Israel Wants Churches to Pay Property Taxes

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It’s hilarious the way that Christians overreact to everything. Take this recent story out of Israel. The small country is getting rather tired of all of these local Churches taking up valuable real-estate and paying nothing back in taxes. Well, that’s something they are planning on changing, and this threat to the Church’s pocketbook is sending all of their hucksters in a tiff.

“We believe these efforts represent a coordinated attack on the Christian presence in the Holy Land,” wrote the heads of the Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Orthodox churches. “In this time, when the whole world, and the Christian world in particular, are constantly following the events in Israel, we find ourselves, once again, dealing with an attempt by authorities to drive the Christian presence out of the Holy Land.”

First of all, I think we can all agree that it would take a lot more than paying for your fair share to drive Christians out of the “Holy Land”. The church claims that the money they save goes to pay for a number of different charitable services. I call bullshit. Like most faiths, they might devote a paltry sum to helping others, but it’s clear to everyone where the money is going: in giant coffers that continue to enrich religious weirdos. In fact, these churches never even bothered to properly register as charities, and instead just benefited from the blanket tax immunity that religions benefit by default.

To compound their little scam, these religious organizations open up cafes and other businesses, still claiming thax exemption for these for profit enterprises. This grift is one of the favorite tactic for American religious groups like Mormonism, which now boasts riches in excess of 100 billion as a result of these financial shenanigan’s. Israel is obviously looking for money to pay for their little war, and I’m sure they are tired of seeing these Christian organization benefit from their largess. I personally welcome the move. There is no universal law that demands that all religious organizations benefit from not paying their fair share. Considering how much money flows through some of these groups, it’s actuall perverse to continue to allow them operate with such impunity.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens. Israel’s government had already proposed this, but backed down after pushback. Now, things are different. They are engaged in a conflict with no end in sight, and I’m sure money is getting real tight. That alone means there will be more pressure to make churches financially accountable, like the rest of us.
https://apnews.com/article/israel-christians-taxes-church-palestinians-ac106bb1d49dd3d0d96613af53d4fcf7

More Bibles in Schools, Less Free Lunches

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What happens when you interview the coauthor of an insane bill designed to force the 10 commandments in schools? You get one of the more unhinged and deranged individuals yet! And let’s not forget this dangerous idiot is just getting started!

This woman is against programs that would help children from poorer families to benefit from a meal program. That kind of charity is not in the 10 commandments, so it can promptly go to hell I guess.

You know, when claiming that America is a Christian nation, I think that this religiosity should be pointed at whenever we see the legacy of racism. After all, the Bible condones slavery, and was one of the main documents used to justify it. That’s history folks, and if they insist on accuracy, I say we oblige them. “Introduction to Christian Atrocities 101” sounds about right, doesn’t it?

Man Set on Fire for Blasphemy in Pakistan

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In yet another display of compassion from the religion of peace, a man in Pakistan was burned to death by a mob after being arrested for supposed blasphemy. The man, identified as Mohammad Ismail, who appears to have been a tourist, was ganged up by a group of people at the local market and brought over to police, claiming that he had desecrated the most useless book in history, the Koran. Shortly after, the local mosque decided that this was not enough, and quickly radicalized their followers into deadly action.

According to witnesses, the mob asked police to hand over the suspect to them, and on their refusal, forced their way into the police station. Police officials had to flee to save themselves, while more reinforcements were called in to deal with the tense law and order situation.

So, to recap, we have absolutely no idea what this man’s supposed crime was, or the names of the people who actually incited this violence. In other words, everyone is going to walk away scott free, and an innocent man is dead because the feelings of the world’s most insecure religion were offended.

In Pakistan, blasphemy accusations abound, and while it can carry a death sentence, the government doesn’t actually need to carry out the sentence: their insane citizens will usually do it for them. All one needs to do is make an accusation. This is not unlike the burning of witches in Europe. People used the obsessiveness of the church to easily kill of their hates rivals, using the blunt instrument of faith as their instrument of murder. It seems very little has changed.

Heat Kills Over 500 Visiting Mecca

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In ancient times, the city of Mecca was a place in the middle of nowhere, notable only for the fact that a temple existed there, where many different idols of gods resided. People of all different kinds of faith would visit it, if only to show piety to their chosen gods.

