I don't know that much about the City Church, but from what I have read it is affiliated with white and male supremacist groups that remember slavery fondly. At what point does a church become just another hate group?
"At what point does a church become just another hate group?"
What do you mean, "just another?" Perhaps the largest and most influential one of all. In the 2024 election, 85% of white Evangelical Christians voted for Trump. They voted for sending masked goons with guns into the streets of America to round up "those people," and to shoot in the face anyone who gets in the way. And these weren't just fringe members. Among white Evangelical Christians who attend services AT LEAST once a week, the number was 88%. Let that sink in. 88%.
Agreed completely. For those of us who are not religious, this is the image we get of Christianity in America far more than any other: that it's a breeding ground for bigotry, hatred and cruelty more than anything else, despite how that's completely antithetical to what Jesus is supposed to represent. It seems very apparent that a gigantic segment of Christians in America have completely discarded all the teachings of Jesus and instead now rally around a group of hatreds and that is what Christianity has now become.
If I hear someone profess to be a Christian I'm far more wary of them than I am of anyone who professes to be a member of any other religion now. That's what these Christians have wrought in this country. For the people who are actually good Christians, unfortunately this hateful majority has sullied your reputation for you, to where you're now associated with a hate group in the eyes of many.
The prior editor of Christianity Today, Mark Galli, was fired and run out of town on a rail for opposing Trump. He's now not even an evangelical--he's converted to Catholicism.
Agree, but I would not support government or mob intrusion into the right to worship. The answer to a church preaching hate is lawfull protest and reporting. Both are also protected by the 1st ammendment.
I agree Jim. The protestors should not have entered that church; however, Don Lemon and Georgia Fort had every right to enter and cover a news event. The protestors would have delivered their message more effectively outside the church than allowing themselves to become the story that got reported.
The purpose of ICE is to terrorize. First, it is to physically terrorize the people they are weaponized to terrorize. Then it is to terrorize the minds of people watching the terror. The message is clear. "This could happen to you!"
To think about terrorizing children at schools, or people worshiping at churches, or people who are suffering in and around hospitals is pathetic. They want to let you know that they will follow you and terrorize you at your weakest moments. They want you to feel vulnerable. Don't allow them to do this. Don't isolate. Don't be alone. Create solidarity with friends and family, or anyone. Find people who have your back, and watch others' backs. This is how you can find some peace.
Vought wants federal workers to go to work in fear. ICE wants you to be afraid just living. When this madness is over, these criminals should spend some time in jail. All of them.
Agreed. But our desire for justice, as instinctive and righteous as it is, leads us to project our wishes and hopes into the future. Let's gird ourselves so that we don't "dissolve" now. Let's not give them what they want.
So correct AR. Know that we are not into the final lap, but have miles to go. And most of all, do not become the thing you hate, because it will consume you. That’s the hardest. The adage “fight fire with fire” does not apply.
You have clarity. To get people to treat you like you want to be treated, you have to treat them like that, even if undeserved. Instinctively, this feels wimpy. But historically it's pragmatic.
That's why it's probably impossible to ever have a Christian society. Jesus was probably a mystic. Mystics don't deal with social and political structures. They deal with the life within. In my estimation, this is where religions go wrong.
Thanks for that link. "Chilling and detailed" for sure. Wow. I'll add "precise and powerful," and guaranteed to give you even more anxiety about Miller and where we could be headed>
I am fairly certain DHS agents entered churches during worship in the Rio Grande Valley before we moved to NC late last summer. I was appalled at the time. While I find the protesters in MN entering the church to be in error, it is rich that the rogue administration is making such a show of them. Don't even get me started on the Don Lemon (and other reporters) charges.
After reading Adrian's 1/25 newsletter describing various folks in Minneapolis working behind the scenes to help immigrants, I emailed one of the people profiled, Daniel Hernandez, who owns a small chain of latin grocery stores/restaurants and is delivering groceries for free to those who are too scared to leave their homes. I asked him how I could help, knowing that there were commenters on that newsletter who had asked the same thing.
