The GOP is an unholy alliance of groups that have nothing in common except they don't fit into the modern world. The GOP's real owners are the extremely wealthy, yet there aren't enough of them to win elections, so they have to recruit/use other groups that no one else wants to be beholden to. These are the racists, secessionists, fundamentalists, supremacists, conspiracy theorists, fascists, misogynists, reactionaries that cling to the past and the other "deplorables" I can't remember right now. Well now the religious right is paying the price for their unholy bargain.
$100 million Jesus ads point to exploitable weakness in the religious right
https://www.rawstory.com/ad-jesus/
#GOPIsTheToolOfTheRich
#GOPIsTheOffal
"Some major Christian donors have decided, to the tune of $100 million apparently, to go with the greenwashing strategy rather than substantive change.
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The people paying for this ad campaign are the same ones promoting homophobia, advocating against reproductive healthcare for women, and funding politicians to protect the good old pecking orders: rich over poor, men over women, white people over everyone with more melanin.
Losing customers
Back when the world and I were young, Evangelical Christians were a politically diverse group. But Republican strategists recognized them as a potential political voting block. Hierarchical social structures within churches meant the strategists had to recruit only Church leaders, and those leaders would bring along their congregations. It worked for the Republican party, but at an enormous cost to Christianity as an institution. That is because right wing operatives were spending down Christianity’s good name by merging its brand with their own. The more Christianity came to be associated with ugly political priorities—and then crass power grab-‘em-by-the-pussies—the more young people fled the Church. By the millions.
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Losing money
Losing customers by the millions would be a problem for any corporate body—especially one with a product that people realize they don’t need when they actually take a good look. When there are better options, in this case secularism, people rarely go back to the same-old-same-old. ...
Losing prospects
But this isn’t merely a financial calculus. At some point, brand damage becomes a threat to identity. Evangelicals are evangelical. It’s part of the ideology. Go into all the world and make disciples of every creature. Unlike Judaism or Hinduism, Christianity is a proselytizing religion.
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In need of a savior
Having spent down Christianity’s brand, the patriarchs of the religious right are uncomfortable with how far that has gone—the image, that is, not the substance. Most Americans used to think of the Bible as The Good Book, but not anymore. Most Americans used to think of Christianity (and religion more broadly) as benign, but not anymore. Jesus, though—the image of Jesus is relatively untainted. Even those who don’t buy into the idea of him being the perfect human sacrifice who saves our souls (Are you washed in the blood?) tend to believe that he was a good, wise, loving man. They think we know a lot more about him than we do, and what they think we know is positive. So, it totally makes sense that a $100 million rebranding and recruiting effort would center on the person of Jesus. Much of Christian theology is nasty, and the Iron Age texts in the Bible contradict what we now know about science, anthropology and—well, pretty much every other field of modern scholarship. This iconic personal Jesus is all they have left.
The fact that conservative Christians are spending $100 million on marketing Jesus means they are bad off and know it. It means they recognize the deterioration in their brand, and they feel desperate to turn it around... Their product sucks, and we need to keep saying so in every way possible. We need to make sure the general public keeps associating Christianity with what Christians are doing, not what they are saying: Those anti-abortion centers that dupe women into keeping pregnancies aren’t Crisis Pregnancy Centers, they are Church Pregnancy Centers. Fetal personhood isn’t a philosophical debate, it’s theology. Denying rights to queer folks and women isn’t conservative, it’s theocracy."
#gopisthetooloftherich #gopistheoffal