Keats Snideman

Last week I went with a friend to Changing Hands bookstore in Tempe and learned exactly how close we are to losing something most of us assume is permanent: the separation of church and state.

Jeanne Casteen of Secular Arizona interviewed Rep. Jared Huffman on his new book, No Prophets: The Fight to Save Democracy from Christian Nationalism — and it was as sobering as it was necessary.

Huffman lays out three factions with a frightening influence over our government right now:

1)the New Apostolic Reformation (charismatic evangelicals and self-declared “prophets,” heavily embedded in Jan 6)
#2) radical traditionalist Catholics (“rad trads”) and

3) Reformed evangelical “TheoBros.”
#Different doctrines, same core belief — that Christians are ordained to hold power over everyone else. All three groups reject religious pluralism (e.g. tolerance and co-existing) of other beliefs and religions and church-state separation, and all three are aligned with Trump. Trump their minds, is some sort of Prophet send from God to do the Lords work. 🤦🏻🤷🏻‍♂️

To be clear: this isn’t about Christianity. Most reasonable Christians don’t buy into any of this. This is about a specific, well-organized minority using religion to justify political dominance. They want to make America 🇺🇸 a Christian Theocracy. Yikes! 😱

Huffman himself grew up religious — reformed LDS, Independence, Missouri — and landed where I did: secular humanist. We don’t need a god to be good to each other. We just need the freedom to believe, or not, without someone else’s theology running the country.

Grab the book if this rattles you the way it rattled me. 📖 And please take the time to listen to some of the clips I recorded as they are eye-opening and terrifying at the same time. All people, religious and non-religious should ban together to make sure we do not lose our current democracy and freedom to choose whatever we want to believe!

#separationofchurchandstate
#NoProphets
#JaredHuffman
SecularHumanism