ICE does not need to be armed. An “armed ICE” has proven to be too lethal to innocent citizens, dangerous to the careless gun-handling agents themselves, and injurious to fellow agents who are accidentally shot by another careless ICE agent. https://hotbuttons.substack.com/p/reform-homeland-security?r=3m1bs
Also, they don't need to be dressed like soldiers invading another country. Dress them as "officers of the peace," i.e. like mail carriers, and give them non-lethal weapons. If they are dealing with dangerous criminals, which at least for now they rarely are, they can work in conjunction with real, trained LEOs.
Their purpose is to create bewilderment, terror, social fracture. This is how authoritarianism works.
Authoritarians want to control your emotions, not your body. Where your emotions go, your body will naturally follow. They want you to hunker down in fear and stay out of their way. They are only interested in keeping you under their boot heels. The more fierce they look, the better.
Who do you suggest takes away their methods of Terror? DJT? DHS Secretary Kristi Noem? Please consider who's in charge here. We are not. The cliché that we can only control ourselves is apt in this situation.
I think it should be part of the reconstruction of ICE when it is taken down to the studs and rebuilt. Earliest possible time is after the midterms, but I think we should be talking about all of the ways it needs to be completely remade, not just tweaked around the edges.
From a pragmatic point of view, I think we need to figure out how to survive it today and tomorrow. If we actually have free and fair elections, we can talk about this later. Right now we are in it. We aren't above it.
Your question is one I ask myself constantly, Claudia. Here is my partial response to myself:
We have a strong suspicion how we have come to this point. We saw it happen in Germany during the 1930s, to name one example. It happens because of flaws built into our human nature: greed, resentment, anger, and fear, not necessarily in that order.
Those are emotions that require great effort to work against within ourselves. The Germans didn't succeed overcoming them until it was over for them, and then they (most of them) found the way to live normal, healthy, prosocial lives again. Of course, it took WWII and the Marshall Plan to do it.
In other words, I "fear" that we have more of the spiral downwards to go before we can see our way up again. On a positive note, one way or another, we will see our way up again.
Part of how fast we can get our society moving in a humane, kind, and just way again depends on how willing we are to forgive those who are driving us downward in the present.
I'm not suggesting we forgive them now, but in the future when they are willing to see the cruelty, the inhumanity, and the injustice of what they have wrought.
Yes after WWII we did not trample the Germans or Japanese and they built strong democratic societies . I think the fight against MAGA is different because they have plenty of money and power and nothing ti gan form joining civil society
Thank you. My storage tank of words is on the empty line and I’m running on reserve. I’m a fighter and also a yakker. This article just turned a screw in my brain and made me sadder. I’ll be ok, we all will, we just need to keep our eyes wide open and never give an inch! I wonder who is next? I have a sinking feeling that Homeland Security will not leave Minneapolis but send a new crop of thugs into Ohio or Pennsylvania or both. We’ll be fighting on lots of fronts. Midterms can’t come soon enough! 🤞🏽😡💙🇺🇸
you continue to provide the best coverage of the immigration issues of any major media source. You are helping a guy like me, who is mobility bound to understand what the real facts are, beyond the rhetoric. Wish we could clone you.
The trump folk seem hell bent to destroy any institution that our pluralism and democracy need to survive. His 1930s outlook is so much scarier than is portrayed on the nightly news.He is a real and present danger.
Don Lemon, a journalist, recorded a demonstration by protesters in a Minneapolis church. The United States maintains that he violated provisions of the FACE Act by violating the civil rights of worshippers. The First Amendment provides in part that Congress shall make no law...abridging... freedom of the press...Case law regarding statutory construction requires that a court read every federal statute in a way that preserves its constitutionality. The FACE Act conflicts with the First Amendment if it is read to abridge the right of a journalist to witness an event and to report about it. The law cannot be constitutionally applied to Lemon or other Journalists then present, including Georgia Fort, and they cannot be convicted of violating a law that does not apply to them.
These fools don’t think about winning a court case. They know they will loose. The resulting fear that they can put in the minds of ordinary people is the goal.
Yes. But the cost to the defenders, and the turmoil to the community will be what this administration’s wants. The damage being forced on us is the desired outcome.
