So, a big one that we didn't include yesterday, as it deserves its own post. This may be the most significant post of this thread.
Don't lie and don's support liars.
Everyone has heard the old joke, “How do you know a politician is lying?” The answer. Because their mouth is moving." That stretches the point, but there's some truth behind the joke, as there is with any good joke.
Indeed, we've become so used to politicians lying that we basically expect it. The current era, however has brought lying, as well as truth telling, into a new weird surreal era.
Lying is a sin. It's been debated since early times if it's always a sin, or if there are circumstances in which it may be allowed, limited though those be. If it's every allowable, it's in situations like war, where after all, killing is allowed. Most of us lie, but it's almost always sinful.
In Catholic theological thought, lying can be a mortal sin. It's generally accepted that most lies are not in that category. So, "yes, dear, I love gravy burgers" is not a mortal sin. But lies can definitely be mortally sinful. Lying over a grave matter is mortally sinful, if the other conditions for mortal sin are met.
Donald Trump, whom some deluded Christians refer to as a "Godly Man", lies routinely and brazenly, and this has brought lying into the forefront, even as he's shocked people, rightfully, by following through on some of his promises, but not all, that were assumed to be lies or at least exaggerations. He's advanced lies about who won the 2020 election, and many of his followers have advanced those lies as well. Some people, of course, believe the lies and advance what they assume to be the truth, but some of that is being wilfully ignorant that they are lies.
Of course here, as always, I'm coming at this from a Catholic prospective. I do not accept the thesis that some do that lies can be utilized to advanced something we regard as a greater good. Some hold the opposite view and I'm fairly convinced that some Christian Nationalist politicians hold the opposite view. I frankly wonder, for example, if Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, hold the opposite view. Johnson claims to be a devout Christian and if he doesn't hold the opposite view, based on the lies he spouts, he must despair of his own salvation quite frequently, unless he hold the completely erroneous "once saved always saved" view some Evangelical Christians hold, or if he's a Calvinist that figures that double predestination has the fate of everyone all determined anyhow, which is also a theologically anemic position.
A very tiny minority of Christians hold such views, however. For the rest of us, it's incumbent not to reward lying, and not to advance lies. It's dangerous and destructive to everyone. It should not be tolerated by anyone. And in this era, and for the proceeding several, it's destroying everything.
This series was kicked off on a companion blog, and followed up upon in another one that has a more limited focus. That's why we're posting this one here. I.e., we acknowledge that questions that are important to hunters, fishermen, campers, etc., may not be to the sincerely religious.*
I fear, gentle reader, that this will have a rather long winded introduction, but there's no real way to avoid that.
More than any other era in my lifetime, religion is in the public sphere. In Wyoming, the least religious state in the country, decades went by in which politicians never openly stated anything about their faith. I knew very sincere Catholic politicians who never mentioned that in a race, or while in office.1The same is true of two deeply Mormon politicians I know. If you knew them, you knew that they were Mormons, but they never mentioned it even once in their campaigns.
The same was true of Congressional candidates. There were longserving Congressmen from Wyoming whom I could not tell you anything about their religions. I assume that they were Christians, but it's just an assumption. I'm sure I could look it up, but it's not something you automatically knew.
Well, those days are over, and they're over because radical Calvinists of the New Apostolic Reformation are waging a holy war on American culture, and by extension, effectively on other faiths, including the main of the Christian faith. They're franky fairly open about it.
As part of this, a lot of politicians now wrap themselves in the mantle or religion, claiming Christ and Christianity, and directly interjecting questions of faith and morals into their politics. Prime examples today are people like Mike Johnson, who is some sort of Evangelical Christian and who has the Christian Nationalist Pinetree Flag outside of his office.2 The election of Donald Trump brought to the forefront Christian Nationalist and National Conservatives, movements that were around before Trump but who see Trump as their once in a millenium opportunity.
In that group, moreover, there are two distinct camps. One one hand, you have National Conservatives, a movement defined by people like Patrick Dineen and Rod Dreher and who are often Apostolic Christians looking back basically to the 19th Century. They distrust democracy entirely, and therefore espouse a sort of democracy that can only exist within cultural guiderails. Adherents to their views who are in the Administration or who have close influences on it are J. D. Vance and Kevin Roberts.3
These people are influential, but not as much as the second group.
The second group are radical Evangelicals who are often part of the New Apostolic Reformation. They really only barely tolerate Apostolic Christians and some of them, who are pretty ignorant as a rule on Church history and the early history of the Church, do not regard Apostolic Christians, particularly Catholics, as Christians at all. The standard bearer for people of this mindset was Charlie Kirk, although he seemed to have been evolving steadily towards Apostolic Christianity. Paula White, whom most Apostolic Christians and Mainline Protestants would fine to be a little weird, is the "faith advisor" from this camp who is very close to the Trump Administration. Franklin Graham seems to be in this circle as well.4
The NAR people believe in a theology in which the United States sort of has a status roughly analogous to Israel in the Old Testament. That is, they believe the US has a Devine mission. They're serious about it, and they see the country as a Calvinist country, which is distinctly different from seeing it as a Christian country. The U.S. is definitely a Protestant Country, even though many Americans don't' realize that, and Puritanism still influences it heavily. Teh NAR people would bring Puritanism roaring back.