When Islam came along, these other idols were destroyed. The only thing that was preserved was a black Onyx rock, and in order to make it fit within this new religion, Islam claimed that the rock had been found by one of their early church fathers: Abraham.

The site became what is now called the Kabba, and ever year, tens of thousands of Muslims make the dangerous trek to this hellhole presumably to impress their creator god. Over the years, there have been many deaths. Some were due to tramplings, and a few were the result of fires. This year, because of an intense heat wave, you can add heat stroke to the list of ways their supposed loving god rewards them for turning around in circles for “his glory”. So, just how hot was it?

Saudi state TV said temperatures rose on Monday as high as 51.8 degrees Celsius (125.2 Fahrenheit) in the shade at the Grand Mosque in Mecca.

That’s 51 degrees…in the shade! No wonder people were dropping like flies! Over 500 people are now dead thanks to this useless tradition. Folks, here’s an idea: stay home and pray to your invisible friend in the comfort of your air conditioned homes! No god is worth dying in the middle of nowhere for.

Megachurch Pastor admits to Child Abuse

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If you want to truly understand the horrors of child abuse at the hands of “men of faith”, I believe you should familiarize yourself with the case of Cindy Clemishire. When she was a 12 year old girl, she was sexually molested for years by a trusted family friend named Robert Morris. Morris was a young travelling preacher at the time, and would often stay with his family in the Clemishire home. For a while, it all seemed so innocent, until Christmas night in 1982, when Morris asked Cindy to join him in his room. It was there that he began to molest her, all the while warning her that if she told anyone, it would “ruin everything”.

This sick behavior continued for years, until in 1987 when Cindy told a friend of the abuse. This friend suggested that she speak to her parents about the abuse. Her father was livid, demanding that the Shady Grove Church report him, or that he would go to police. Instead, Morris chose to voluntarily take a long leave of absence from ministering. He blamed Cindy for being seductive, which explains why his wife, Debbie, later called Cindy and said that she “forgave her”. Here’s his pathetic response:

“When I was in my early twenties, I was involved in inappropriate sexual behavior with a young lady in a home where I was staying. It was kissing and petting and not intercourse, but it was wrong. This behavior happened on several occasions over the next few years… In March of 1987, this situation was brought to light, and it was confessed and repented of. I submitted myself to the Elders of Shady Grove Church and the young lady’s father. They asked me to step out of ministry and receive counseling and freedom ministry, which I did. Since that time, I have walked in purity and accountability in this area,” Morris said in his statement, adding he and his wife met with the survivor and her family in 1989.

Well, give the man a prize for not having intercourse with a child. What idiot would believe for even a second that this guy is reformed? A man who accuses a little girl of “seducing him”, you know that there’s something not right going on in that guy’s head. What he needs is to be held accountable for his actions. Are Christians so desperate for pastors that they are willing to forgive the unforgivable? If Cindy’s family did forgive him, what effect did their pathetic excuse for parenting do to her sense of self?

Here’s the thing: you don’t need to forgive your rapist. Some acts are beyond forgiveness. You would think that someone molesting your child would be one of those. For some religious folks, I guess it’s just another Monday.

Partial Apology by US Bishops Promises Little

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Should every apology lead to forgiveness? This is a complex moral question. It would be tempting to answer yes, and to believe that all human beings are worthy of redemption. There are always outliers in any group, and overall, it is reasonable to assume that the vast majority of people are worthy of a second chance, especially when they make an honest and sincere apology.

The world is more complex than this trite observation would have you believe. It’s not only people who issue apologies. Sometimes, it’s entire organizations and institutions. One in particular, the Catholic Church, has committed so many atrocities over the centuries of its existence that it would take many lifetimes of work to simply identify them all, let alone do anything about them.

One of the many recent scandals it is involved with is the uncovering of mass graves in their 80 government sponsored boarding gulags. The rampant sexual, physical, and mental abuse suffered at their hands has never been full accounted for. The Church, which keeps meticulous records, have provided no helpful documentation that would harm their financial bottom line. Instead, they offered a partial apology that took only part of the blame for what had happened:

“The Church recognizes that it has played a part in traumas experienced by Native children,” the document said, saying “these tragedies” led to addiction, domestic abuse, abandonment and neglect that harmed families.