True. The Courts can speak but it won't matter if the Executive Branch refuses to apply the law. Eisenhower and Kennedy used the military to enforce the orders of the Courts in Arkansas and Alabama. We would still have segregated schools without those Executive actions. I attended integrated schools in a mostly white county. The schools had long been integrated because integration was less expensive than building a separate but equal school system for thirty students in grades 1-12.
You have two ideals, power and wealth. Gina, you are correct when you said that building an equal but separate school had to be sacrificed. Unequal, sure. That’s cheaper. But that was becoming less of an option by the 1950’s and 1960’s. JVL said it best “When we do something (fill in the blanks), it’s because we benefit from it.” War is expensive and regressive. Stop wars, save money. Give to charitable organizations, save hospitalizations and incarceration. Assimilation into the culture comes later. And ultimately everyone benefits. Unfortunately this president wants chaos and uncertainty because he benefits, in his twisted mind.
So far, there is a tissue paper veneer to this group of lawlessness - “We are only doing our job.” It is said so often, those hearing it go numb. My fear is that the tissue paper is being shredded and soon, there will be no rationalization. These people will want everyone to know that what they are doing is what they want to do. Just like the SS troops under Hitler. Then, we won’t hear that comment until they are on the witness stand, pleading for mercy.
This administration is the most anti-Christian of my lifetime. They are covering themselves in shame. I pray that their inner voices tell them to get out while they still have souls. The Devil is working hard these days.
I don't know that much about the City Church, but from what I have read it is affiliated with white and male supremacist groups that remember slavery fondly. At what point does a church become just another hate group?
"At what point does a church become just another hate group?"
What do you mean, "just another?" Perhaps the largest and most influential one of all. In the 2024 election, 85% of white Evangelical Christians voted for Trump. They voted for sending masked goons with guns into the streets of America to round up "those people," and to shoot in the face anyone who gets in the way. And these weren't just fringe members. Among white Evangelical Christians who attend services AT LEAST once a week, the number was 88%. Let that sink in. 88%.
prri.org/research/analyzing-the-2024-presidential-vote-prris-post-election-survey/
Agreed completely. For those of us who are not religious, this is the image we get of Christianity in America far more than any other: that it's a breeding ground for bigotry, hatred and cruelty more than anything else, despite how that's completely antithetical to what Jesus is supposed to represent. It seems very apparent that a gigantic segment of Christians in America have completely discarded all the teachings of Jesus and instead now rally around a group of hatreds and that is what Christianity has now become.
If I hear someone profess to be a Christian I'm far more wary of them than I am of anyone who professes to be a member of any other religion now. That's what these Christians have wrought in this country. For the people who are actually good Christians, unfortunately this hateful majority has sullied your reputation for you, to where you're now associated with a hate group in the eyes of many.
The prior editor of Christianity Today, Mark Galli, was fired and run out of town on a rail for opposing Trump. He's now not even an evangelical--he's converted to Catholicism.
Agree, but I would not support government or mob intrusion into the right to worship. The answer to a church preaching hate is lawfull protest and reporting. Both are also protected by the 1st ammendment.
I agree Jim. The protestors should not have entered that church; however, Don Lemon and Georgia Fort had every right to enter and cover a news event. The protestors would have delivered their message more effectively outside the church than allowing themselves to become the story that got reported.
I don't like protests in front of people's houses either.
Not to be confused with citizens in front of houses observing and trying to protect neighbors from abuse by federal agents?
I wouldn't either.
History appears to ask the same question of nearly all religions.
Ask the Native Americans, Incans, Mayans, ...
No fooling.
The purpose of ICE is to terrorize. First, it is to physically terrorize the people they are weaponized to terrorize. Then it is to terrorize the minds of people watching the terror. The message is clear. "This could happen to you!"
To think about terrorizing children at schools, or people worshiping at churches, or people who are suffering in and around hospitals is pathetic. They want to let you know that they will follow you and terrorize you at your weakest moments. They want you to feel vulnerable. Don't allow them to do this. Don't isolate. Don't be alone. Create solidarity with friends and family, or anyone. Find people who have your back, and watch others' backs. This is how you can find some peace.
Vought wants federal workers to go to work in fear. ICE wants you to be afraid just living. When this madness is over, these criminals should spend some time in jail. All of them.