Christianity has had splits and different views right from the onset. There were early heracies, of course, but there were also local expressions of Catholicism that gave rise to different rights. World events separated the churches from each other, and some of the divisions meant that distant branches of the Church spent long periods in isolation from other Christians. I note that to counter what is so often generally supposed, that being that Christianity was completely uniform at first. That was never true. Christians could certainly recognize each other, and even when long separated Churches came back into exposure with the main they often instantly recognized that they were in contact with other Apostolic Christians, but there were local different. Such differences gave rise to the Great Schism and then, more radically, to the Reformation.
I don't note all of this to try to set out a history of the Church, but to further note here a set of additional divides.
The Catholic Church has divides between orthodox, traditional, radically traditional, and liberal, with the latter camp really falling rapidly away. We won't deal much with the liberal here, as its basically a Baby Boom thing and a product of a misunderstanding of Vatican II. Over time, orthodox thinking has really returned to the Church, to the relief of almost all, and presently orthodoxy is the mainstream of the Catholic demographic, with liberalism sort of an old Priest and old Bishop hold out sort of thing. Orthodox Catholics take their Faith seriously, and look inward at the Church, rather than expect all that much of society as rule. Trads take that one step further, reincorporating some of the things that disappeared with the "spirt of Vatican II". Rad Trads go even further than that, with hostility towards the modern Church.
Politically, sincere Catholics are hard to peg down. Even the Trump administration gives us a glimpse of that. I doubt that Rubio joins Vance for Mass, even though they both go each Sunday and Holy Days. Anyhow, Catholics that aren't protestantized, and many are protestantized, tend towards the middle of things politically, being very conservative on most social issues involving life or gender, but potentially all over the map on other issues, save for one thing. They can't be "America First" or any nation first on anything. They hold Christ first and everything else second, some things a distant second. There's no such thing, for educated Catholics, as an "American church". In that, they hold the same view as St. Thomas More as expressed in his last words before his martyrdom:
I die the king's good servant, but God's first.
St. Thomas More before his execution on July 6, 1535.
The Orthodox are much the same, save for the fact that there really aren't "liberal" Orthodox, although there certainly are unobservant ones due to a loose understanding of mortal sin in Orthodoxy. The interesting thing here is that the Orthodox, who are very traditional on things, have been experiencing an unanticipated influx into their ranks which is changing the Orthodox Churches.
For decades, Orthodox Churches were ethnic in a way that Catholic Churches could not be. Now, many people will note that somebody was "Polish Catholic" or "Irish Catholic", and indeed that meant and means something. But at the time at which such phrases meant the most, it was also the case that the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church said its Masses in Latin, and that meant that the Church was always very much International in nature. Any Catholic Church anywhere, no matter how ethnic its parishioners may have been, always had members who were converts or members of other ethnicities, in the United States as well as elsewhere, and CAtholics were always conscience of that. Orthodox Churches, however, were often extremely ethnic.
The Eastern Rites of the Catholic Church and the Orthodox have, however, seen quite the influx of others in recent decades. In the case of the Eastern Rites of the Catholic Church, the influx started off with Trad Catholics who were seeking a traditional service. That may have continued on, but frankly at the present time the entire Latin Rite is much more traditional than it was even fifteen years ago. Put another way, if you are seeking the traditional in the Latin Rite, it's not very hard to find it.5.
But some Protestants who are fleeing their mainline Protestant Churches as those churches decline, and moreover as they've embraced liberalism, can't bring themselves to go all the way across the Tiber. Many, many do, but some do not. Some of those swim the metaphorical Bosphorus instead.
As they've done that they've brought a much needed widening to the Orthodox Churches, although not always in a way that ethnic parishioners have always welcomed. Churches that were Greek Orthodox or Russian Orthodox have started to become American Orthodox, both figurately and early literally.
In Protestantism, we see some similar things going on.
In the Mainline Protestant Churches we've seen some that have gravitated towards liberalism, and empty pews. Usually in the same denomination there's a pull away back toward their Catholic origin. One of the most Catholic wedding homilies I've ever heard, for example, was delivered by a Lutheran pastor. It was blisteringly orthodox. Entire groups of the Anglican Communion had waded into the middle of the Tiber and waded there.
As that has happened, liberal branches of Mainline Protestant Churches have simply started to die. Indeed, the entire Protestant Reformation is pretty clearly in its death throes. The Catholic Church in much of the ground captured by rebels of the Reformation is gaining ground, including in the United States and United Kingdom. In the same territory, the churches of the Reformation are dying away.
As that happens, however, the radical Reformation churches, those that were the reformation of the Reformation, have held on in their own unique ways. In some instances, they've done so through having a very lightweight adherence to Christ's message. Entire branches of Protestantism don't take seriously much of Christ's message on multiple things, the sanctity of marriage, and its enduring nature, in particular. Most Protestant churches have come around to being completely comfortable with divorce and remarriage, and even multiple mirages, as well as birth control and living together outside of marriage.
While that's happened, on the far political right we now have a revival of hardcore Calvinism, the sort of Calvinism that's really intolerant of anything else. And that's the branch of Protestantism that has the most influence on the Second Trump administration. It's basically at war with American culture.
What those who are religious, or who take religion seriously must do, or even those who simply take the topic seriously must do, is to ask candidates a series of questions, or ask yourself a series. We'll start off, after this very long introduction, with those.
1. Does a candidate who clothes himself in the mantle of religion, in any fashion, live according to the tenants of the religion?
We are seeing a lot of claims by politicians now days that they are religious, or that perhaps some other candidate is. But what's the evidence for this?
