It reminded me of an earlier picture of Vice-president Pence when he signed a law rolling back the progress for LGBTQ persons in Indiana when he was governor.
Then today there was an article in the Guardian that gave some direction to my incomplete thoughts.
The Guardian today reports on an article in La Civilta Cattolica written by Antonio Spadaro who is described as La Civilta Cattolica's editor-in-chief along with Marcelo Figueroa, the editor-in-chief of L'Osservatore Romano's Argentinian editions. Both men are reported as friends of Pope Francis.
The Guardian article "claims that fake religious arguments are being used to demonise segments of the population – particularly when it comes to migrants and Muslims – and to promote the US as a nation that is blessed by God, without ever taking into account the 'bond between capital and profits and arms sales'".
The article continues by criticizing conservative American Catholics who have aligned themselves with fundamentalist Protestants on issues like same-sex marriage and abortion, saying that what really united the groups was a “nostalgic dream of a theocratic type of state”.
There is a reference to the evangelical theologist John Rushdoony who is described as the father of today's American Christian fundamentalism. Then there is a critique of the roots of this ideology which clearly puts Pope Francis in opposition to where Donald Trump is trying to take the country. At heart, "the narrative of terror shapes the worldviews of jihadists and the new crusaders and is imbibed from wells that are not too far apart.”
This is the Guardian article reporting on the article in La Civiltà Cattolica
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/13/pope-associates-criticize-american-evangelicals-extremism
