Pompeo promoting theocracy
Dominionism at the State Department:
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered a speech on Friday to the American Association of Christian Counselors (AACC) at its 2019 world conference in Nashville, Tennessee. Outlining “what it means to be a Christian leader,” while relaying family anecdotes and stories from his West Point education, Pompeo described how he applies his religious faith to government administration.
Titled “Being a Christian Leader” and promoted in his official government capacity on the homepage for the State Department, religious and civil liberties organizations have decried it as a potential violation of the U.S. Constitution’s intended separation of church and state.
That second paragraph is a syntactical trainwreck. The speech was titled “Being a Christian Leader” and promoted in his official government capacity on the homepage for the State Department; religious and civil liberties organizations have decried the speech and the promotion of the speech as a violation of the separation of church and state.
A complete transcript of Pompeo’s speech has been posted to the front page of State.gov, including notation indicating the audience reaction to specific lines. While politicians often speak at events sponsored by religious groups, explicit promotion of “Being a Christian Leader” is widely seen as crossing a line.
According to both religious and atheist organizations, Pompeo is welcome to his Christian faith, but in potential violation of the separation of church and state by promoting “Being a Christian Leader” in official capacities, such as the State Department home page.
Not “potential” violation of the separation of church and state, just plain in violation.
Ironically enough, I was in the middle of this when a couple of women came to the door. ?? “We just wanted to share with you a couple of thoughts from the bible.” “No.” They went away. Honestly, what makes people think that’s ok? I don’t go around knocking on strangers’ doors and telling them I want to share some thoughts from Keats or Montaigne or Orwell, what makes people think it’s acceptable when it’s the bible? It’s so rude.
Frankly, if people went around knocking on doors and offering to share some thoughts from Romantic poetry or Enlightenment philosophy, the world would be a far, far better place than it currently is. Start a trend.
As for Pompeo, this is why so many religious people love Trump. He emboldens this sort of thing. It’s one of their priorities, and makes them feel important.
As a general rule I don’t even answer the door unless I’m expecting someone.
Sastra beat me to what I was going to say, but I think I was going to add:
I think I’m going to start going around knocking on people’s doors offering some thoughts from Ophelia Benson. That would definitely be worth my (and their) time.
The Jehova’s Witnesses don’t come to our house any more, even when they’re in our street.
Can’t think why….
You answer the door in your underwear enough times and they tend to get the hint.
@Seth
Hey, I can’t help it if one of the reasons i work from home is that I don’t have to get dressed.
Funnily enough, I had two elderly women knock at my door last week asking if I had a few minutes to talk about Jesus. I told them yes, but politely added that they would be wasting their addedas I am an atheist. At that, one of them put on a very condescending voice and said ‘Oh, you poor dear, did something happen to you?’ which I thought was totally unnecessary, so I pointed at the Bible in her hand and matching her condescension replied ‘Yes, dear, I read that’.
They left.
No idea why my phone replaced ‘time’ with ‘addedas’!
Reminds me of the time a JW came to my front door with a spruce young lad I took to be his son. He got a few words out of his spiel when I interrupted him with “why have you got this young fellow coming round here flogging this garbage? He should be out with his mates, kicking a football round; not dressed up in that monkey suit.”
The preacher immediately abandoned his holy mission, and could not hustle the kid away fast enough.
I need to get some of what you all have. I do the same thing – and they come around more! Maybe because I’m a woman? They think I’m naturally spiritual, and all they have to do is persist to save me? Last time I had surgery and a two night hospital stay, I requested that the visiting minister not come to my room – he showed up with additional information, and left me with a little medallion he had made about Jesus. Somehow he thought that would save me, I guess, by looking at that medallion.
Yeah, they always bring those creepy children-of-the-corn with them, don’t they? They are always even more pale and hissing curses at the yellow eye than me, which is frankly impressive. It’s almost as if they’re only allowed out of the house on Sundays and then only on cult business.