The prime example is frankly Donald Trump. Claims that he is a Godly man are simply absurd. The claims that he's some sort of Cyrus the Great are less absurd, but still absurd. He's a genuinely bad man.
You really can't practice serial polygamy and claim that you are some kind of adherent Christian. And while all things are possible with God, having extreme wealth and being focused on it likewise make a person quite unlikely to be any sort of sincere Christian.
I'd start in part with Trump here, not because Trump claims to be a sincere Christian, although he comes pretty close, but because of those who seek to wrap him in the mantle of Christianity. It's simply not credible, and people who assert that seriously shouldn't be taken seriously. In contrast, thsoe who take a more cynical view, that they're advancing some kind of Christianity through an irreligious man, are more credible.
This question is a very sincere one. We have, right now, J. D. Vance, a Catholic, on record supporting IFV, which is condemned by the Church. How can he do that? And he's certainly not the only Catholic politicians who has strayed massively from the tenants of the Faith.
But its not just Catholic politicians. Plenty of Protestant politicians right now claim to be deeply religious, but are they? If they are opently not living according to the tenants of their Faith, what is the reason?
2. What religion are they?
This may sound like an odd one, but right now there's a lot of politicians who cite "faith", or claim a relationship with God, or who broadly claim to be Christian, without saying what they really are. If they make the open claim they need to be asked this question.
The reason is that there are significant differences in the world outlook of various Christian religions. The Wyoming Freedom Caucus, for example, seems to be heavily influenced by NAR type views, which most Christians are not, and which most do not support.
What about Trump, again. He was raised a Presbyterian but has disavowed that, interestingly, as an adult. What is he?
On this, the answer "Christian" doesn't cut it except in the case of the non observant member of the American Civil Religion, who are just sort of vaguely aware that most people in the US are Christians and they are too.
3. Do they actually attend a Church?
There are politicians who might never attend a church. We don't know, for example, if Tammy Duckworth does.6 But we also know that Duckworth does not make her religion an issue. Likewise, we mentioned the other day that one of conservative members of the legislature is Episcopalians, but he doesn't mention religion at all on his legislative biography.
It is not, we'd note, that we're encouraging people to be irreligious. Quite the contrary. But if a person makes being a "Christian" a banner in their campaign, what kind of Christianity do they espouse? The same would be true for any other religions. The new mayor of New York, for example, is a Muslim, but clearly of the branch of Islam, now rare in the Middle East, that was of the progressive tolerant variety.7
The long and the short of this is ,that if politician claim to be a devout member of "Fill In Church" here, but doesn't go, well, that says all you need to know about him.8
4. Do they adhere to the tenants of their religion?
This is a big one, and you are entitled to ask.
It's one thing for a person to say "I'm a ____________". But all religions have the concept of a greater entity. If a person claims, for example, to be a Muslim but slams down a fifth of Jim Beam every night, well. . .
That is, of course, a bad example. But to give more concrete ones Joe Biden was often cited as a Catholic, but supported the seas of blood that abortion results in, as well as the biological abomination of transgenderism. This might make more sense (well actually it wouldn't) if you did not claim to be part of a religion that condemns them, but if you do, it shows that you have weak moral character that you may betray for convenience.
Lest it seems like we are endorsing Republicans by default, Donald Trump, who claims sorme loose association with Christianity, is a moral sewer.
Vance has claimed Catholicism, but backs IVF, which the Church condemns.
But what about your local politician? They may be ramrod straight claiming that they are a member of _______________, but do they live their lives that way? If they claim a faith, you have the right to ask, and demand that they do. Indeed, part of the problem with modern politics is that politicians are allowed to claim a religion on a tribal, but not practice basis.
5. Have they changed religions?
Religious conversions can be sincere or insincere. In contemporary American conversions for convenience are less common than they once were, but they still exist.
Something to consider here is that conversion from no religion into a religion, and then practicing it, indicates sincerity. Also, conversion into a religion that carries they byproduct of contempt for conversion does as well.
For this reason, while I have lots of problems with J. D. Vance, I sincerely credit his conversion into Catholicism. This isn't something that you do lightly, and it isn't like just showing up at a service. To be a Catholic is to endure contempt.
I'll also note that as a Catholic, while I feel that joining a Protestant faith if you are a baptized Catholic endangers your soul, I'll credit sincerity with some who have done so. Mike Pence, who was a baptized Catholic is sich an example. While I feel that his faith journey has been deluded, and I hoep for his return, I believe he's sincere.
On the other hand, a conversion that was one of convenience shows a defect in moral character. Without naming names, I can cite one local politicians who had a Catholic education and marriage, and then became a Presbyterian when a marriage situation suited that. He's probably about as sincere Presbyterian as he was a Catholic, but that's the point. A person whose attachment to the existential is so thin has no attachment to anything that matters at all, as is exemplified by the person I mentioned, who went from middle of the road conservative, to conservative, to MAGA, all with a stern look as if he was paying any attention at all.
5. Why are they citing their religion?
If they are, why?
There's only two possibilities. Either they think it really matters, or they think it matters to you.
That's it.
If they think it matters to you, they're claiming a tribal affiliation, not a moral one, and that should be problematic.
6. Do they think that: 1) this is a Christian nation and 2) it should be a theocracy?
The answer matters.
This is a Christian nation. People who say otherwise are fooling themselves. More than that, this ia a Puritan nation, although that's dying before our eyes.9 Accepting one, without the other, is significant.
