Here are some key reasons I fear the Republican party:

BOISE, Idaho -- The Idaho Republican Party will consider 31 resolutions at its three-day convention starting Thursday, including one already adopted by Texas Republicans that President Joe Biden isn’t the legitimate leader of the country.

The Idaho resolution in the deeply conservative state that Donald Trump won with 64% of the vote in 2020 is nearly identical to the Texas resolution that was passed last month, stating: “We reject the certified results of the 2020 presidential election; and we hold that acting president Joseph Robinette Biden was not legitimately elected by the people of the United States.”

Both the Idaho and Texas resolutions contend that secretaries of state circumvented their state legislatures, even though both states have Republican secretaries of state.

Jim Jones, a former chief justice of the Idaho Supreme Court as well as a former Republican state attorney general, called the resolution rejecting the 2020 presidential election results “asinine,” noting multiple courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, rejected attempts to overturn the election.

“(The Idaho Republican Party) has gotten so caught up in conspiracy theories, meaningless culture war issues, that they have quit being able to function as a meaningful political party,” he said. “We have got to get away from this authoritarian streak that has infected the Idaho Republican Party, as well as a good part of the nation, because it’s absolutely tearing our country apart.”

Idaho's resolution goes further than the Texas resolution in that it falsely states that audits found the vote count for the 2020 election to be fraudulent in Wisconsin and Arizona.

In Wisconsin, election fraud claims have been dismissed by courts or rejected by the state's (bipartisan) election commission.

In Arizona, where Republicans submitted a slate of fake electors, Trump supporters hired inexperienced consultants to run “a forensic audit” that was discredited. FBI agents looking into events surrounding Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss recently subpoenaed the Republican Arizona Senate president, who orchestrated a discredited review of the election.

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, a Trump ally, even accused Idaho of allowing election fraud. But the Idaho secretary of state said a partial recount of ballots validated the accuracy of the 2020 results.

Jaclyn Kettler, a Boise State University political scientist, said revisiting the 2020 election by different state or local Republican party officials “seems to be an issue that is commanding a lot of attention still in the Republican party. It may continue to cast doubt on our elections and increase fears of voters that their votes are not being counted.”

Among the other proposed Idaho Republican Party resolutions this week is one calling for not recognizing “imaginary identities,” a resolution aimed at transgender people.

Multiple resolutions involve voting, several focusing on people not deemed sufficiently Republican voting in Republican primaries.

One resolution, titled “A Resolution to Protect Rural Representation,” calls for changing Idaho’s system for statewide elections into a national-style electoral college, a process that sometimes leads to candidates winning without receiving the most votes.

Trump, for example, in 2016 defeated Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton by winning more electoral college votes despite losing the popular vote by about 3 million votes. The proposed system for Idaho would tally electoral votes from counties. Such a change in Idaho would require changing the state’s constitution.

Another proposed resolution calls for privatizing Idaho Public Television, a long-time target of far-right Republicans.

The Idaho Republican Party will also elect officers during the gathering. First-term incumbent Chair Tom Luna, who served two terms as the state's schools chief, is being challenged by Republican Rep. Dorothy Moon. Moon ran unsuccessfully in the Republican primary in May for secretary of state, contending the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent and Biden wasn't president.

Mainstream Idaho Republicans, who would be considered far-right in many states, have dominated the state for three decades. But they have become targets of far-right members of their own party and labeled as RINOs — Republican in name only.

The May primary was a mixed bag for the two groups, and the power struggle will likely continue at the convention.

In the primary, first-term incumbent Gov. Brad Little crushed Trump-backed Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin, and most other statewide races went to more mainstream Idaho Republicans. But Raul Labrador, a favorite of the Tea Party during his eight years in the U.S. House, defeated five-term Attorney General Lawrence Wasden, well known for a strategy of simply calling balls and strikes that oftentimes irked his Republican colleagues when he gave them legal advice they didn't want to hear.

Several far-right lawmakers in the House lost their seats, but the Senate turned decidedly more conservative with mainstream losses that included the co-chairman of the legislature's powerful budget-setting committee.

Interesting word here. Fear.

I was watching a movie that summed up tyrannical regimes in one word. Fear.

The dictators are afraid of losing power. The commoners are initially driven into fear by a crisis (COVID as an example, but as another one, before WWII, Germany had crazy inflation and Hitler took advantage), but eventually become afraid either of their government, or of some imaginary enemy used as a scapegoat. The thugs of the regime (e.g. brownshirts or storm troopers) in turn use fear.

Meanwhile, why the hell are you afraid of Republicans? I know you live in a bubble where you never meet any Republicans, but they are obviously different from you imagine. Or you're projecting.

This is mostly what Republicans do.

Rejecting Christian Nationalism Is What Jesus Would Do
Rev. Nathan Empsal

Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene who wrap themselves in T-shirts proclaiming to be “proud Christian Nationalists” are really wolves in sheep’s clothing.

In 1915, the Ku Klux Klan found revival at Stone Mountain in Georgia in a ceremony that included a U.S. flag and a Holy Bible placed on an altar before a burning cross.

