right-wing activist Dave Daubinmire, who melted down about Enoch, rebelling angels, nephilim and, of course the evil Dr Fauci and his DNA melting vaccine.
He spent a good long time talking about “the book of giants” an apocryphal book supposedly written by the prophet Enoch, which talks about the many reasons the Flood of Noah “happened”. “According to the Book of Giants, angels in rebellion against God had mated with human women, creating a race of giants known as the Nephilim, who were so wicked that God had no choice but to destroy the world.”
After he talked about the Nephilim for a while, he then compared “linked the current COVID-19 vaccines to the End Times by citing Jesus’ warning in Matthew 24 that “as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man,” asserting that the vaccines are modern-day demonic effort to corrupt humanity’s DNA akin to the mixing of DNA prior to the flood.”
““Friends, as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be at the coming of the Son of Man,” Daubenmire bellowed. “...That this jab is mixing and melting and working and screwing up your DNA! The same thing that was going on before the days of Noah. The exact same thing. And as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be the coming of the Son of Man.
“Dr. Fauci is an emissary of the devil, folks,” Daubenmire screamed. “Not just the devil that you see on Halloween. Not just a guy who dresses up in a suit. He is an emissary of Beelzebub himself, sent to deceive and destroy the seed of Christ!”
The insanity...it burns...
And in “it's everyone else's fault” news, we have Rick Wiles who is blaming the vaccinated for his Covid 19 infection.
Now no one can accuse Rick Wiles of being sensible about COVID: he believes the vaccines were part of a plot to carry out “global genocide.” And now he has proceeded to accuse vaccinated people of infecting him with the virus.
“You’ve got people who are vaccinated who are shedding the virus, infecting other people, walking around thinking they are protected and yet they are the ones who are spreading the virus to other people,” Wiles said. “I don’t think that there is a variant called Delta. I think it’s a name that they gave the public to explain the explosion of infections caused by the vaccinated people.”
“We’re witnessing for the first time in human history global genocide, compliments of the Church of Satan,” Wiles said later in the program. “The Communist Party is the political arm of the Church of Satan. These people that are running the world are Satanists. They’re killing off massive numbers of people.” He also called the vaccine the “Satanic Serum.” Nice alliteration there.
He went on to say, “I’m convinced that my infection and the explosion that we had here in our staff, among my family and friends—20-some people altogether infected suddenly—I believe it came from a vaccinated person coming into this building who was shedding the virus,” Wiles replied. “I believe that’s how it happened.”