Played a part? They were the main event! It almost sounds like they want to throw their hands in the air and say: “Well, it was also the government’s fault for sending those guys to our rape dens in the first place”. Sure, the government place them in your care, which was wrong to begin with, but the Church could have showed them the love, compassion and charity they keep claiming to have a monopoly on. Instead, they beat them, starved them, sexually abused them, and countless other horrors that went on for decades. When you need to take responsibility for literal crimes against humanity, maybe don’t start with “played a part”.

To offer a proper apology, it’s important to be honest when it comes to exactly what part you played. Take for instance the part they played in the extermination of the Jews in Nazi Germany: in exchange for becoming the official religion of the country, they helped the exterminators find the families, often pretending to provide asylum for them but turning them in anyways, and whisking away the perpetrators to safe territory in Latin America when the whole thing went tits up. Those are things they have yet to specifically apologize for as well, or make up for in any way. Instead, they still collect part of every German citizen’s paycheck, unless that persons specifically asks not to. That deal with the Nazi stuck around, unsurprisingly.

This pathetic apology is a way to try and reconcile their Native believers, who feel a great deal of uncertainty about their faith following the harrowing details of the history of abuse. For most old Catholics, who’s ancestors also had their faith imbued at the edge of a sword, enough time has passed that the church’s atrocities are long forgotten. In Native communities, that wounds of the past are still fresh. It’s causing problems for the church’s bottom line, so something had to be done. Their plan? An impotent apology that serves only to highlight just how out of touch they are, and a promise to “listen”. Platitudes and empty gestures. Pathetic.

Islamic Scholar Abused Minor, Threatened to Kill Him

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TGA has been reporting on a number of Christian abusers recently, which has probably given our audience the mistaken impression that only Jesus lovers are abusing kids on a global scale. Please allow me to dissuade this opinion by bringing up the case of an Imam in India, recently convicted of abusing a young boy.

Unfortunately, the news report fails spectacularly in providing important details, such as the bloody name of the monster. They did release details of the conviction however. It seems that the young boy was assaulted multiple times when he attended religious classes, with the old pervert even threatening him with drowning if he told anyone what happened.

This sick bastard will be spending the next 56 years in prison. Hopefully, he dies there, never to spend any more time with young people. As for the news organization which reported on the assault, it’s pathetic that they couldn’t even be bothered to publish the name of this degenerate Those of us actually interested in keeping religions accountable find that this kind of information is crucial. Was it a simple oversight, or were they showing favoritism? I guess it’s hard to tell with bad journalism.

Standoff with a Religious Wacko in Florida

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What do you get when you cross a pervert and a mentally unstable man? Well, you get this man: Robert Shawn Detherow, a 56 year old man who was recently arrested after a tense standoff. Police were originally called due to a noise complaint, but Detherow had barricaded the road in anticipation of a police standoff. When they arrived, police were peppered with beer bottles.

Detherow is a “survivalist”, which baically means that he’s a doomsday prepper that has a strong hostility with authority. In the video above, he basically taunts officers to kill him, all because he is upset that transgender people exist in America.

After a standoff that lasted over 6 hours, Detherow was finally placed in their custody. He now faces serious charges for assaulting officers. With Christian Nationalists continuing to fill diseased heads like Detherow, these kinds of incidents will continue to happen with disturbing frequency.

Colorado GOP wants Pride Flags Burned

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For the American Republican Party, it has become the norm to be in a state of near constant fear and hatred. They seem intent on being the voice for those who wish to see people of different sexual orientations ostracized, harmed, and even killed. They GOP is intent on spreading the dangerous lies that the LGBTQ community is grooming children to sexually abuse them. Since the party itself seems to have moved to a “post truth” view of the world, it matters little that there is no proof in the allegations. If only they showed such zeal for their own religious institutions which already have hundreds of thousands of incidences of child abuse. Instead, their hateful rhetoric becomes a calling card for the extreme fringe of their constituents; impotent men armed to the teeth, thinking that they will be heroes instead of domestic terrorists.

The most recent example of this is in Colorado. You may remember that in 2022, a pathetic excuse for a human being named Anderson Lee Aldrich entered a gay nightclub called Club-Q. Dressed in body armor and carrying an AR-15 style rifle, he opened fire on innocent people, killing 5 and injuring a further 25. The tragedy would have claimed further victims, were he not stopped by a patron of the bar, a U.S. Army veteran by the name of Richard Fierro. This true American hero tackled the 300 pounds of human excrement to the ground, knocking the gun out of his had. Two other patrons helped hold him down as the authorities made their way to them.

