Lex Anteinternet: Sunday Morning Scene. Dominionism and the Department of Defense.

Lex Anteinternet: Sunday Morning Scene. Dominionism and the Departm...: The following was posted by Assistant Secretary of Defense, Sean Parnell: Sean Parnell @SeanParnellASW “Then I heard the voice of the Lord s...

Sunday Morning Scene. Dominionism and the Department of Defense.

The following was posted by Assistant Secretary of Defense, Sean Parnell:

Sean Parnell

@SeanParnellASW

“Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I. SEND ME!’” — Isaiah 6:8

Frankly, this is a shocking association of the US military with religion.
I've warned here that the US is in the thick of an Administration that features individuals in it who who hold minoritarian Evangelical views well outside the mainstream of Christianity, and further that were introduced rather late in Christian history.  Unfortunately, the United States, which is a Protestant country, is basically the epicenter of such views and many Protestants don't realize their views are not held by most of the globes Christians, most of whom are Apostolic Christians.

Included in that set of views, for some, is the concept that Christians can help bring about the Second Coming and, in some quarters, that the United States is a nation directly charged with a Devine Mission.

The military is definitely suffering right now, with some elements of the Navy having morale problems and a war going on which the administration repeatedly claims we've won, but which drags on.  The current hope is that economic sanctions will bring Iran to its knees but none of the predictions about the war have proven correct so far.  

Not one.

One way to definitely end the war would be to commit ground troops.  It'd also be a bloody mess.

These recruiting blurbs do not indicate a commitment to inserting ground troops, but they do demonstrate a frightening mix of religion with foreign policy.  We are not Crusaders and frankly Crusaders would have regarded American Evangelicals as weird heretics.  The fact that the government sends out a message like this should be alarming, and it should be offensive to Christians, Muslims and Jews, all of whom regard Isaiah as a prophet.

Indeed, when Isaiah spoke those words, he wasn't asking to be sent into combat.  He was being sent as a prophet.

The military should never be committed to an immoral cause, but we should not imagine that every time it has been committed the commitment met Christian standards.  None of the military actions taken during the Second Trump Administration do.  They most particularly do not under the reconsideration of the Just War Theory made by Pope Leo.

What Parnell did here is wrong on so many levels.  Christians should be horrified.

The Agrarian's Lament: Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, March 25, 1911. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. Serving as a reminder that Capital doesn't care that much about you.

The Agrarian's Lament: Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, March 25, 1911. The T...: Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, March 25, 1911. The Triangle Shirtwaist... : 146 garment workers—123 women and girls and 23 men, out of a workf...

Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, March 25, 1911. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. Serving as a reminder that Capital doesn't care that much about you.

Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, March 25, 1911. The Triangle Shirtwaist...: 146 garment workers—123 women and girls and 23 men, out of a workforce of 500, died in Manhattan's horrific Triangle Shirtwaist Factory ...

Posted as a reminder that management and capital often really doesn't care that much what happens to labor and regular people.

In 1911, it was textile workers.  In 2026, it's everybody.  You may care, for example, about big oil and big ag, but it doesn't care about you.  It doesn't care that much about you if you are working for it, and you can't be assured that it cares if your children inherit a planet with the surface temperature of the sun.

Oh, sure, there are some that might, on occasion.  But don't fool yourself that Elon Musk, Donald Trump, or Jeff Bezos, and their pals, are pulling for you.

Saturday, March 25, 1911. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factor Fire.

146 garment workers—123 women and girls and 23 men, out of a workforce of 500, died in Manhattan's horrific Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.  Most of the victims were Italian or Jews immigrants 14 to 23 years old.  62 of the victims jumped to their deaths.

The fabric fire in the fireproof building broke out five minutes before end of shift. The doors to the stairwells and exits were locked to prevent unauthorized breaks and to reduce theft

Oh, but don't worry. . . today's oligarchs have your vest interest at heart. . . 

Last edition:

Monday, March 20, 1911. Stolypin resigns, and then is back.

Labels: 1910s, 1911, Czar Nicholas II, Pyotr Stolypin, Russia

Lex Anteinternet: Giving up completely on the GOP.

Lex Anteinternet: Giving up completely on the GOP.: I've noted my political history here before. I'm a Westerner and an Irish Catholic.  That informs my vote pretty heavily. When I fir...

Giving up completely on the GOP.

I've noted my political history here before.

I'm a Westerner and an Irish Catholic.  That informs my vote pretty heavily.

When I first registered to vote Ronald Reagan was President.  Marine Corps Raider veteran Ed Herschler, a Democrat, was the Governor of Wyoming.  D-Day veteran Teno Roncolio, also a Democrat, was our Congressman.  Republicans Malcolm Wallop and Alan Simpson were our Senators.  