More than a century later, today’s generation of white supremacists are following in their political ancestors’ footsteps, explicitly and proudly embracing the label of “Christian nationalist.” Some are even going so far as to sell merch, with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) hawking “exclusive” shirts emblazoned with “Proud Christian Nationalist.”

Even before she began advertising the shirts on Instagram with the call to stand against the “Godless Left,” Greene told an interviewer that the Republican Party needs “ to be the party of nationalism and I’m a Christian, and I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists.”

It’s not the first time she has embraced the label. And it’s a dangerous turn of events that requires active, loud opposition from all of us, especially from American Christians, for whom Greene and her allies claim to speak.

As a pastor, if there’s one thing I understand, it’s that Christian nationalism is unchristian and unpatriotic. Academic researchers define the authoritarian ideology as a political worldview—not a religion—that unconstitutionally and unbiblically merges Christian and American identities, declaring that democracy does not matter because America is a “Christian nation” where only conservative Christians count as true Americans.

If there’s any doubt that this is the heart of Christian nationalism, consider these two examples. First, last fall former Trump aide Michael Flynn stood in a Texas megachurch known for its antisemitic pastor and told a crowd chanting “Let’s Go Brandon” that America should have only “one religion.” Then only last month, America First Legal—whose board includes top Trump allies Stephen Miller and Mark Meadows—issued a statement asking the Supreme Court to let the 50 states create official state churches and “establish religion within their borders,” claiming that the First Amendment only applies to the federal government.

The clear goal of Christian nationalism is to seize power only for its mostly white evangelical and conservative Catholic followers, no matter who else gets hurt or how many elections have to be overturned. This is the unholy force that incited the failed coup of Jan. 6, 2021, brought us the recent spate of theocratic Supreme Court opinions, and has inspired multiple wave upon wave of dangerous misinformation about elections, climate change, and COVID-19—all in direct contrast to Jesus’ teachings of love, truth, and the common good.

Whether they speak from the halls of power or the front of a sanctuary, Rep. Greene and her ilk know exactly what they are doing when they so proudly embrace the label of Christian nationalist. Each explicit declaration of Christian nationalism is a blatant attempt to pull the wool over people’s eyes and make the anti-democracy extremist ideology seem safe and more palatable, distracting us from the right’s project of seizing power to remake America into a theocracy in their image—a nation where the LGBTQ community, people of color, and non-Christians all lose rights while evangelicals and conservative Catholics are put permanently in charge.

They are America’s false prophets. And Jesus warned us about them.

Wrapping their hateful heresy in a T-shirt, they are wolves in sheep’s clothing. They try to appear righteous, carrying a cross and wrapping themselves in the flag, but instead are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. They cross the land to convert Americans to their hate-filled ideology with the promise of salvation but instead lead their converts astray, dividing families and undermining our democracy at every turn.

Greene would have you believe that all of her critics “hate America [and] hate God,” but this ignores the fact that most Christians are appalled at the way she hijacks the Gospel to justify attending white nationalist rallies and spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories. Yet she’s not alone: evangelical businessman and QAnon believer Clay Clark tells his right-wing political rallies that they’re “Team Jesus” battling the Catholic Joe Biden and the Jewish Anthony Fauci on “Team Satan.”

For all their cries of a “Godless left,” conservative, white evangelicals are only a fraction of American Christianity and an even smaller fraction of America. According to the nonpartisan PRRI, white evangelical Protestants only make up 14.6 percent of the population, but are among the most likely to believe that the election was stolen from Trump and other QAnon lies, and that “American patriots might have to resort to violence in order to save our country.”

They don’t speak for American Christians. And it's up to us to finally deflate their claims of a monopoly and thus their hold on power, reclaim our religion and its prophetic voice for the Gospel’s true values of love, dignity, equality, and social justice.

Across the country, Christians—clergy and lay folk alike—are speaking out. The Christian organization I lead, Faithful America, has amassed more than 112,000 signatures in the past year alone on actions condemning Greene’s unabashed Christian nationalism and calling for consequences when she and her allies, including political candidates like Doug Mastriano and incumbent Reps. Paul Gosar, Lauren Boebert, and Madison Cawthorn, spread violent and hateful Christian nationalist lies. We’re also taking a Christian stand against the ministers and religious leaders who sell out their churches for a taste of power like Franklin Graham, Proud Boy allies Sean Feucht and Greg Locke, and Bishop Joseph Strickland.

I’m particularly inspired by clergy from California to Ohio who have spoken out in opposition to Christian nationalism as the ReAwaken America Tour has rolled into their communities, bringing Greene, Clark, disgraced General Michael Flynn, Roger Stone and dozens of others connected to the Jan. 6 insurrection, QAnon, and the spread of COVID-19 misinformation to local megachurches. Never underestimate the power of speaking out together: When local faith and community leaders petitioned government officials and mobilized against the tour stop in Rochester, New York, they successfully pressured the venue to cancel the event and forced tour organizers to scramble to find a new venue.

Everything Green and her ilk says is a bastardization of the Christian faith, and it is harmful not just to the church but to all Americans. Christians will not ignore this hateful hijacking of Jesus’s name. And we will stand against America’s false prophets in this fall’s midterm season and beyond.