Agreed. But our desire for justice, as instinctive and righteous as it is, leads us to project our wishes and hopes into the future. Let's gird ourselves so that we don't "dissolve" now. Let's not give them what they want.
So correct AR. Know that we are not into the final lap, but have miles to go. And most of all, do not become the thing you hate, because it will consume you. That’s the hardest. The adage “fight fire with fire” does not apply.
You have clarity. To get people to treat you like you want to be treated, you have to treat them like that, even if undeserved. Instinctively, this feels wimpy. But historically it's pragmatic.
thank you Katherine , I want revenge . That is not the Christian way . Justice yes . accountability (a secular word for same )
That's why it's probably impossible to ever have a Christian society. Jesus was probably a mystic. Mystics don't deal with social and political structures. They deal with the life within. In my estimation, this is where religions go wrong.
they should be in a prison with both black and Latinos in the usual proportions for incarcerated people
You gotta read this. Sam Freedman has written a chilling and detailed profile of Stephen Miller, the dark heart of the Trump regime. https://kathleenweber.substack.com/p/the-most-dangerous-man-in-america
Thanks for that link. "Chilling and detailed" for sure. Wow. I'll add "precise and powerful," and guaranteed to give you even more anxiety about Miller and where we could be headed>
I am fairly certain DHS agents entered churches during worship in the Rio Grande Valley before we moved to NC late last summer. I was appalled at the time. While I find the protesters in MN entering the church to be in error, it is rich that the rogue administration is making such a show of them. Don't even get me started on the Don Lemon (and other reporters) charges.
After reading Adrian's 1/25 newsletter describing various folks in Minneapolis working behind the scenes to help immigrants, I emailed one of the people profiled, Daniel Hernandez, who owns a small chain of latin grocery stores/restaurants and is delivering groceries for free to those who are too scared to leave their homes. I asked him how I could help, knowing that there were commenters on that newsletter who had asked the same thing.
I heard back from him on 1/31, and he sent me a link to a GoFundMe he started, which can be found here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-colonial-markets-community-efforts
thank you
ICE does not need to be armed. An “armed ICE” has proven to be too lethal to innocent citizens, dangerous to the careless gun-handling agents themselves, and injurious to fellow agents who are accidentally shot by another careless ICE agent. https://hotbuttons.substack.com/p/reform-homeland-security?r=3m1bs
Also, they don't need to be dressed like soldiers invading another country. Dress them as "officers of the peace," i.e. like mail carriers, and give them non-lethal weapons. If they are dealing with dangerous criminals, which at least for now they rarely are, they can work in conjunction with real, trained LEOs.
Their purpose is to create bewilderment, terror, social fracture. This is how authoritarianism works.
Authoritarians want to control your emotions, not your body. Where your emotions go, your body will naturally follow. They want you to hunker down in fear and stay out of their way. They are only interested in keeping you under their boot heels. The more fierce they look, the better.
Yes, which is why I would like that to be taken away from them.
Who do you suggest takes away their methods of Terror? DJT? DHS Secretary Kristi Noem? Please consider who's in charge here. We are not. The cliché that we can only control ourselves is apt in this situation.
I think it should be part of the reconstruction of ICE when it is taken down to the studs and rebuilt. Earliest possible time is after the midterms, but I think we should be talking about all of the ways it needs to be completely remade, not just tweaked around the edges.
From a pragmatic point of view, I think we need to figure out how to survive it today and tomorrow. If we actually have free and fair elections, we can talk about this later. Right now we are in it. We aren't above it.
How have we come to this? Words fail me.
Your question is one I ask myself constantly, Claudia. Here is my partial response to myself:
We have a strong suspicion how we have come to this point. We saw it happen in Germany during the 1930s, to name one example. It happens because of flaws built into our human nature: greed, resentment, anger, and fear, not necessarily in that order.
Those are emotions that require great effort to work against within ourselves. The Germans didn't succeed overcoming them until it was over for them, and then they (most of them) found the way to live normal, healthy, prosocial lives again. Of course, it took WWII and the Marshall Plan to do it.
In other words, I "fear" that we have more of the spiral downwards to go before we can see our way up again. On a positive note, one way or another, we will see our way up again.
Part of how fast we can get our society moving in a humane, kind, and just way again depends on how willing we are to forgive those who are driving us downward in the present.