Truth be known, this country stopped being 100% Puritan about a week after the Plymouth Rock landing, but it's been a long haul. It wasn't until the Kennedy election that Catholic's really became part of the country. Things continue to evolve.
This being the case, the weltanchaung of the NAR is fundamentally adverse to American culture and, oddly enough, the American Civil Religion. We're not going back, and we're not going back as the NAR is fundamentally wrong.
We're headed in a new direction. That direction can be conservative, but the NAR doesn't reflectd Christian reality, or the message of Christ.
7. Does the candidate advocate or excuse bad things?
It's one thing to be irreligious and advocate a bad thing. It's another to be a Christian.
Invading countries and killing people outside of self dense if deeply immoral.
Killing people, including the unborn, is gravely wrong.
I'd argue avoiding the natural result of human intercourse is as well.
Theft, including of lands, is immoral
Avaracie is immoral.
Right makes might has been a proven failure since day one. Our current President seems to have adopted it. Does your candidate"
8. Does their embrace of religion make you 100% comfortable?
This would depend upon the faith, of course, but basically if you are sitting behind the candidate at Mass and wondering, 'how can he?", well, ask him?
Footnotes
*Although we would argue that if you are not out enjoying and experiencing God's creation in nature, in some fashion, you should be.
1. Highly successful sheep rancher and politician Patrick J. Sullivan, who was Irish born, and a Catholic in Natrona County, supposedly tried to keep his distance from being too publicly Catholic, although that would have been due to the outright hostility to Catholicism in the first half of the 20th Century. He served one year, more or less, as Wyoming's U.S. Senator upon the death of Francis E. Warren.
The unrelated Gov. Mike Sullivan is a devout Catholic who was ambassador to Ireland under Bill Clinton. While his Irish heritage was very well known, pretty much nothing was every said about it while he was in office.
2. Johnson provides an interesting example of what we're discussing here, in that he's from Louisiana. Louisianans will often sort of wrap themselves around a faux Cajun personality to outsiders, but there are really five cultures that are basically naive to the state, Cajun, Creole, Black Creole and Southern White. Johnson is Southern White. This is quite significant in that Cajuns are descendants of Acadians transported there and have a strong French culture, including within it Catholicism. Creole's and Black Creole's are a"mixed" ethnicity in Louisiana, descendants of Cajuns, Spanish colonist, and African slaves. They too have a culture that's heavily impacted by the French, through the Cajuns, but they are not Cajuns. They are also often Catholic. The third group, Deep South Whites, are descendants of English and Scottish colonist in the Southeast, and they're uniformly Protestant, and reflect the post Civil War shift from the Episcopal Church toward the Baptist Church and related Evangelical Christian faiths.
I've only known three Louisianans, and of them, only two fairly well. Two of them were Creole, and one of them was a native French speaker. One was a Cajun and could speak French, and interestingly was a Catholic with a French Jewish background.
As a total aside, these culture are really distinct and have distinct music and even distinct style of dancing.
3. Vance wrote the forward to Robert's book Dawn's Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America. Vance and Roberts are both Catholic.
So, of course, is Marco Rubio, who is a fairly devout Catholic But he's not a National Conservative.
4. I find White to be a little weird, and I have questions about how Christian she really is, given her personal life. I can't stand Graham, and couldn't stand his father either, for reasons I really can't define.
I've been this way, I'll note, since I was a child. One are where I really differ from my father, who grew up without television of course, is that I, who did, basically will never turn a television on until the evening and I never watch TV during the day. Never. My father pretty much turned the TV on as soon as he was in the house. It was just sort of background noise, really. As there were only three television channels locally when I was a kid, that means he'd sometimes turn the TV on and there'd be some Billy Graham revival, and he'd just leave it on. I couldn't stand Billy Graham and I didn't like him being on, even though I probably was only ten years old or younger at the time.
5. Thirty years ago I probably could have counted the women I'd see at Mass wearing a mantilla with one hand and have fingers to spare. Now it's becoming common, and even with preteen girls. There have been restrictions on the Traditional Latin Mass, but most typical Catholic Masses now would rival any High Church service that Episcopalians might choose to hold.
6. She was raised a Baptist, but is intensely private about her religious beliefs.
7. The world's most oppressed religion, Judaism, seems uniquely exempt from this in some ways. Secular Jews get tarred with the same brush as highly religious ones, while on the flip side, at least in contemporary America, opposing somebody simply because they are Jewish remains intolerable. Having said that, the prejudices that have resurfaced under the Trump Administration now make this statement suspect, as openly hating Jews because heya re Jews has returned (openly hating Catholics because they are Catholic will not be far behind).
I'll also note that I've heard open contempt for the Mayor of New York, simply because he's Muslim. But then, at the same time, at least two members of Congress have received open contempt for the same thing, with one receiving contempt from Donald Trump seemingly because she's a black African.
8. I'll note that Mike Johnson, who at one time compared himself to a Biblical Patriarch, is on record as being too busy to alway attend church.
This is baloney. I've, to my regret, often worked seven days a week, but I make Mass. I'd gladly exchange my role with Mike's.
9. Wihtin a generation, for multiple reasons, this will be a Catholic country.
H.E. Buechner’s proposed Wyoming state seal. The next two prosed ones featured topless women. One was briefly adopted by a Governor, who liked the topless figure, but a lot of people weren't too keen on it.
