They believed this long before Donald Trump, who astutely tapped into this deep malaise and magic thinking, mounted his 2016 campaign for president. Satanic forces, they believe, control the financial systems, the media, public education and the three branches of government.
Millions of largely white Americans, hermetically sealed within the ideology of the Christian right, yearn to destroy the Satanic forces they blame for the debacle of their lives, the broken homes, domestic and sexual abuse, struggling single parent households, lack of opportunities, crippling debt, poverty, evictions, bankruptcies, loss of sustainable incomes and the decay of their communities. The world was divided into us and them, the blessed and the damned, agents of God and agents of Satan, good and evil. The simplistic message was always the same. I spent hundreds of hours interviewing scores of believers. I visited the 50,000-square-foot Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, took an "Evangelism Explosion" course, joined congregations at numerous megachurches for Sunday worship and participated in right-to-life retreats. James Kennedy and Tony Perkins and creationist seminars. " I attended Bible studies, prayer groups, conventions, tapings of Christian television shows, rallies held by Patriot Pastors, talks by leaders such as James Dobson, D. I heard a lot of these types of sermons by fundamentalist preachers during the two years I crisscrossed the country for my book " American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. And then we read where everyone - everyone that rejects Christ - will join Satan, the Beast and the false prophet in hell." That great dragon deceiver - just that quickly - God throws him into an eternal torment. Satan himself is bound and released and then bound again and banished. "There is one word devoted to their demise," the pastor said. And when Christ returned, Dockery said, he would wage a ruthless and violent war on nonbelievers and infidels, those controlled by Satan. Jerry Dockery, told the congregation that Christ's second coming was imminent. The church, however, also immediately took down its web site and removed videos, including one that was captured by The Washington Post before it was deleted where the church's pastor, the Rev. His church, Crabapple First Baptist Church, in Milton, Georgia, which opposes sex outside of marriage, issued a statement condemning the shootings as "unacceptable and contrary to the gospel." Robert Aaron Long, 21, charged with murdering eight victims, six of whom were Asian women, at three Atlanta-area massage parlors, told police that he carried out the killings to eliminate the temptations that fed his sexual addiction. This article originally appeared at ScheerPost.
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