That was sort of the political landscape here at the time.   More Republicans than Democrats, but there were still Democrats, and those Democrats tended to be pretty tough conservative people.  Republicans were already tacking off into batshit crazy economic theories but they weren't completely bathed in them yet.

I registered as a Republican.

I didn't stay a Republican for a really long time.  I don't recall when exactly I switched parties, but by the time I was at the University of Wyoming, I had registered Democratic.  I stayed in the Democratic Party for a long time.  I was still a Democrat when I became a lawyer and I know that I was when I was married.  However, sometime after that, I couldn't stand the sea of blood the Democratic Party had become.  I became an independent.

As an independent you missed the primaries pretty much, however, and starting in the Clinton era in general Wyoming Democrats began to drift over to the GOP.  After all, the mainstream of the Democratic Party wasn't all that different from the traditional mainstream of the local GOP.  After awhile, I registered as a Republican.

Little far right Dixiecrats like Chuck Gray like to scream that people like me are "RINOs", when in fact they're the malignant innovation into the GOP.  That element hadn't entered the GOP at the time I was first in it, and didn't for a long time.  Gray himself, who nobody really knew anything about, was probably the first, followed by Jeanette Ward, who served one term in the legislature before losing a bid to retain her seat.  While she lost, that showed the direction things were headed in.  Carpetbaggers who knew nothing about their state moved in and wanted to convert it into pre 1964 Alabama.

It's not as if the Democrats stood still.  As moderate Wyoming Democrats left the party, it too became delusional.  If the Republicans became increasingly fascistic or Dixiecratic, the Democrats lived intellectually in the Greenwich Villages' Stonewall Inn in 1969.  It made going back into the Democratic Party an outright impossibility for people like myself, particularly as they lashed themselves increasingly to abortion and perversion. 

More recently, I'll note, that seems to be wearing off.  The Democrats are still "pro choice", but they don't talk much about it.  For that matter Republicans who were really gung ho on being pro life have sort of lost their fire for that as well, following the lead of Orange Mussolini.

What the Republican Party, nationally, has become is flat out insane.  No thinking person can be a member of it and be comfortable.

There are still good Republicans here in Wyoming.  They began a big fight against the Dixiecrats prior to the legislature and largely prevailed this session, in spite of the fact that the diehard adherents of The Lost Cause were theoretically in control of the solons.  That should give local Republicans who aren't literally whistling Dixie some hope.

But with the current national Trumpites in control, the line has been drawn. 

For years people like Dixiecrat Chuck Gray, or Dixicrat Bextel, have claimed that the Republican Party here was infiltrated with Democrats. Well, it was. They're the Democrats.  Democrats from 1960 Alabama. They just don't know it.  But the screaming lunacy that they've espoused does have an effect after awhile.  Yell at people that "you are a RINO" for long enough, and they'll take it up.

I'm remaining registered in the GOP.  Chuck Gray's efforts to disenfranchise voters has been enough for me in and of itself not to change registrations.  Frankly, if I was to take a run at the House of Representatives, and I've thought about it, I would switch parties as right now that would give a person a place in the November election no matter what.  But I'm not going to do that.  I'm old, worn out, and very tired. 

So I'm remaining in the GOP in no small part so that I can vote for the decent primary candidates, of which there are some right now.

At this point, merely stating that you are "pro Trump" will be enough to cross my vote for you off the list.  At least three House candidates are promising to be Trump's biggest lover, and they're all of the list.  I hope I run into some of them during their campaigns.  I probably will.

And I've already quit giving MAGAs in my midst slack.  Frankly, since the start of the assault on Iran, that's been easy, as the "never war" MAGAs can't explain that one without sounding like hypocrites, and they know it.  Even a few have begun to look as if Valentines to Trump weren't a good idea.

But in the Fall.  I'm not voting for any Republicans for anything.

That won't exactly be easy.  So far here only one candidate from the Democratic Party has signed on to run for a statewide office.  He has my vote even though I like the only Republican whose announced for the same position.  And just because I'm not voting for a Republican doesn't mean I will vote for Democrats.  In my state house district a really decent Republican holds the seat and a young woman from the Democratic Party has announced against him. She's already on the sea of blood ticket.  I can't vote for her, but I won't vote for the Republican I've voted for many times before.

To vote for Republicans in 2026 you have to accept that a low IQ, deranged, octogenarian should have complete dictatorial control over the Federal Government, can start major wars on his own, can demolish parts of the White House as he has the tastes of a bordello owner, can cause the hiding of files on a major pedophile ring, and can have a domestic army occupy the streets.  It also means you have to be willing to sacrifice the environment of the planet for scientific denial.  You have to be willing to endorse lies at a never before seen rate, which makes you a liar yourself if you do. 