This is the main university that educates our kids in Wyoming. They don’t have three other choices like they do somewhere else. This is what we have. This body is sending the message to the people of Wyoming, our own people, ‘Don’t stay here. Don’t come here.’”
Ogden Driskill.
Driskill is exactly correct. This is what he was discussing:
I want to first note that I've really struggled with this entry, as I didn't want to sound condescending. I've probably failed, but I don't mean to be, if I have.
Thing is, I think the WFC, which is responsible for this looming disaster, is a bit condescending.
I was in attendance of a gathering of legislators this past week, most of whom were experienced legislators outside of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, one new member who was outside of it, from a teaching background, and horrified by what they were doing, and one new member who was clearly way out to sea and three was a demeanor perhaps best characterized by ultra befuddlement. One of the long time members of the salons, in referencing this story, let slip the truth in full, before retreating on it. He noted the members of the Joint Appropriations Committee are largely new, now that the WFC has seized control of the legislature, which is against the norm, and that they aren't from here.1 Some, he noted "haven't even been to university", before he went on to qualify that as being fine, "but".
Not all of these people are members of the Freedom Caucus, but a majority are. Driskill isn't and Sherwood definitely isn't. Bear, Allemand, and Pendergraft are.
What does the Freedom Caucus have against UW?
They favor ignorance.
That no doubt sounds harsh, and it is, but it's very much the case.
Spend any time around Wyoming Freedom Caucus members at all, and you'll find that they are generally poorly educated themselves, or they have very narrow educations. That doesn't mean they are dumb, although at least one of these guys is about as sharp as a spoon. Those who are educated, were not educated here, although quixotically, John Bear, who is a major figure in this movement, was educated at CSU and has a degree in economics.2
You can generally figure out how these by looking up their legislative biographies and doing a slight bit of digging. Take, for example, the well respected conservative, but not Freedom Caucus, Driskill:
Campbell, Crook, Weston Counties Republican
Senate District 01: Senator Ogden Driskill
Leadership:
2023-2024 President of the Senate
2021-2022 Senate Majority Floor Leader
2019-2020 Senate Vice President
Years of Service:
Senate: District 01, 2011-Present
Spouse:
Rosanne
Children:
3
Grandchildren:
3
Education:
Hulett High School-Diploma, 1977
Casper College-AA, 1980
University of Wyoming-,
Occupation:
Rancher and Tourism
Civic Organizations:
Wyoming Stockgrowers Assn
Partnership of Rangeland Trusts
Land Trust Alliance
Bear called Driskill a "doofus" the other day, which is particularly unwarranted. Driskill is pretty far from a "doofus".
Driskill went to Casper College and obtained an associates degree, and apparently attended, but did not graduate from, the University of Wyoming. He didn't list a religion, but a little digging reveals he's an Episcopalian.
Let's look at another 1977 high school graduate, Bill Allemand, who is in the WFC.
Natrona County Republican
House District 58: Representative Bill Allemand
Years of Service:
House: District 58, 2023-Present
Birthplace:
Casper, Wy
Children:
4
Grandchildren:
6
Religion:
Christian
We have a "don't vote for list" coming out, and Allemand is on it. He's anti access to public lands. Based on a recent news story, he has an odd relationship with alcohol, as he was picked up for drunk driving and indicated, according to the news, that he says he drinks while driving to address stress, or so the newspaper stated he stated.
Anyhow, no education is listed at all.
His campaign site notes he graduated from high school in 1977 and moved to Kansas to run a trucking company. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's a pretty narrow weltanschauung that might give you. No spouse is listed, which probably represents a divorce, although he could be widowed. He lists his religion as "Christian".
Allemand was one of the legislators who revealed to have been given a script for a hearing this past week, with that being excused on the basis that he's green in the legislature.
He's on his second term. . .
Let's look at the Democrat.
Albany County Democrat
House District 14: Representative Trey Sherwood
Minority Caucus Chairman
Leadership:
2025-2026 House Minority Caucus Chairman
2023-2024 House Minority Caucus Chairman
Years of Service:
House: District 14, 2021-Present
Religion:
Lutheran
Education:
Leadership Wyoming-, 2009
University of West Georgia-Public History/Museum Studies, 2004
Piedmont College-History/English, 2001
Occupation:
Director, Laramie Main Street
Civic Organizations:
Laramie Public Art Coalition
Trinity Lutheran Church
Hmmm, she has two degrees focusing on history, and she lists her religion as Lutheran.
Okay, what's up?
Well, with the Freedom Caucus people we tend to find that they're not well educated, or that they have very narrow educations, although there are exceptions, such as Bear. And they tend to list their religion as "Christian".
So am I "anti Christian"?
Not at all. I am a Christian. But what I find interesting about these listings is that what they tend to mean by Christian doesn't mean being a member of the Church founded by Christ or one of the original dissenting churches that recognized the Catholic Church as the original Church, as the Lutheran Church, Presbyterian Church, Episcopal Church and Methodist Church all did, but sought a reformation of it, by their claims, but rather being a member of a Church that claims a Christian view and was founded by an identifiable human being, who was probably an American or where the church was highly developed inside the U.S.3
Take John Bear, for instance, one of the exceptions, as he's well educated. A while back I read a story on him, which included a terrible tragedy his family endured (and it was terrible). It noted he's a member of the Evangelical Free Church. The The EFCA was formed in 1950 from the merger of the Swedish Evangelical Free Church and the Norwegian-Danish Evangelical Free Church Association, so it has its roots in Scandinavian Protestantism outside of the Lutheran Church, the latter of which was the official state religion up until after World War Two, and which was imposed upon the Scandinavians by force against their will (they wanted to remain Catholic). Indeed, the Swedish Evangelical Free Church is a Baptist Church and all Evangelical Free Churches adhere to Radical Pietism It's what adherents of its sort of views call a "Bible Believing Church" which means that they reject the first 1500 years of Christianity largely because they are unaware of it and therefore, ironically, they do not believe in all of the Bible.
