Lack of Prophetic Witness in U.S. Catholicism As Trump Presidency Approaches: Astonishing Indictment of Pastoral and Lay Leaders of U.S. Church

4 in 5 white evangelicals, 3 in 5 white Catholics and Mormons — "pro-life" voters — brought us the Trump nightmare.

I will not forget.

— Bill Lindsey (@wdlindsy) December 15, 2016

In a posting at Common Dreams today entitled "Throwing Roses to Hitler," Abby Zimet writes,

"I Could Never 'Throw Roses to Hitler'": Mormons of Conscience Speak Out, But Catholics . . .

My previous post today refers to a statement Jan Chamberlin made yesterday on Facebook about her decision to resign from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in protest of the choir's choice to sing at Donald Trump's inauguration. As Erp notes in a comment in response to my previous posting, this Facebook statement has now gone viral. It's a public statement, and is here. I encourage you to read it.

Mormons Openly Criticize Decision of Tabernacle Choir to Sing for Trump — While Lay Catholic Intellectual Leaders Discipline Those Criticizing Dolan's Decision to Bless Trump

AP reports today: 

A member of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir says she has resigned from the famed group over its decision to perform at next month's inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump. 

Jan Chamberlin posted her resignation letter to choir leaders on her Facebook page Thursday. In it, she writes that by performing at the Jan. 20 inaugural, the 360-member choir will appear to be "endorsing tyranny and facism." She says she feels betrayed by the choir's decision to take part.

Cardinal Dolan Blesses Pharoah on Behalf of the U.S. Catholic Hierarchy: Not in My Name

NEW: Early Christmas present for @realDonaldTrump? Sources say NY's Cardinal Timothy Dolan to participate in Inaugural.

— Kelly O'Donnell (@KellyO) December 24, 2016

Once again: No more. Not in my name any longer.

On the "Incorrect" "Homosexual": The Catholic Magisterium, Father Dwight Longenecker, and Asking the Wrong Questions in the Age of Trump (2)

There's a reason my previous posting built to a question about what kind of institution produces people who think about gender and sexual orientation at the puerile level of moral awareness exhibited by Catholic magisterial thought regarding these matters, especially when that institution professes to shape moral thinkers. My posting asked,

On the "Incorrect" "Homosexual": The Catholic Magisterium, Father Dwight Longenecker, and Asking the Wrong Questions in the Age of Trump

I'd like to say a few more words about Father Dwight Longenecker's musings (see Peter Montgomery) on the recent document — endorsed by Pope Francis — reiterating the Vatican ban on allowing gay candidates for the priesthood to enter seminaries. Longenecker's analysis of the document zeroes in on its claim that gay priests are problematic because they cannot relate "correctly to men and women." I discussed this analysis glancingly in my last posting.

The Weaponization of Christmas and What Trump's White Christian Supporters Want: Selections from Recent Commentary

PRRI, " 'Merry Christmas' vs. 'Happy Holidays' "

A pre-Christmas smorgasbord of items I've read in the past few days, in which you may be interested:

Where Do Christians Go From Here? When "Pro-Life" Christianity Deals Death, Time to Turn Our Backs on the "Pro-Life" Game

4 in 5 white evangelicals, 3 in 5 white Catholics and Mormons — "pro-life" voters — brought us the Trump nightmare.

I will not forget.

— Bill Lindsey (@wdlindsy) December 15, 2016

"Now is the time to talk about what we are actually talking about," declares Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in a powerful, hard-hitting post-election essay rich in moral insight that refuses to entertain the palavering, both-sides-have-a-point games of the American chattering classes — when those morally evasive games have brought us Donald Trump. They have been, in fact, signposts and paving stones for the path that has led the nation to Trump, though getting the nation's intellectual arbiters in its media,  its churches, and its academies to admit the large role they have played in paving and signposting the road to Trump is a meaningless and futile enterprise: moral awareness is simply not what the chattering classes do, even as they engage in moral rule-making and ethical pontificating.

Bilgrimage Is Wildly Popular in Russia — So My Stats Counter Tells Me

So fascinating, the number of Russian computers trained on this one tiny blog in the U.S. week by week — and the numbers, which have been very large for some time now, have only picked up after the Trump election. Next to its American audience, its Russian (and Ukrainian) audience is its largest "readership" — with some of the hits to Bilgrimage from those parts of the world coming from Russian sex sites to which . . . someone . . . for some reason . . . has chosen to link the blog.

When Toxic Religion and Toxic Politics Meet to Create a Death Cult of Historic Proportions: Where Do Christians Go From Here?

Any political movement that is

anti-women
anti-poor
anti-Muslim
anti-LGBTQ
anti-immigrant
anti-refugee

is anti-human and anti-Christ.

— Nathan Hamm (@NathanHamm) December 12, 2016

Here are some things I've read in the past week or so that I'd like to share. I will use them as the basis for a subsequent posting asking where we go from here — "we," as in any of us interested in the question of what Christian churches or religion in general can contribute to the American public square, now that white American churches and their leaders have placed the country in extreme moral crisis and have displayed the complete vacuity of their "Christian" message through their support of Donald Trump.

Had One of My Church Dreams Last Night: An Advent Meditation

Had one of my church dreams last night. Church dreams are, for me, often painful ones involving tears (the impossibly distant altar I can see from high in the eyrie at the back of the church to which I've been consigned, but which I cannot reach at communion time). Or, they are the opposite, ecstatic ones involving singing and a gladdened heart.

#NotNormal: Choosing Normalcy As the Not-Normal Prevails

This is what the end of democracy looks like pic.twitter.com/MmnUHE56AE

— CJ Werleman (@cjwerleman) December 1, 2016

In what is becoming an increasingly dark moment of global history, due to the determination of economic elites to pick one last time over the carcass of a defunct late-capitalist economic system built on the exploitation of the many to put more wealth into the pockets of the already grossly rich, what do we who believe (whether in any formal religious sense or not — this matters not a whit) in the possibility of a more humane world do? Those rapacious economic elites are crashing democratic systems of government everywhere in the world. They're doing so deliberately, since their rapacious picking over the carcass of late-capitalism — which is to say, over the carcasses of all of us — depends on their having total control of the mechanisms of national and international government, so that there will be no checks and balances on their rapacity and cruelty.

What's Church for Again? A Tale of Two Churches

What's church for? I've been asking this question repeatedly on this blog during the lead-up to the U.S. presidential election. What's church for when its members — the people who brand themselves with the name of Jesus Christ — are the source of some of the most egregious slights to the humanity of people on the margins of society to be witnessed in the world today?