Right wing evangelicals are going even further off the deep end

| 6:00 pm EDT July 5, 2021
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“Politics is becoming religion in our country,” Utah Governor Spencer Cox, a Republican, stated this weekend. Governor Cox is correct, and it’s rare to hear a factual statement from members of the GOP these days. In fact, politics has already become religion for the basest elements of the right wing in this land. Ours is a divided country, and the right has conflated politics with religion in especially ugly fashion. Particularly amongst white evangelicals, we’ve seen a merger of political affiliation and religious affiliation. This is not only unfortunate, it’s dangerous.

It just so happens that for those who’ve erased the lines of distinction between politics and religion, their chosen deity has been shaped in their own image. Their preferred god just so happens to have the same biases and prejudices they have. Their chosen god hates the same people they hate, and this god has the same political identity. It’s uncanny how theocrats have married their religion to their politics, just as it’s striking how their belief system conveniently and conspicuously aligns exactly with that of the deity they’ve created in their own likeness. It’s remarkably opportune that they’d be the chosen ones, with the rest of us left to fend for ourselves and await the dreadful afterlife they’d threaten us with.

This country was not intended to be a theocracy, nor was it founded on the principles or biases of any of the numerous man-made religions. We have a sordid history or racism, imperialism, and colonialism, but our union was never intended to resemble what many on the right wish for our homeland. We need separation of religion and state in the United States, as this push for fascistic theocracy is incompatible with freedom and democracy. As Rep. Val Demings (D-FL) said, “let’s be the America we were created to be.”