Let's look at another WFC member:
Campbell County Republican
House District 03: Representative Abby Angelos
Years of Service:
House: District 03, 2023-Present
Birthplace:
Buffalo, WY
Children:
3
Religion:
Christian
Education:
Wright Jr Sr High School -, 1998
Occupation:
Women’s Ministry Director
Again, no education listed save for high school, and religion is listed as "Christian".
The charmingly named Angelos would suggest that somebody in her husband's family was Greek, but apparently lost their faith in the Apostolic faith somewhere along the way, which is a danger in the Orthodox community as it does not seem to share the Catholic canon of mandatory attendance. It's also a marked feature of the agricultural community, quite frankly, as it was difficult for isolated ranchers to attend Mass or Divine Liturgy, and so they lost their original faith or became very loose in adherence to it.4 In its place a sort of loosely organized Christianity sprang up, with many Christian tenants ignored not really grasped.
John Ford gave a really nice portrayal of Western frontier Protestantism in The Searchers, even though Ford was Catholic. Indeed, he gives a nice and very sympathetic portrayal of it in several films, with this one being the best perhaps for the simple reason that the Ethan character in the film is irreligious. Another really good one is given in Sam Peckinpah's Major Dundee, in which the Protestant minister is one of the combatants. Peckinpah was raised in a very strict Presbyterian household. Wayne, who became a very late in life Catholic convert, was in another frontier minister film that does a good job with the topic, The Shepherd of the Hills. In any event, Ford's observations are very keen i the way that only somebody who is religious themselves can be about another religion.
Digging in a little shows Angelos to be a member of Gillette's "Family Life Church", which claims to be "non denominational" even though there's utterly no such thing. So, no doubt, it's a "Bible believing" do it yourself church that likely has a very poor understanding of Christian history, theology, and perhaps even Christianity. Indeed, it's website claims its "Christ centered" which any Christian church would have to be without claiming to be.
Here's another example:
Laramie, Platte Counties Republican
House District 04: Representative Jeremy Haroldson
Speaker Pro Tempore
Leadership:
2025-2026 House Speaker Pro Tempore
Years of Service:
House: District 04, 2021-Present
Birthplace:
Wheatland
Spouse:
Lori Haroldson
Children:
2
Religion:
Christian
Education:
Bismark State College-Power Plant Technology, 2006
Global University -Biblical Theology , 2016
Occupation:
Pastor
Civic Organizations:
Platte County Chamber of Commerce Chairman of Board
Rural Advancement Board Member
Platte County Ministerial Association former President
Haroldson is a WFC member. He has an education, but it's basically a technical school type education, which is definitely an education, but not a liberal arts education. He's an Assemblies of God pastor, which is a Pentecostalist "Bible believing" Protestant Church that's popular, for some reason, with rural communities.
Um, okay, so what?
The first real attacks I heard on the University of Wyoming were by the fellow who caused this event to come about:
I guess that's not entirely true, as the movement that caused Kirk to show up was active before that. Frankly, it was mostly amusing at first, as it was a collection of young (men) people who organized to complain about how liberal the University of Wyoming was while attending it. The prime mover of that organization is somebody I heard holding forth in a casual setting once, addressing a group of people he assumed to be uneducated, and he really held forth on how liberal professors were poisoning the minds of young people, a common theme of people in the Kirk orbit.5
Now, there's a lot to dig into this group of folks and their overall world outlook.6 We'll do that elsewhere, and that doesn't relate to this at all.
So, what's the point?
Just this, while individual members of the Freedom Caucus are educated, or are not members of a do it yourself sort of poorly catechized Christianity, that theme runs through the entire group, and it runs through the entire Charlie Kirk branch of Protestantism. And as they are poorly educated in general, to include religion, they don't trust education, as its adverse to what they want to believe.
Educated people generally have open minds, which does not preclude them from being conservative. William F. Buckley, for example, or George F. Will, are certainly well educated and conservative. Generally, however, educated people are more likely to embrace some ideas that are "progressive" or "liberal", or which are neither but which people very entrenched on the right regard that way, or they are at least likely to have nuances or exhibit tolerance.
A good example of that with well formed Catholics is is that climate change is caused by humans and we need to do something to arrest, and reverse it. You can definitely find well educated people who dispute this, although it's a declining number.
It gets confusing when you get to social issues, which is why I think we've seen Catholic fellow travelers with some of these groups, who are not part of these groups.7Abortion is a good example. Catholics have been opposed to abortion since day one, but how have been joined by right wing protestants. A lot of well formed Catholics are also opposed to the death penalty, and have been for a long time, but you won't find this to the case with right wing Protestants as a rule.
And we could go on and on. Lots of "conservative" Catholics are also pretty concerned about the environment, which puts them on the left in that area. Plenty of Catholics have real formed opinions against starting wars, any war, which also puts them on the left, although that's not universally true. You won't, however, hear Protestants debating on whether a particular action comports with the Just War Theory.