My strategy – and the presumably the reason I’m on some sort of list – is to be cheerfully and with barely superficial politeness willing to waste my entire day to waste theirs.
Yes why did I answer the door? It’s my employers’ door, and normally no one knocks on it because there’s a gate to the front…courtyard or whatever tf it is. When someone pushes the button by the gate I go to look out the window to see if it’s a FedEx or UPS truck (my employers buy a lot of stuff), and if it’s not I ignore it. But so someone knocking on the door itself was surprising and weird so I decided to see who it was. I had the dog with me. (The dog actually contributes nothing to safety because he loves everyone on sight, but people behind the door wouldn’t know that.)
My “No” was very swift and aggressive – I had it as it were ready, because they did give off that “we’re here to godbother you” look. They put up no resistance at all. Very nice young women no doubt but still doing a very un-nice intrusive impertinent thing.
Not original, but: What do you get when you cross a Jehovah’s Witness with an atheist? Someone who knocks on your door for no reason whatsoever.
I totally agree about the rudeness. We regularly get these otherwise polite folks knocking on our door to “share” with us. I, in turn, will politely say “no thank you”, but stew for a while afterwards. Why didn’t I mention my good friend who was brought up a JW and, due to horrific experiences at the hands of other adherents, left the group. Who was punished? No need to ask. And now she is shunned by the rest of her family, who hold tighter to their faith than anything else. From the outside, I can say she is better off, but I’m not the one who has lost my family.
At the same time, if I respond with vitriol, what would it accomplish? Someone wrote here (?) recently that the purpose of proselytizing isn’t actually to convert people, but to strengthen the proselytizer’s identification as a faithful warrior struggling against an (unbelieving/evil/resistant/etc) world. And it’s not like the folks knocking on my door actually want to have a conversation of equals.
Hmm. It’s probably true that vitriol wouldn’t accomplish much, but I wasn’t going to thank them for an uninvited unwanted intrusion coupled with an assumption that they could tell me something useful. I think it’s quite fair to be sharp with them if only because it’s rude to bother people for your own purposes. (Political doorstepping is an exception to that, I guess…and I guess that’s fair because politics affects us all.)
Be rude.
I despise it when people accost me on the street to try to sell me something too, unless it’s the Big Issue or someone who needs help. Those sales buggers act as though they get to steal our time and attention. They act as though they’re hurt if we don’t respond. Please. Be rude. Make it clear that we don’t owe them our attention.
It is so much more annoying and rude when they knock on our doors.
A few years ago there was a scheme around here that helped ex-prisoners make a life for themselves by selling things – mostly bits of tat, to be honest – door to door. It was a good scheme and I’d usually make them a cup of tea and have a chat in the warm and buy some not especially wanted thing. That was a perfectly good reason to knock on my door. There are few others.
I believe in being rude because of an early experience. When I was thirteen, my father had a major accident involving a tractor and was in the hospital with many, many stitches, losing a lot of blood. The next day, my mother was on her way to visit him (this was back in the day of very limited visiting hours). We had a long country driveway, but it was narrow at the street end. As she was getting ready to back out, a car with two JW women pulled up just far enough into the driveway to prevent anyone from driving out without destroying their car. They then began to proselytize my mother, who was unwilling to be rude (probably a first for my mother, but she didn’t like to be rude to religious people). She told them, politely, she had a husband in the hospital she was going to visit. They expressed sympathy, but remained to give her their god talk, because she needed god to help her husband. (My mother was intensely religious already). They would not go, would not move their car, and my mother was unwilling to be rude. She missed seeing my father that day…
She was never polite to them again. I, a young teen, never forgot that, and refuse to allow politeness to trap me at the door with a godly messenger.
WOW. That is simply amazing (not in a good way).
Yes. I had been reading the bible, and was on my way toward the exit door of the church. That actually ushered me out a bit faster (I only had about one step left – that was it).