Aldrich had previous incidents with police in the past, including threatening his grandparents for “ruining his plans for a mass shooting”. Of course, because this is a red state, this ticking time bomb was allowed to continue to own weapons, despite serious incidents with police and even the FBI, or him hosting a website advocating for the killing of civilians to “cleanse society”.  It was therefore only a matter of time before the continued lies and propaganda against the LGBT community, now perpetuated openly by the Republican party, would incense someone into violence.

It seems that they are doubling down on the dangerous rhetoric now. No longer are they skirting around their hatred for the LGBT community. They are now openly calling for people to burn pride flags, as though we were in the middle of Kabul:

“Burn all the #pride flags this June,” the state GOP wrote Monday on the social platform X. Earlier Monday, an email sent by the party with the subject line “God Hates Pride” perpetuated the false claim that LGBTQ people are “grooming” children to abuse them. “The month of June has arrived and, once again, the godless groomers in our society want to attack what is decent, holy, and righteous so they can ultimately harm our children,” reads the email.

Social media response is of course mixed. People with crosses in their profile are just as likely to condemn it as embrace it. It’s telling. Those of us with our heads screwed on properly know that advocating for the destruction of private property by a major political party is outrageous to say the least, but this type of thuggish behavior is becoming all too common. Those that support this kind of open animosity and hatred should be closely monitored. They are at the knife edge of fascism without knowing what it is.

The only bright light at the end of this dark tunnel is that this type of strategy is going to blow up majorly for the GOP. You see, there is a large, unvocal majority that sees all of this and have a strong reaction against it. They just aren’t social media savvy, and are smart enough not to engage in online toxicity. But they vote, and often they have no real political alliance. They simply try to balance out the left-right divide, often punishing groups if their power goes unchecked. Well, this is as power hungry as it gets, and considering the fact that people are leaving churches that promote such hatred, I find it difficult to imagine where all of these voters are that the GOP is hoping to attract with open calls for assault and violence.

Hopefully, the decency of people will shine through when it comes time to elect their representatives anew. There is a lot of hatred in the halls of government, and it needs to be expunged. Judging by the fact that Fierro’s family has been endlessly harassed by bigots who invented stories to demonize him, our prospects for the future does not look good.

The Good Atheist Podcast: EP 357

In this weeks episode, we discuss a wild murder plot from Mormon Fundamentalists, Louisiana and Texas trying to force religion in schools, and the new grift of Russel Brand. You don’t want to miss this news!

The Good Atheist
The Good Atheist
The Good Atheist Podcast: EP 357
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Taliban Kills Gay Man, Sends Video to Family

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The Taliban is perhaps one of the most vile organization on Earth. Although the name is derived from the Pashtun word for “student”, the only thing that these monsters are students of are the worst aspects of humanity: its cruelty and stupidity. While they were at war with the Soviet government, they were trained and armed by America, only to later go to war with them a few decades later. Then, when the US withdrew from Afghanistan, they made a deal with the devil in return for assurances that they would help them fight their greater enemy, Al Qaeda. The results were predictable. The agreement wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.

The goals of the group are simple: they want women to stay in the home and be constantly barefoot and preggers, ban all forms of entertainment, and destroy any other religious or ethnic minorities that they dislike. Among those that get their goat are gay people. With such fundamentalists in power, it’s not surprising that people of the LGBT community are in constant danger.

Just a few days ago, a gay man was murdered, and the whole affair was videotaped. With the deed done, the tape was then sent to family members as a chilling reminder that no one is safe:

Hamed Sabouri of Kabul, Afghanistan, died on August 5, activists said. The news of the 22-year-old’s death only became public this week after his former boyfriend informed the media. Graphic video footage of a murder, which Insider has viewed, appears to show a man resembling Sabouri being shot in the neck and head at least 12 times. Days later, the Taliban sent the disturbing execution video to Sabouri’s relatives and friends, who, in turn, forwarded it to the Afghan LGBTQ+ group Roshaniya.