And finally, as a rule, Catholics are huge on education. The Big Bang Theory, after all, is our idea, as is the roots of the theory of evolution. Quite a few people in the far Evangelical right would insist that those are fibs.8
In short, some of the things taught in universities, but certainly not all, run contrary to what the far right of the Evangelical movement holds, particularly, but not exclusively, in regard to science. Indeed, this very topic comes up frequently for Catholics as somebody will ask us if we believe in science or religion, and we look baffled, and say, well, both, which is true. The far right in Evangelicalism however, can't. And because the evidence in science is frequently irrefutable, it does in fact cause a crisis for those who are deep into it when they start to study it.
That's not all of it however.
In the debate on hacking money away from the UW block grant, it was clear that, in spite of what was said, that the feeling was that UW has some liberals lurking in the woodpile that need to be smoked out. Indeed, this is so much the topic of far conservative angst that the very conservative Claremont Institute has published an entire article on it. There are specific courses that they detest, often having to do with things they regard as Woke, and they don't like Wyoming Public Radio, which is housed at UW. One of the legislators, Haroldson, compared it to Pravda, which is absurd, but which reflects a long held conservative distaste for media and general and public media in particular, as they regard it as biased. It's regarded that way as its reporting is straightforward and it'll cover unpopular topics.9]
You won't find too many Freedom Caucus members listening to NPR's Science Friday.
In contrast, you will find some, I'd guess, that listen to an Evangelical radio station in Casper which unironically runs a really long item by a guy who is adamant that the world is only 5,000 or so years old and who likes to go to National Parks and confront the science lectures of Park Rangers with that. He conceives of them being overawed, when in fact it's clear that they think he's an anti scientific nut.
And that gets to the heart of it in general. Folks in the Freedom Caucus are afraid of education, as people learn that the world isn't 5,000 years old, that evolution is real, and that climate change isn't a fib. They can't stand that as it deeply upsets their world view. Evolution, the age of the Earth, and climate science aren't a threat to Catholics, the Orthodox, or mainline Protestants as they accept that faith can be informed by science. It is a a deep threat to "Bible believing" Christians as they can't reconcile any of those things with the literal text of the Bible, even though they're perfectly content to flat out ignore big chunks of the Bible that Apostolic Christians in fact take literally.
The other thing that these groups are flat out ignorant on is history.
This often comes through in economic debates or in campaigns. Listen to them, even though most of them aren't from here, Wyoming came about when hardy pioneers crossed the barren plains and carved out a civilization from the raw wilderness.
Which is bull.
Well, not completely bull, but at least partially bull.
In reality, Wyoming was a major benefactor of the American System in which the Federal Government heavily invested in the economy to give private enterprise a start. The US removed the original inhabitants of the land by armed force, subsidized the building of the railroads, guarded the trails with Federal troops, and gave away land with bare minimum proof of effort. In 2026 the US would never do any of that, but its legacy, including the completely absurd legacy that the owners of land that was given away solely for agricultural purposes now own the minerals, including the oil and gas, below where the grass grows.
Now, I'm a huge fan of history, including Wyoming history, and I'm an agriculturalist as well as a lawyer, and I wish I'd lived back when you could homestead. More than that, if I could have lived when free and company trappers were the only European Americans out here, I would have loved to have done that. But none of that should mean that we take a They Died With Their Boots On view of history let alone our own state. Frankly, the repeal of the Homestead Act after Franklin Roosevelt saved the state and made it was it is, and we ought to be grateful.
Finally, the other thing that's going on is a guerilla campaign in the Culture Wars. College campuses really are more liberal than any other American institution, followed probably only by the Bar.10 Even this, however, isn't very uniform.
As noted here before, I came up in the sciences. By and large, people in the sciences couldn't, at the time, be characterized as left or right. I've heard that certain Charlie Kirk acolyte rail against "liberal professors", but that's because he was a political science major. Who did you think you were going to find there? Other than sociology, that's no doubt the most likely to be left wing major that there is. It's also a major that only leads to teaching or the law, so in a way its a self refining pool of people. People with political science degrees will generally find that the professors are center to left of center. Lawyers as a rule are center to left of center, even if they didn't start out that way, as they have to work with real people. Far right lawyers, of which there are some, aren't going to probably do very well in a profession where your clients are basically in the category of desperately needing help.
Universities, it might be noted, have become more liberal since the Second World War, that being another impact of WWII that I failed to note in my large post on that topic. The reasons were several fold, the first being the massive government investment in universities, which were providing necessary technological knowledge, and manpower, as universities were training needed professions as well as directly training officers. An officer during the Second World War was much more likely to have come out of a university than a military academy. This relationship kept on right after the war and it still exists today.
But beyond that, the GI Bill sent thousands of men to universities who would never have otherwise gone.
All of this created a new condition in which universities started taking in government money, and then became dependent up on it to a degree. It shifted the center of gravity in various academic fields, but not all of them, away from liberal arts degrees that were fairly narrowly focused to much broader ones. This expanded existing degree programs as well. Having said all that entirely new fields were not created anywhere as much as people like to think. CU, for example offered political science classes all the way back to the 1910s, although the department was created in 1957.
So here's the one area that they have a point on. In some fields, not all, some professors, not all are fairly liberal, because that's where they can find a professional homes. Prior to World War Two, and even more, prior to World War One, that's where a certain type of tweedy right wing academic found a home, funded as it were by old money that funded the universities. Now it's sort of flipped.
