A Thank You to All Subscribers
Yogi Berra once quipped: “I just want to thank everyone who made this day necessary.”
I am getting close to 300 subscribers mostly those that subscribe for free with a minority of paid subscribers. But I am really amazed that in the past month over 50 of you have subscribed. While I depend on paid subscribers to help further my work, I appreciate everyone who subscribes and who takes to time to read, comment, restack these articles on Substack, or share them on other platforms. In fact since I don’t believe in paywalls and open the comments section and the ability to restack anyone on Substack, and to share on other platforms. Whether you pay or don’t I appreciate the time you take to read, as well as your comments here, and sharing these articles elsewhere. I hope that because you take the time to read and share that more people will read and subscribe.
As far as those who have commented. I have learned a lot from you and been encouraged when I share my life and things that have helped make me the man that I am today.
So on to something that troubles me a lot is Trump’s attacks on the USAID, charitable organizations, and NGOs. Many of the charitable organizations and NGOs are Christian and parts of Christian denominations or ministries. I read an article by Charlie Sykes this morning that described those attacks, which are truly onerous and dangerous not just against human rights, but against religious liberty that is being used to help others, not for political power. You see the real threat against religious liberty, which is a key component of the Bill of Rights, which is not for Christians to rule over non-Christians, as the MAGA-Christian world holds, but for everyone regardless of the religious tradition, including free-thinkers, agnostics, and atheists. As the great Virginia Baptist John Leland, a friend of both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison who advised Jefferson on the Virginia Statute on Religious Liberty and Madison on the First Amendment to the United States Constitution said:
“The notion of a Christian commonwealth should be exploded forever. … Government should protect every man in thinking and speaking freely, and see that one does not abuse another. The liberty I contend for is more than toleration. The very idea of toleration is despicable; it supposes that some have a pre-eminence above the rest to grant indulgence, whereas all should be equally free, Jews, Turks, Pagans and Christians.”
The link to that article is here:
As most of my long time readers know, I am a retired Navy Chaplain and a semi-retired priest. Those who followed me on my legacy site know how much I champion liberty for all and how much I despise those among the MAGA-Christians, Seven Mountain Domionists, and Christian Nationalists who want to impose their own terrible versions of Christianity on the rest of us.
Likewise, I have supported or worked alongside side many people in various Christian ministries from many traditions that provide badly needed and often lifesaving help to people in the United States and around the world. The ones I know today are aghast at what is happening.
Likewise, the level of greed and grift among Trump’s allegedly Christian supporters, much of it heretical and condemned by the Church for centuries is appalling. It is no wonder that the Church is bleeding people and that most people want nothing to do with Christianity. I have many friends, long time or lifelong conservative Evangelicals and Catholics who have walked away, not because they don’t love Jesus, but because of these very things.
I am afraid of most self proclaimed Christians and of even stepping foot in church. That is the result of a MAGA-Christian who forced me to go through the ordeal of being investigated and threatened with Court Martial over a sermon condemning looking up immigrant children in cages on the border in 2018. The man invented complete lies which were refuted in the investigation, but the effects were traumatic and affect me to this day. I distrust people who tout their faith and am afraid to attend church.
To paraphrase Pedro Ceranno (Denis Haysbert) in the original Major League: Jesus, I like him very much, but he no help with Trump and MAGA Christians.
This week will be busy as I have a lot of tests and papers on the Holocaust from three classes to grade and the papers alone take me 20 minutes to an hour to grade depending on the number of comments and corrections needed, but I will try to write a couple of times this week.
So anyway, thank you, be safe and watch your six.
Steven, first i would like to say that I really appreciate the fact that you have no paywall. in fact, that was one of the reasons I subscribed! It seems to me that many substacks have important messages to put out - and the responses, ideas and encouragements that readers can come up with are being lost because of paywalls. I don't have much money to subscribe, or even time to read, so I have to choose my subs. carefully. To find someone who is prepared to just give it all away is a blessing - I hope more writers follow your good example!
I am not a Christian in any traditional sense, I believe in Christ, I think he existed and his ethical teachings are good for any faith. I also believe he was the Son of God - whatever "God" is - and that we are ALL children of God, touched by the light in some degree or other. "The "Christianity" that is taught by many MAGA preachers would have disgusted Christ - I don't think he would have allowed them space in the temple. When you think that the original Pilgrims came to this country so that they could practise their faith in freedom, one can only conclude that MAGA doesn't spend too much time studying history - or the New Testament. I find it deeply sad, and ironic, that a sect who scream so loudly about "Christian Values!" are the very ones that are driving people away from Christ.
I cannot tell you how sad it made me to read that you are now afraid to go into church. I would suggest that maybe you could find a Quaker meeting house? I know you are Catholic, but God's love is everywhere, and very often I've found a real feeling of his presence in such places. It's often the most obscure and unadorned places that He can be felt. I have spent a lot of time in Italy, and while was amazed by St. Peters, and the Church of St. Francis in Assisi , it was in the crypt of tiny 1,000 year old church in a small village that I felt God's love most. And last week I attended a happy funeral for a 100 year old lady who had been a regular worshipper at another ancient church in an English village, capable of holding 50 people at most, hung about with spring flowers. We stood in the graveyard and sang as she was lowered, and all of us felt blessed for having known her - and for having the church as her final resting place.
Faith is often described as a belief in things you cannot see or prove. I think it is a belief in things you can feel - and there are most definitely places where the presence of great good can be felt. I hope you can find somewhere like that in your life - even if it is only under the branches of some great old tree - which is how the "church" in ALL it's aspects, appears to me. Just unfortunate that some branches appear to be rotten.
You are a joy to read, Steve.