The so-called Public Broadcasting Service is anything but a “service” to Republicans. Tune in any night of the week. As a whole, Republicans are extremists; Republicans are insurrectionists; and Republicans are terrible, racist, sexist Christians.
On Oct. 11, the “PBS NewsHour” warned all about the threat of right-wing “Christian nationalism” and what it means for the midterm elections. Anchor William Brangham reported, “A growing movement led by right-wing politicians is increasingly challenging a centuries-old value of America’s political system: the separation of church and state.”
PBS ran clips of Republicans Kari Lake, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Doug Mastriano, Dan Cox and Ron DeSantis all speaking about drawing on their religion in public life or how, as Boebert said, “The church is supposed to direct the government. The government is not supposed to direct the church.”
Media liberals hate the idea that Republicans lean on religion for their political ideas. They are so aggressively for separating church and state that they almost think religious conservatives shouldn’t be allowed to vote, since they’re a threat to democracy — or at least to the Democrats.
The “NewsHour” found an agreeable expert for their secular feminist worldview. It was a professor of gender studies named Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of the book “Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.”
Christians apparently don’t corrupt a faith when the Rev. Raphael Warnock runs for office as a “pro-choice pastor,” or when politicians embrace a “religious left” that pushes amputations of breasts or penises as “gender-affirming care.”
According to Du Mez’s book, this macho John Wayne heresy means that conservative white evangelicals allegedly link the gospel to “patriarchal authority, gender difference, and Christian nationalism, and all of these are intertwined with white racial identity.”
On PBS, Du Mez offered the bizarre theory that conservative Christians shouldn’t feel embattled in today’s secular and “woke” culture, that they are somehow dominant in America. “Even though they are in the majority and even though they have a lot of cultural and political power, they will continue to insist that they are actually the ones who are embattled,” she said. “Therefore, what choice do they have but to be ruthless and to seize power?”
PBS anchor Laura Barron-Lopez naturally turned to Jan. 6 to associate all conservative Christians with rioting: “We saw a lot of Christian imagery in the crowd on Jan. 6, when rioters stormed the Capitol, and faith being used to justify violence there.”
Du Mez briefly expressed that not all Christians supported violence at the Capitol. But then she gave PBS what it wanted. Yes, “more extreme versions of Christian nationalism, we do see a correlation between the idea that America has a special destiny, and it’s a destiny that’s under threat, and it must be protected. We see connections between that and a willingness to use violence.”
Barron-Lopez cited a University of Maryland poll that 61% of Republicans would favor an official declaration that the U.S. is a Christian nation, “but, also, a majority of Republicans understand that doing so would be unconstitutional.” One can cite Pew polls that 63% of Americans identify as Christians — a Christian nation — without canceling the religious freedoms in the First Amendment. A significant chunk of those self-identified Christians are not conservative at all.
But PBS and Du Mez are preaching to the liberal choir that the Christian right is a menace that is eroding democracy and pushing “voter suppression” somehow. There’s no conservative counterpoint to this midterm messaging on taxpayer-funded TV. That’s somehow not eroding democracy.
Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Tim Graham and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
DEFUND PBS and use the funds for the POLICE.
Agreed. PBS was made when there was only TWO or Three news channels. WITH over a dozen now, WE NO LONGER need them.
“A growing movement led by right-wing politicians is increasingly challenging a centuries-old value of America’s political system: the separation of church and state.”
What these disgraceful, demonic, immoral, socialist Democrats are trying to Con you into thinking that if an elected public servant has Christian moral values and does not follow the ways of Satan. Then they are an enemy of the government.
BUT…..
To fully advance the Lying, Treasonous, Demonic, Woke, Socialist Democrat Party’s destructive beliefs and agendas is to divide our citizens with hate and promote – racism, open borders, radical feminism, abortion-on-demand, the LGBTQ lifestyle, unfettered sexual identity, transgender, same sex marriage, child indoctrination into sexual confusion and perversions, the pagan Liberal left Democrats must do away with GOD, our Constitution, common sense, morality, Christian values and free religious exercise altogether.
Under the Disguise of their version of “anti-discrimination.”
Matthew 7:15-16
“Watch out for false prophets (“politicians”). They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.
16 By their fruit (“actions”) you will recognize them.
NOT ONE can ever show where in the constitution, THERE IS THE :Seperation of church and state: phrase. BECAUSE IT doesn’t exist there.
Defund PBS !
William Brangham’s ‘centuries-old’ value was the creation of the progressive Warren Court in the 1960s with Madeline Murray O’Hare and the Chicago school board over prayer in public schools, a holdover from the time before the government took over public education! The term separation of church and state came from a letter written by Thomas Jeffereson in 1802 to the Danbury Baptist Convention assuring them the First Amendment should allay fears that the government might mandate a national church such as the Church of England, Catholicism in Italy, France, Spain or Protestantism in some other countries. He mentions nothing or would have thoughts that there was or would be any barrier to people of faith expressing themselves as such in public or the politican arena. It appears that PBS is advocating the government breach that barrier and define what religion, any religion not just the Judeo-Christian variety, is allowed to do in the public forum!
Well, the Republicans should make it one of the first orders of business to take away PBS’s funding so they can no longer perform their “service” on Democrats, which is illegal in most jurisdictions of the country anyway…
Does this not stand for Pure Bull Shift from one idea to another ans as one bull said. “I have dropped bigger ones than that”
These people aren’t worried about Christian nationalism they simply don’t like Christians. Then again, socialists have never embraced religion because their god is the state. What really rubs me wrong is us Christians are footing the bill to keep PBS on the air while they’re trying to destroy us.