New Yorkers couldn’t even get through the long holiday weekend without discovering some Christian bashing in the pages of The New York Times.
In the July 5 edition of the Grey Lady, Pamela Paul’s opinion piece “Your Religious Values Are Not American Values” was published.
It was illustrated with the Blessed Mother wearing an American flag blouse.
Paul wasted no time getting to the heart of the matter and bashing what some call — including the FBI in a leaked 2023 memo suggesting some “radical traditionalist” Catholics pose threats of violence — Christian nationalism.
The opening paragraph of the opinion piece went like this: “Whenever a politician cites ‘Judeo-Christian values,’ I find it’s generally followed by something unsettling.”
Paul then cites some recent news stories concerning this brewing up of Christian nationalism and labels it as Republican lawmakers being behind the growing Christian movement.
The first case cited was Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry signing legislation requiring public classrooms to display the Ten Commandments.
While the signing may have set Paul off, it appeared that former President Donald Trump’s comment on social media pushed her over the edge. She wrote, “Trump crowed: ‘I LOVE THE TEN COMMANDMENTS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS, PRIVATE SCHOOLS, AND MANY OTHER PLACES, FOR THAT MATTER. READ IT — HOW CAN WE, AS A NATION, GO WRONG???’ ”
The second case she referenced involved Oklahoma’s superintendent of public instruction announcing plans to mandate teaching the Bible in public schools. Paul mentions that the man behind the measure was “a fellow Christian soldier to the Louisiana governor.”
Paul goes on to say, “Despite what the Christian nationalist movement would have you believe, America was not founded as a Christian nation.” Ironically, in her bio on the Times website, she says she studied history at Brown University.
However, while we do have a separation of church and state, America has “In God We Trust” on our currency, and most colonists came to these shores to exercise their freedom of religion.
In her wind-down on the topic, Paul writes, “In their drive to foist their religious beliefs on others or to prove their conservative Christian bona fides, Republicans are leaning harder into exclusionary territory. Prominent and mainstream Republicans increasingly support the tenets of the Christian nationalist movement, which often embeds antisemitism and anti-Muslim views into its creed.”
It is truly heinous that she equates Republicans to festering antisemitism and anti-Muslim points of view. Remember, Paul, your lede dealt with Judeo-Christian values, so your antisemitism charge comes across as sheer pandering.
As a parting shot, Paul is convinced that the conservative-majority Supreme Court often considers its religious beliefs more important than the First Amendment.
There does not seem to be much independent thought in this opinion piece.
It reads as straight-up anti-Christianity with a touch of Republican bashing thrown in for free.