The Army of God Comes Out of the Shadows | Hacker News Reader

The Army of God Comes Out of the Shadows

theatlantic.com

Here is a gift link: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/02/new-apo...

Personally, when Jesus said love everybody like I love you, it includes the Atheists, Secular Humanists, GLBT etc people. I am not a member of the Army of God, I am a Catholic and I followed what Pope Francis (God rest his soul) preached and spoke on love and peace.

Groups like the Army of God derive justification for violence from scripture, claiming their actions constitute 'justifiable homicide' that supersedes secular law.

This textual divergence seems to show the fundamental interpretive challenge: how do you reconcile the inclusive, loving passages with those depicting Jesus's harsh rebukes of the Pharisees or the apocalyptic imagery in Revelation?

What framework allows you to prioritize the 'love thy neighbor' ethos over the seemingly more militant passages that extremist groups leverage? And what might this suggest about the inherent tensions within textual interpretation, more broadly?

I'm curious about how your Catholic tradition provides guidance for navigating these apparent contradictions in a way that remains intellectually honest while preserving the primacy of love.

Turn the other cheek, Jesus said. It is all water under the bridge from the groups we might attack.

Here's how I feel that Democrats and Republicans are viewing the Church: [where "Church" is our abstract, "all baptized believers" sort of umbrella.]

The Democrats seek to incorporate the best aspects of Church into the State. That is, entitlements and welfare programs should be secular, essentially supplanting the charity outreach and evangelization that was formerly done by Church. That patriotism and nationalism should be approached with a religious fervor and indeed, the highest religion would be the State's. I believe that liberals recognize the power of Church, and simply want the State to supplant and subsume that power for the good of the State. This garners plenty of support from non-Christians, who can see the Church eventually withering away as it is rendered irrelevant and redundant.

Conservatives see Church as an ally and partner to the State. Evangelicals in particular, independents and non-denominationals can perceive deep rifts and struggles among denominations, and they feel persecuted not only by anti-Christian sentiment, but threatened by institutionalized Church [and also Jews, Muslims, Hindus] joining and melding with State power. So there is this feeling of separatism on the Right, that Church must remain independent of State and that eventually, it will come down to a Church vs. State struggle that Church must triumph and reign supreme again.

Personally, I'm unable to agree or fully get onboard with either side in this struggle. The conservatives almost convinced me of that separatism thing, but it is absurd to think that that narrative will win out somehow. The Right is weaponizing Christian fervor against the Left, and the Left is recruiting every non-Christian, and every anti-Christian, to merely weaponize them against the Right.

And sadly, there are many innocent people caught in the middle of this. We just wanted to live our lives and not get swept up in an end-times battle. The din of the Left screaming in my ear about Trumpism is deafening and appalling. The conservatives seem to have a grip on reality, pragmatism, and calm response, but the unrest just grows, and our nation's issues are deeper than left-right partisan issues.

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