Christian Nationalism: Grifting Vehicle

The news keeps piling up on Rapture believer Mike Pompeo. Dude just axed his department's inspector general for investigating his own misdeeds, including using federal employees to run his personal errands. Now Slate reports that Pompeo's wife, who has already used government functions to build her contact database, had diplomatic security officials literally help move her mother's things to a retirement home.

Thus, Slate: 

Linick [the IG] was looking into two issues brought to his attention by several employees. First, Pompeo and his wife, Susan, were using State Department political appointees for personal household tasks—having them pick up dry cleaning, walk their dog, buy groceries, and so forth. The couple have apparently made these demands quite a lot. A friend of the family told me that when Susan Pompeo visited her mother in Lafayette, Louisiana, security officials were ordered to pick her up at the airport. Last June, they were told to pack up the house in Lafayette and cart away boxes when her mother prepared to move to a retirement home in Overland Park, Kansas.

The second issue under investigation is that, last year, Pompeo illegally declared an “emergency” to circumvent a congressional ban on sending weapons to Saudi Arabia, which would use them for the war in Yemen—although, as was later discovered, there was no real emergency.

And:

A friend of the family told me that when Susan Pompeo visited her mother in Lafayette, Louisiana, security officials were ordered to pick her up at the airport. Last June, they were told to pack up the house in Lafayette and cart away boxes when her mother prepared to move to a retirement home in Overland Park, Kansas.

If we think it's just one guy, let's think some more about the super Christians in Trump's orbit: Betsy DeVos and her brother Erik Prince. But think especially of Christian Taliban cabinet members Scott Pruitt and Ryan Zinke, whose multiple instances of corruption forced their resignations. The corruption in the administration is pervasive (link strongly recommended), but it's especially interesting when it involves the Christians. 

It's easy to think of Christian nationalism as a grassroots movement, fueled by millions of Americans who have a vision, however distorted, of how America used to be and what it is now. Those people exist, and the movement couldn't persist without them. But every mass gathering, every email blitz, every voter guide, and every position taken is funded by super-rich people who want nothing other than to get super-richer. 

I'm currently reading journalist Katherine Stewart's The Power Worshipers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Christian Nationalism. As Stewart puts it (all references from here on out are from this work):

The Christian nationalist movement is not a grassroots movement. Understanding its appeal to a broad mass of American voters is necessary in explaining its strength but is not sufficient in explaining the movement's direction. It is a means through which a small group of people--quite a few of them residing in the Washington, D.C., area--harness the passions, resentments, and insecurities of a large and diverse population in their own quest for power.

For example, the Family Research Council--who funds them?--promotes some pretty wacky stuff.

Scripture... opposes public assistance to the poor as a matter of principle--unless the money passes through church coffers. (16)

The Bible--the Bible!--also opposes environmentalism and gun control. Just try to swallow how anyone who wasn't exploiting Christianity for their own gain could come up with that. But that's where this agenda goes, and it's a very dangerous space for democracy.

One clear reminder of how this grim system works involves the Green family, owners of Hobby Lobby and founders of the Museum of the Bible. Hobby Lobby, of course, challenged the Affordable Care Act's requirement that health care plans include birth control. I'm guessing Green family members, married only of course, use birth control. But there's also the nasty little thing that the Museum of the Bible keeps getting caught with illegal or unprovenanced antiquities. The Museum of the Bible is nothing if not a vehicle for promoting Christian nationalism. In the news this very week. It's a reminder that for these people, integrity means nothing in comparison to promoting the movement that funnels money to themselves.