I can't go there.

Lex Anteinternet: If you are an Apostolic Christian, and aren't worried yet, you ought to be. Or maybe not. Or maybe.

Lex Anteinternet: If you are an Apostolic Christian, and aren't worr...: The Defense Department hosted a Christmas service at the Pentagon. Now, if you are an Apostolic Christian, as the overwhelming majority of C...

If you are an Apostolic Christian, and aren't worried yet, you ought to be. Or maybe not. Or maybe.

The Defense Department hosted a Christmas service at the Pentagon.

Now, if you are an Apostolic Christian, as the overwhelming majority of Christians around the world are, or if you are a member of a Protestant denomination that is closely based on the Catholic Church, or which even thinks that they are part of it, this service will come across very strangely.  But, as I've noted before, this is a Protestant country and a Protestant county in which the strains of Puritanism are deep.

The services of the Apostolic Faiths, i.e., the Catholics and the Orthodox, go back to the very origins of Christianity.  The Didache was written within a couple of decades of the Crucifiction and it shows Christians doing what Apostolic Christians do right now, which isn't a surprise to Apostolic Christians but which can come as a rude shock to Protestants.  The writings of the Church Fathers do the same.  If you read these text and remain a Protestant, while cutting a little slack for High Church Anglicans and conservative Lutherans, it's just a wilful decision to ignore the first 1,500 years of Christian practice.

But most people don't read those things and so they're going with what they learned as kids, or what they've sort of picked up, no matter how in error or ignorant it may be.  John Calvin, who influenced the Puritans, was flat out demonstrably wrong (and frankly not a nice guy) but most people don't know that if they're in one of the churches influenced by him, and for that matter they don't even know who John Calvin was.

The Puritans, because they were religious dissenters from the Church of England, which had militantly broken off from the Catholic Church in order that King Henry VIII could pursue a string of hopefully fertile bedmates, was not only pretty ignorant, but obstinately so in many ways, as it had a history of fighting with the Established Church.  The Church of Scotland was somewhat as well, particularly in its American form.  All of these churches have declined enormously in Europe while Catholicism has increased, reclaiming lost ground, but in the US their descendants are pretty numerous and strong.

Most Protestants aren't "Evangelical Protestants", but Evangelical Protestantism is really easy for people who want to be Christians without a whole bunch of Christian theology, want to escape the personally difficult aspects of Christian theology, or who just know that there's truth in Christianity and don't know where to go.  The do it yourselfism in them is pretty strong, and some, but not all, of them are pretty good at pointing out the sins of others while simply ignoring their own favorite  ones.  There's a host of ministers in this camp that are personally wealthy or who are married and divorced, and who have even engaged in affairs.  Flat out ignoring the Christian injunction against divorce and remarriage is pretty much the rule in most Protestant communities and it obviously is in some Evangelical ones.  Paula White is on her third husband, for example.  Joyce Meyer on her second.  Missouri pastor Rich Tidwell is a polygamist.

The point isn't to debate on all these topics, setting aside polygamy, Protestant denominations do not have, I think, the process of annulment, which can be controversial in the Catholic Church, and their ministers do not take vows of poverty, but rather the pick and chose nature of things is a problem, and it'll turn on Catholics and is already starting to.

The New Apostolic Reformation is an aggressive backer of Donald Trump and its openly a backer of Americanism.  Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, is clearly aligned with the movement, and it's pretty clear that Secretary of Defense Hegseth falls in this camp.  Hegesth is practically the poster boy for ignorance in this category as he's festooned himself with tattoos that recall the Crusades while not realizing at all that Crusaders would have regarded him as a heretic.  But there he is, all emblazoned with sayings and symbols that properly belong to the Apostolic faiths, while living in what they'd all regard as an irregular marriage.

The same week that the Pentagon service occured Chip Roy took a direct swing at Catholics.

A lot of good Americans give their money to Catholic charities thinking they're helping people, and it turns out they're a part of a vast leftist network that is being used to undermine our country. 

Whether it's the open borders, Soros DAs, Arabella, or the 'Islamification' of Texas and this country—it's organized, and this is one example. Look at the Medicaid fraud up in Minneapolis. It was going to Somalis, and it was literally billions of dollars.

This administration is rooting it out; Congress needs to do more. That's why I called for a special select committee to follow the money of these radical groups. We need to do it.

Roy, who lives in Austin Texas, is a Baptist, something that isn't surprising both because the Baptist are a large Protestant religion in the United States and because Texas is part of the "Bible Belt" where the Southern Baptist are particularly strong.

The Baptists are not part of the New Apostolic Reformation as a rule and have a very large set of differing beliefs on different topics. The reason to note this, however, is that Roy's statement really brings out a certain strain of Protestant Anti Catholicism that's very deep in the country's history.  Setting aside any one thing he's complaining about, a strain of it is that Catholic charities don't seem to care very much where people come from.