His boyfriend is now in hiding, afraid that he will soon suffer the same fate. The chilling message was received: gays are living in constant fear, with danger lurking at every corner. My heart hurts at the idea of my fellow human beings being hunted simply because of how they feel inside. The Taliban, and all fundamentalist Islam is a bane on mankind, one that I can only hope will someday be in the dustbin of history.

Southern Baptist Church Can’t Be Trusted

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Religions are always protecting their own. There is an unspoken rule in sectarian circles (or in the case of some churches, actual memos): you don’t rat out your fellow Christian, no matter the crime. You see, to hard-core believers, it is the outside secular world that is to be feared. The fact that there are countless wolves in sheep’s clothing amongst their ranks is less terrifying to them than the prospect of the secular world interfering with their affairs.

Still, news often leaks of the countless instances of child rapes, and other horrid crimes. In order to try and pretend that they are doing something about it, The Southern Baptist Church had pledge a few years ago to create a website meant to track individual abusers within the church. With hundreds of cases, it should have been a breeze. Instead, they’ve been stalling so bad that not one single name is on their pathetic excuse for a website.

To date, no names appear on the Ministry Check website designed to track abusive pastors, despite a mandate from Southern Baptists to create the database. The committee has also found no permanent home or funding for abuse reforms, meaning that two of the task force’s chief tasks remain unfinished…Instead, she said, SBC leaders do just enough to make it look like they care, without any real progress.

Do you mean to say that a religious organization, which had previously done everything in it’s power to either ignore abuse or protect abusers, would only offer empty platitudes instead of solutions? What a shocker! Next thing you’ll try and tell me is that water is wet, and that fire burns. So, what’s behind the veil of secrecy, you may wonder? Why, it’s the most important thing to any church of course: money!

SBC leaders have long sought to shield the denomination and especially the hundreds of millions of dollars given to Southern Baptist mission boards and other entities from liability for sexual abuse. The 12.9 million-member denomination has no direct oversight of its churches or entities, which are governed by trustees, making it a billion-dollar institution that, for all intents and purposes, does not exist outside of a few days in June when the SBC annual meeting is in session.

There’s more employee oversight for Uber than there is for Southern Baptists pastors. Pathetic. The SBC even tried to stop an independent couple from posting their own list, sending them a threatening email. Luckily, because the names they publish are for convicted felons, they are immune from being sued for essentially telling the truth.

Anyone who still thinks that billion dollar evil organizations give an iota of care for their flock, beyond the ability to fleece them, is officially a moron. Thanks for helping these clowns make the world a worst and less safe place to live!

Russian Government Promise Soldiers Resurrection

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The war in Ukraine is a modern tragedy. With the ambition of Russia to be once more a superpower, this can only come at the expense of it’s former republic states, such as Georgia and Ukraine. Once upon a time, these were the pride and joy of the Soviet Union. Now they are (as of today) countries that had long wished to no longer be under the yoke of their Soviet masters.

The rights of other countries to decide their own fate is not a proposition that a man like Vladamir Putin respects. After years of fomenting mistrust and rebellion in the young republic, by 2014 they were in open war, after the capture of Crimea. The rest of the world was slow to act, and it was only after their official invasion, which they hilariously called a “Special Military Operation”, that the West decided to actually get involved.

We are now 10 years into this conflict, which really only got seriously bloody in the last 3 years. So far, Russia has lost an estimated half a million soldiers due to death or injury. Not since the Second World War have we seen a major country have such high casualties, with some days seeing over a thousand dead.

There are so many dead, in fact, that Russia is now trying to convince their soldiers that they will be guaranteed to be resurrected, declaring that the conflict is now a “holy war”. This is partially due to the fact that Ukraine has firmly rejected their Russian Orthodox connections, which was one of the ways that the Kremlin could exercise unofficial power over the region. The creation of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (based somewhere in Canada now) sent Russia on a crusade to force them back into the fold.

One of the madmen claiming that soldiers serving in the army are coming back to life is a man named Artemiy Vladimirov. This archpriest has made it his mission to convince men fighting a pointless war that death is not real:

“In war, there are no unbelievers! When you are facing physical death, every fiber of your soul comes alive. Right now, there are many wonderful testimonies of Christ’s victory over death. My wife sends me many military testimonies and video clips. Before Lent, I watched a video about one Chinese man who participated in the special military operation. A bullet hit him in the stomach, destroying all of his insides. He died from this and then was resurrected… Saint Luke of Crimea appeared to him and completely healed him, his insides were fully restored. He was baptized along with his relatives, all of them are photographed together, dressed in white clothes, baptized into our Orthodox Church.”

