Alabama Chief Justice Tom Parker indicated on the show he was a proponent of the “Seven Mountains Mandate,” an explicitly theocratic doctrine at the heart of Christian nationalism.
Alabama Chief Justice Tom Parker, who wrote the concurring opinion in last week’s explosive Alabama Supreme Court ruling that frozen embryos have the same rights as living children, recently appeared on a show hosted by self-anointed “prophet” and QAnon conspiracy theorist.
Parker was the featured guest on “Someone You Should Know,” hosted by Johnny Enlow, a Christian nationalist influencer and devoted supporter of former President Donald Trump. Over the course of an 11-minute interview, Parker articulated a theocratic worldview at odds with a functioning, pluralistic society.
“God created government,” he told Enlow, adding that it’s “heartbreaking” that “we have let it go into the possession of others.”
This is why I’m talking to you. This is just made a percentage you made up. The politics are so much more complicated and you’re writing off innocent people out of your - justified - personal grievances. Hating your enemies is good (they hate us after all!) but you need to make sure you’re correctly identifying your enemies.
The religious affiliations of adult people in Alabama are as follows: Christian – 86%, Non-Christian Faiths – 1%, Other faiths – 1%, Unaffiliated (religious “nones”) – 12%
Yikes, right? However, we can subdivide this further. Of those Christians, Evangelicals (the ones chiefly associated with the Christian Nationalist political movement) represent 49% of all Christians. Yikes again! They’re almost a majority of all Christians, and Christians are the extremely dominant majority of all people in Alabama. Those are our enemies.
Instead of just giving up on the South we need to unite all the disparate groups against Christian Nationalism and crush them like the cockroaches they are. We can defeat them and we can’t just give up and let them win the South.
We need a new Reconstruction.
Those percentages are meaningless. If I walk into a restaurant and see a guy at a table with 9 Nazis, I see a table with 10 Nazis.
Christianity has 2 groups left; the people who are fascist motherfuckers and the people that condone fascist motherfuckers because they get what they want out of it. That’s 99% of the South. That other 1% are people who need to leave.
I don’t have any inclination whatsoever to engage with the Christians. None. They want to start shit, I’ll be glad to finish it with a fucking smile on my face, but I’m not into fighting the American Al-Qaeda alone and I damn sure don’t have any reason to live amongst them in the meantime because you think I have a duty to do so.
Again, when did I ask you to fight Y’all Qaeda alone? In fact I literally said you’re free to leave and it isn’t your job to stay in the South to fight them in the first place! You keep building up strawmen to attack and I don’t know why.
As to the legitimate point that “If I walk into a restaurant and see a guy at a table with 9 Nazis, I see a table with 10 Nazis.” I think it’s worth pointing out they aren’t at the same table. They don’t go to the same churches, they aren’t in the same social groups, they’re literally different.
I’m comfortable saying all the Evangelicals are enemies but not literally all Christians when some denominations literally have queer pastors and do same sex weddings and the like. There’s clearly different factions and we need to drive deeper wedges between them instead of lumping them together.
Don’t go around making more enemies - we have enough of them.
Let me say this unequivocally so there’s no way to get it twisted; Christians are my enemy. I don’t have a single reason to break them down by denomination to figure out which lunatic sect is better or worse than the others. They are all equally worthless.
Just exactly what are you saying? Because you’ve been trying to guilt trip me about leaving this den of shit bags for the entire thread… Saying I’m “leaving people behind to die” which is incredibly dramatic seeing as I’m still here at present.
And keep in mind, I’ve been behind enemy lines doing my fucking part my entire adult life. There’s nothing else I can do. Not that my vote in a red state did much of anything at all. Exactly what do you expect me to do? Have you never been to Tennessee? They threaten to attack city council members for just asking them to clean up their yards. We’re not talking about some idyllic Southern caricature here. This is a place full of “God Hates Fags” bumper stickers and even the police are scared to pull over people in pickup trucks because they know those people are carrying weapons. This isn’t going to be a boastful march out of town for me. It’s sneaking out under the cover of darkness.
Then let me say this unequivocally so there’s no way to get it twisted. I was objecting, specifically, to when you said “nothing in the bible belt is worth saving”. That’s an incredibly fucked up thing to say and we shouldn’t abandon the innocent people who can’t escape. We should do what we can to save the people worth saving. We should try to find Christian allies that can be aligned against the Christian Nationalists. That doesn’t mean I expect you to personally live in the South, that’d be stupid, I live in Iowa and I’d be a huge hypocrite to demand that of you.
Not you. Us.
But when you say “nothing in the Bible belt is worth saving” you are ignoring the fact that there are people down there that need our help and it’s in our own best interests to help them, because they will be crucial allies against Christian Nationalism. Nothing means no one. Fuck that. There are people in the South worth saving from the South. They’re not all monsters and we need all the help we can get, and they need us too because with the way politics in this country are going the mass lynch mobs and race riots are going to be starting up again very soon.
I understand hating Christians. I did too for many years (I was born in Kentucky) but they’re not all monsters. Christians are literally the majority in the US. You have to grapple with this if you want to win when this cold culture war goes hot. I have not, at all, been guilt tripping you about leaving. Get the hell out of there. I am only angry that you’re saying we should give up on the South entirely.
At the very least, we’re going to need allies for when we reinvade them and force them to go through a new Reconstruction period.