And that's because Catholics aren't not supposed to view the world that way.

For the Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked out by any singularity. The course of conduct which they follow has not been devised by any speculation or deliberation of inquisitive men; nor do they, like some, proclaim themselves the advocates of any merely human doctrines. But, inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according as the lot of each of them has determined, and following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers. They marry, as do all; they beget children; but they do not destroy their offspring. They have a common table, but not a common bed. They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. 2 Corinthians 10:3 They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven

Letter to Diognetus.

For many years, the really strong Protestant religions in the US were the "mainline" Protestant faiths, of which the Episcopal Church was the strongest.  None of the Mainline Protestant Churches was friendly with the Apostolic Churches, but they ironically all had connections to it, with the Presbyterian Church having the fewest.  In truth, in spite of the Black Legends of the Reformation they'd spread, they all worried about how they were viewed by the Catholic Church, accepting large elements of the Church's views as correct, and particularly worried about whether they had Apostolic Succession, strongly suspecting themselves that they did not.  People have spoken much about the decline of Christianity in the West, but they've missed two elements of that story to a significant degree, one being that the Catholic church was persistently attacked by Protestant governments during and after the Reformation, and that this yielded to attacks by left wing secular governments thereafter.  The Catholic Church nonetheless endured in spite of all of it, and its' rebounding from that assault.  The Mainline Protestant Churches, however, are simply dying of their own accord.

All along there's been a strain of loosely organized Protestant churches that fall outside of the Mainline churches.  The Mainline Protestant Churches did not worry much about them, but as time has gone on, and the impacts of the death of the Reformation and the cultural revolutions of the Baby Boomers have played out, those churches have grown and are particularly infused with the American Civil Religion, which many barely churched Americans are as well. The New Apostolic Reformation is just a sliver of that set of beliefs, but Apostolic Christians should be concerned.  The Apostolic Faiths are growing in the US right now as people turn towards the truth, but this administration is infused with the NAR which leads to events like this.  Recognizing the Christian origins of the United States is fine, and saying something prayerful at the Pentagon in this season is as well.  But a performance such as this, combined with rumblings from somebody like Roy, should worry us.  Christianity is not an American thing.

Or, perhaps, something else is going on.

The Apostolic Faiths are growing and converts from Protestantism are part of the reason why.  The Mainline Protestant Churches are dying.  Evangelicalism remains strong, but things like this show the marked contrast with the Ancient Faith.  This may all be part of the death of the Reformation playing out before us.

There remains a danger in all of this, however.  There are prominent Apostolic Christians in the National Conservative/Christian Nationalist camp.  People like R. R. Reno, Rod Dreher and Kevin Roberts are founding members, and J. D. Vance is the most prominent politician who travels in that camp.  The views that the backers of people like Mike Johnson and Pete Hegseth hold are not necessarily friendly towards Apostolic Christians at all.  While people in the Reno/Dreher/Roberts camp may rejoice as the seeming defense of Christian values by the administration (and I'm not sure that at least Reno and Dreher, the latter of whom has declared Trump unstable, hold that view), it's making common cause with people who are either inherently hostile to the Apostolic Faiths or, in the case of Trump himself, deeply immoral.  Being such a fellow traveler rarely works out and we'll be turned on.

Related threads:

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 103d edition. The tragic co-opting of death and politics.

Labels: Apostolic Christianity, Catholic, Charlie Kirk, Christian Nationalism, Christianity, Commentary, Fascism, National Conservatism, Populism, Protestant, religion, The Horst Wessel Effect, The Kennedy/Guevara Effect, Weapons

Donald Trump and wolves in sheep's clothing. Attacking actual Christian beliefs and practices. The White House Faith Office and Paula Michelle White-Cain. We warned you.

Labels: Apostolic Christianity, Commentary, Donald Trump, Mainline Protestant, New Apostolic Reformation, Protestant, religion, Sunday Morning Scene, The Second Trump Administration, You heard it here first

An Appeal To Heaven. The 2024 Wyoming Primary

Labels: 2020s, 2024 Election, American Civil Religion, Apostolic Christianity, Catholic, Christian Nationalism, Christianity, National Conservatism, New Apostolic Reformation, Populism, Protestant, Wyoming

The End of the Reformation II

Labels: Apostolic Christianity, Baby Boom Generation, British Empire, Catholic, Christianity, Colonialism, Martin Luther, Protestant, religion, Synchronicity, The Reformation, WASP, Western Society

Confusing politics with religion.

Labels: Apostolic Christianity, Christianity, Protestant, Yeoman's Self Centered Razor