Update: 5/4/24 Religious affiliation is another large determinant influencing voters' decisions besides race that overwhelms political critical thinking. It did not used to be that way. I am a white Christian protestant who belongs to a mainstream traditional church, and sometimes I wonder where some of the theology that has nothing to do with the bible I read comes from. I grew up in the "bible belt," where the goal was to get more believers in faith preached in a particular denomination..Now it has become, get more Trump supporters because he is the second coming. So, I listen.
Update: 4/1/24
From my facebook posting:
Christian Nationalists are waiting in the wings for the second coming of Trump as they seek to get even more political power to make their theocracy become a reality. https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/20/donald-trump-allies-christian-nationalism-00142086 They are already in positions of political power and are making plans to implement their movement by using the government to do their converting on their behalf. They are already planning to ride on the skirts of MAGA into the White House which will give them access to all of the reins of power. Those part of the Christian Nationalist movement like Speaker Mike Johnson, were third in line to the presidency. advocates theology that has something in common with the Taliban of Afghanistan that sets medieval rules and uses government to enforce what they believe is acceptable and unacceptable behavior in all phases of citizens' lives, private or public, MUFTIC FORUM BLOG: The GOP is becoming the American Taliban?
The most recent realization of the Christian Nationalist extremist to use government power to force the vast majority of women to bow down to their ideology is banning in-vitro fertilization. in the meantime, the state gets an F in infant and maternal mortality. https://www.marchofdimes.org/peristats/reports/alabama/report-card
So far as education is concerned, Alabama ranks near the bottom, number 45, as well, in the rankings of states. https://wallethub.com/edu/e/most-educated-states/31075
Alabama also ranks as the 49th lowest state in per capita income. https://www.statsamerica.org/sip/rank_list.aspx?rank_label=pcpi1
Alabama ranks in the top ten states depending upon federal funding as part of their state budgets. https://www.moneygeek.com/living/states-most-reliant-federal-government/
The Alabama ban on invitro fertilization is a backdoor attempt to say life begins with an embryo, not at viability. It lays to groundwork for banning any pills taken early in the abortion process and even to ban contraception. " In all, fewer than 15 percent of fertilized eggs will result in a birth..” per the National Institues of Health. Frozen eggs are potential human beings but rarely become actual ones until it is implanted in a human and develop successfully. Jul 14, 2020 per the National Institute of Health. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7670474/#:~:text The logic escapes me: ban the potential of birth by those who supposedly treasure life. The assumed purpose however is to get the Trump dominated Supreme Court to rule their way to pave the way government to control even more of reproduction rights
From a November 2. 2023 blog posting: I am grateful I do not live in a theocracy. When we became a nation with the adoption of the Constitution, the separation of church from state was at the top of the list of the Bill of Rights. The First Amendment to the Constitution clearly says the government cannot establish a religion, the foundation statement of the separation of church and state. ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ") The Christian right has been active in narrowing the interpretation of the First Amendment, and the Christian nationalist movement has made it a goal to eliminate this separation altogether. Even Jesus referenced separating loyalties from government and God on matters of taxation.: "Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and to God the things that are God's" (Matthew 22:21 NASB).
How freedom of religion came to be in the Bill of Rights was because of the diversity of experiences in the original colonies. The pilgrims famously sought religious freedom to practice their own brand of Christianity, but it was freedom for them, not everyone. Some colonies like Massachusetts had established state religions with results we ought to remember, such as Salem witch hunts, hanging or burning at the stake of heretics, The Scarlet Letter, and Puritan overreach causing breakaway founding of Rhode Island by Roger Williams for religious freedom. The success of the Virginia and Pennsylvania colonies not having a state-sponsored religion had been triumphant in keeping internal peace. Fresh in the founders' knowledge of English and European recent histories were centuries of war between protestants and Catholics, the root of many conflicts.