I'm not suggesting we forgive them now, but in the future when they are willing to see the cruelty, the inhumanity, and the injustice of what they have wrought.
Yes after WWII we did not trample the Germans or Japanese and they built strong democratic societies . I think the fight against MAGA is different because they have plenty of money and power and nothing ti gan form joining civil society
Thank you. My storage tank of words is on the empty line and I’m running on reserve. I’m a fighter and also a yakker. This article just turned a screw in my brain and made me sadder. I’ll be ok, we all will, we just need to keep our eyes wide open and never give an inch! I wonder who is next? I have a sinking feeling that Homeland Security will not leave Minneapolis but send a new crop of thugs into Ohio or Pennsylvania or both. We’ll be fighting on lots of fronts. Midterms can’t come soon enough! 🤞🏽😡💙🇺🇸
you continue to provide the best coverage of the immigration issues of any major media source. You are helping a guy like me, who is mobility bound to understand what the real facts are, beyond the rhetoric. Wish we could clone you.
The trump folk seem hell bent to destroy any institution that our pluralism and democracy need to survive. His 1930s outlook is so much scarier than is portrayed on the nightly news.He is a real and present danger.
Don Lemon, a journalist, recorded a demonstration by protesters in a Minneapolis church. The United States maintains that he violated provisions of the FACE Act by violating the civil rights of worshippers. The First Amendment provides in part that Congress shall make no law...abridging... freedom of the press...Case law regarding statutory construction requires that a court read every federal statute in a way that preserves its constitutionality. The FACE Act conflicts with the First Amendment if it is read to abridge the right of a journalist to witness an event and to report about it. The law cannot be constitutionally applied to Lemon or other Journalists then present, including Georgia Fort, and they cannot be convicted of violating a law that does not apply to them.
These fools don’t think about winning a court case. They know they will loose. The resulting fear that they can put in the minds of ordinary people is the goal.
My guess is that the cases will be dismissed after aggressive pre-trial motion practice.
Yes. But the cost to the defenders, and the turmoil to the community will be what this administration’s wants. The damage being forced on us is the desired outcome.
The Constitution is just toilet paper to the sociopaths in the Executive.
True. The Courts can speak but it won't matter if the Executive Branch refuses to apply the law. Eisenhower and Kennedy used the military to enforce the orders of the Courts in Arkansas and Alabama. We would still have segregated schools without those Executive actions. I attended integrated schools in a mostly white county. The schools had long been integrated because integration was less expensive than building a separate but equal school system for thirty students in grades 1-12.
You have two ideals, power and wealth. Gina, you are correct when you said that building an equal but separate school had to be sacrificed. Unequal, sure. That’s cheaper. But that was becoming less of an option by the 1950’s and 1960’s. JVL said it best “When we do something (fill in the blanks), it’s because we benefit from it.” War is expensive and regressive. Stop wars, save money. Give to charitable organizations, save hospitalizations and incarceration. Assimilation into the culture comes later. And ultimately everyone benefits. Unfortunately this president wants chaos and uncertainty because he benefits, in his twisted mind.
I'm an atheist, but will admit that church buildings have been a sanctuary for people fleeing persecution for centuries.
Until now, with the "Christian" nationalists in charge.
I'm an atheist, too, and I'm reminded of incidents like Oradour-Sur-Glane, 1944, where a church has become a pyre instead of a sanctuary.
ICE has precedent on its side. /s
Adrian, muchas gracias for your deep reporting on this. And for all your reporting on this issue.
Thoughts and prayers always work. Your check is in the mail. The Tooth Fairy is real. Take your pick. YMMV.
So far, there is a tissue paper veneer to this group of lawlessness - “We are only doing our job.” It is said so often, those hearing it go numb. My fear is that the tissue paper is being shredded and soon, there will be no rationalization. These people will want everyone to know that what they are doing is what they want to do. Just like the SS troops under Hitler. Then, we won’t hear that comment until they are on the witness stand, pleading for mercy.
This administration is the most anti-Christian of my lifetime. They are covering themselves in shame. I pray that their inner voices tell them to get out while they still have souls. The Devil is working hard these days.
Don't forget them doming a priest in Chicago