But how many professors is that really?
My academic experience is quite a while back, but even at that time some of the things the populist right regards as "woke" were around. I don't think I had a single undergraduate professor that I'd regard as left wing, but then again, my major was in a hard science. In law school I can think of a single professor that I'd regard as slightly left of center, but there were quite a few students who were very left of center. Those students were in the political left when they got there.
Indeed, thinking again of my undergraduate years, just after the Siberian land bridge closed, there were a fair number of students in the hard sciences that were left of center. I'd guess that there was probably a single student I knew, a grad student, who was definitely in the political right. Most of the rest of us were not.
And that's some the Freedom Caucus needs to consider.
It wasn't our university education that made us geology students slightly left of center. Were were slightly left of center going in. That doesn't mean we were flaming radicals either, I'd note. But we weren't right wing populists. We were pretty cautious, as budding scientists, about right wing views on many things, and now that I'm approaching four decades out, my views have returned to the same as they were on politics for the most part. Indeed, they've evolved hardly at all there. They have evolved on social and religious views, where I've become more conservative over time, but at the same time, I've become more learned on the same topics, which has driven that.
Which is why the Freedom Caucus needs to get a little education itself. It's grasp of the history of the state and its economics is abysmal. They need more of the opening of Red River and all of Little Big Man and less of the end of They Died With Their Boots On.
The University of Wyoming is the state's only four year college, in part because it fought tooth and nail to keep there from being any others. Hurting UW is an ignorant thing to do.11
You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd.
Flannery O'Connor.
Footnotes
1. While I'll note in this that most of the members of the WFC are ignorant in one way or another, they're certainly not stupid, and they're doing what contestants for the English crown used to do in the early Medieval period. They've seized the treasury, and therefore are, they hope, in control.
2. Bear is a CSU graduate and Navy veteran. He's originally from Missouri.
3. They would no doubt not see this, this way, but that's because they tend to be unaware of the highly developed written history of the early Church and the vast number of writings from it.
4. This is very common in the West and I've known some Catholic ranching families that lost their association with the Church in just this fashion. After a time, they don't even know that a generation or two back, they were Catholic.
This sort of thing is described in Patrick McManus' memoir in which he notes that his family lived so far out in the sticks that he was actually relatively advanced in years, age 4 or 5, before he was ware that his family was Catholic. He did remain Catholic.
5. It turns out that he was pursuing a political science degree with the goal of going to law school. It's amusing in part because political science professors tend to be liberal and come by it naturally. If you have Francoist views, as this fellow turned out to have, you aren't going to be a poly sci professor. Lawyers are, moreover, almost uniformly left of center to center, so he's setting himself up for an unhappy life.
6. The real exception to all of this is Rachel Rodriguez-Williams, who is a well educated Californian and a Catholic.
But this in and of itself is interesting. I'd defer to Fr. Joseph Krupp on this, who has discussed how for many years the pro life movement was exclusively Catholic, and then all of a sudden protestant groups started showing up. It had an influence on Catholics in that movement, which ironically helped fuel the Trad movement, although its certainly not the sole reason for it.
Catholics who are fellow travelers with Evangelicals in politics are really naive on what that means as many of these "Bible Believing" Protestants have no clue whatsoever that the Bible is a Catholic book or that Catholics are the original Christians. Rooted in the Black Myths, many of them instinctively really hate Catholics, which will come back to haunt Catholics at some point.
7. See footnote 1.
8. The US is a Protestant country, however, and you can find plenty of Catholics who have adopted heavily Protestantized views on nearly anything, often unthinkingly.
9. The comparison to Pravda is not only absurd, but ironic given that the news organs of the Trump regime might be fairly compared to the Volkische Beobacher.
10. You'll find a lot of conservative lawyers out in the practicing lawyer world, but you won't find very many MAGA ones. There are some, but they're a minority.
Interestingly, when Liz Cheney got into trouble with the electorate here because of her views, the lawyers were really in her corner. I never heard a single lawyer criticize Cheney, and lots of them were very vocal in their support of her. I'd get rare comments from out of state lawyers, who were usually surprised by the stoney silence such comments made, assuming as they did that all Wyomingites hated Cheney.
Lawyers never did, and for that matter, most professionals didn't either. That's still the case, and frankly most of the professional community, including ardent conservatives, are not happy with any of the state's Congressional delegation.
11. For years I thought I saw this coming, I'd note, but not where it actually came. I thought it'd be the law school that would get attacked.
Law schools tend to regarded as liberal by default, and populists tend to hate the law as it restrains them from doing what they want to do, right up until the forces of nature whip around on them and they need protection from the law. Frankly, I fear we're getting there very quickly as Trump's unhinged nature is starting to provoke violent resistance to his programs, and the populist insurrection on January 6, 2020, has given Trump's most radical opponents a blueprint. If the cabinet or Congress doesn't force Trump into the nursing home soon, I suspect very soon that the administration may experience its own January 6 event.
Anyhow, I thought for years that the legislature would turn on the law school, but it hasn't. It might be because, up until very recently, there were quite a few lawyers in the legislature.
That's no longer true, and the lousy quality of some of the legislation that gets passed shows that. Lawyers belong in the legislature. Indeed, there's been a recent effort by some of the legal associations to recruit them back into it, without much success.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
Anyhow, the law school probably averted this by doing a good job of making itself irrelevant. The UBE has really damaged it, and the practice of law in Wyoming in general.