We’re supposed to take this lunatic as his word that people are coming back to life. How amazing that a nameless Chinese man was brought back to life! It must have happened, since this bearded weirdo that colludes with his evil government to send men to their deaths told me so! Let’s not forget that this is the same man who claims the ghost of Charles Darwin visited him and renounced his theory of evolution to him. What a guy!

Ohio Pastors Threaten Pride Event

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If there’s one provision in their faith that Christians cannot seem to abide by, it’s the “love thy neighbor” part. I can understand the confusion. When your god tells you to love your neighbor as yourself, and then simultaneously commands that you kill all the males and non-virgin women to take over a piece of land, it can all seem hard to follow at the end of the day. It would certainly explain their schizophrenia behavior when it comes to getting along with others.

In the city of Ashtabula in Ohio, pride parade organizers have declared that, despite the implicit threats made by many of the clergy there, they will be going through with their planned event. The city had allowed the parade to take part at the local beach, and it didn’t take long for religious assholes to start making threats during a city council meeting:

David Lettau, pastor of Country Gospel Church, read a passage from Romans 1 about “uncleanness” and then related it to the Pride Festival. “What they’re doing is teaching perversion to our children,” Lettau said. “We as a city are responsible for making sure that no decadent and perverse things go on… It’s worthy of death, it says in the Bible.”

Naturally, the gutless council did nothing to point out that this was a fairly explicit threat. In Christian communities, we call that a Tuesday. It didn’t take long for yet another pastor named James Combs to make his own threats, shortly after saying that he was being mischaracterized, and that he had a gay friend. Here’s the quote that he thinks is innocent:

“It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck,” Combs said. “So watch yourselves. We are called to watch over our children.”

How neighborly! I’m getting all chocked up thinking about it. In any case, the brave organizers of the event are undeterred by these fearful people. The problem, however, is that pastors like Combs are simply the linchpin to a greater evil. Their flock can be composed of twisted vigilantes that think they are protecting children. Their minds have been filled with hateful lies, and these typical underachievers have the same messiah complex that deluded suicide bombers have.

Even if nothing happens in this event, the fact that a city council did nothing to stop or counter the hateful rhetoric of these religious nutballs only emboldens them. Their political cowardice is going to cost some innocent lives eventually. There is a powder keg brewing in America, fueled by the antiliteralism of the religious right. We should all be deeply troubled, and equally worried by their animosity towards their fellow man.

Russell Brand’s Grift is Pathetic and Sad

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There’s a fairly predictable trajectory for fading movie stars: when no one wants to put you in a mainstream movie, it’s time to start sucking at the teat of Christianity. Actors like Melissa Joan Hart, Kevin Sorbo, and Kirk Cameron have all found limited success by becoming Christian shills. Jesus lovers are always eager to separate themselves from their money anytime someone strokes their ego.

You can now add conspiracy theorist and general douchebag Russell Brand to that rather undistinguished list of hucksters. For the last few years, Russell has found success in conspiracy theories, which tend to attract fringe Christian groups. He’s now made the transition to full on Jesus huckster. I’m sure his pocketbook is thanking him, since no one with half a brain cell ever tunes in to his pathetic attempts to be relevant.

During his early youtube career, Brand was making videos about the importance of meditation, mindfulness, and other topics that attracted very little attention. It was only when he started making dangerously misinformed videos where he questioned the COVID-19 vaccine did he start to gain any traction. This got him roughly 20 times the views, and his channel was finally making him money. He learned quickly that if you want to make bank on the internet, you need to give the people what they want: stoke their fears, speak to their irrationality, and then pretend that all you are doing is for some higher power.

Recently, he’s been accused of sexual assault, and this has spurred him into religious action. The cover of faith is a powerful one, especially when you need a way to wash away all of your sins. It’s a pretty standard M.O. for Americans when they get in trouble. Did you cheat on your wife, or embezzled a bunch of money? Just say you’ve found Jesus and your peers will fall over themselves in order to forgive you. It’s practically a “don’t do jail because religious people are rubes” card, and trust me when I say that grifters like Brand will do just about anything to survive.