An American Proto-Fascist Presbyterian Church

Mixing religion and politics can be a dangerous business, especially if done from the pulpit and backed up by fully-weaponized police poised in a worship space at the laity in the pews, and from the front so the congregants know they are being intensely watched even as the words, “Peace on earth” are shown on the big screen directly above one of the uniformed police employees. To my utter astonishment, I encountered just this scenario when I visited a large Presbyterian church in the U.S. early in 2026. A Christian who has read the Gospels might look askance at the weaponized, uniformed police in the sanctuary who were facing the people from near the front, and the television cameramen who were standing on the stage even very close to the altar, and think of Jesus castigating the money-changers and sacrifice-animal sellers operating inside the temple.

During the piano prelude, a cameraman hangs out near the altar.

The modern equivalent to the greedy businessmen in the temple is the power-tripping, weaponized police officer staring down congregants in a sanctuary even while the people are worshipping God. To see people worshipping the prince of peace while a fully-weaponized policewoman looks directly at the worshippers from just left of the stage in front—staring at the people—is surreal. True Christianity cannot thrive in such a hostile environment. Lest any members of that Presbyterian church might consider complaining about the obvious hypocrisy, the pastor’s sermon could easily be interpreted as a warning against complaining, not just about the church, but also, and even more troubling, the government.

Just one day before my visit to the large church in a Trump-friendly state in the U.S., Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Kamenei denounced rioters, saying that they “must be put in their place.”[1] Such a sentiment is hardly surprising because Iran’s “democracy” is severely constrained to include only approved candidates for office. So, it does come as a surprise that Iran’s supreme leader went on to say, “We talk to protesters, the officials must talk to them.”[2] It may also come as a surprise that the pastor of the Presbyterian church would not agree with Iran’s leader on talking with protesters, for that pastor said in his lengthy sermon that Christians should not complain about government. To do so is to “rebel against God’s sovereignty.” Anyone who complains has an overblown, selfish sense of oneself. The pastor also urged his congregation to contact the White House’s office of religion about a public prayer for the U.S. coming up.

Because it is unclear how a democracy can endure without complaints being made about elected officials, government policy, and even laws, I contend that the pastor was advocating a proto-fascist, anti-democracy message as a religious sermon. That he lapsed in overreaching from the domain of religion to that of politics and government—a category mistake—was dangerous because he had stationed fully-uniformed, and fully-weaponized local police not only at the periphery of the building outside, but also inside the sanctuary and in front, facing the people—staring at them as they (presumably) worshipped amid the blatant show of force. 

I intentionally made transparent the latent hostility by pivoting in the pew in the direction of the policewomen because she was staring in my direction throughout the entire service, except during the sermon, when she faced the pastor. Her loyalty was clear, and this means that the pastor’s demand that the laity not complain, even though in the Gospels Jesus complains about the money-changers, is dangerous. Were he to have seen me holding my phone/camera at my chest in the direction of his hired gun and told her to harass me, she would not have hesitated to do so, and with manufactured anger directed at me. In short, the pastor’s autocratic mentality plus the blatant, literally “in your face” presence of a fully-weaponized police officer is so toxic to Jesus’ message in the Gospels that the pastor could hardly be trusted to wield such power as he did.

The policewoman was even staring in my direction through a gap between the cameraman and the camera. She probably took my sustained stance toward the screen above her as a provocation, as she was well accustomed with passive aggression. So much overt hostility in a Christian church belies its raison d'etre. 

The environment inside and outside of the church was so toxic to worship that the pastor actually did his congregation a favor by talking through almost all of the service, lest the people be put in the uncomfortable position of closing their eyes in engaging in transcendent religious experience. Outside of the building, before the service, at least two uniformed, near riot-gear police employees roamed around the perimeter while security guards were also present. It was a sight, ironically, of excess, and thus bad judgment. As I sat in a pew inside the sanctuary, I noticed two cameramen standing near the main table/altar even though the only activity was that of a piano-player, who was very good. The Christmas lights were still up, and the sight was beautiful, but unfortunately false (which is what Aristotle wrote of Plato’s theory of the forms). After a hymn was sung, just before the Creed was said, the pastor warned his congregation, “If you don’t believe in the Apostles’ Creed, you aren’t getting into the kingdom of God.” Apparently that minister had never read Paul’s dictum that without the love of compassion, even, and I would like to add, especially for one’s enemies and even rude and dislikeable people, even faith that can move mountains is for naught. Love is not primarily about belief, though that it part of it, as I discovered ironically as I was walking from the pews.

The pastor went from reciting the Creed to making a bunch of announcements of upcoming church social-events. Any sense of transcendence that the laity may have felt arising in them from reciting the Creed was instantly wiped out by the profane announcements, which were essentially advertisements. The profane turn was made complete when he urged people to contact the White House’s office of religious affairs regarding an upcoming public prayer for the United States, which was then aiding and abetting Israel’s committing of what the UN and the International Criminal Court have both determined to be a genocide. “Praying for the country” would not include praying that the United States hold the guilty accountable and extend compassion to the million of homeless, starving civilians in Gaza.

Empty pipes even during the sermon.

The pastor’s sermon came after a reading not of the Gospels, but of one of Paul’s letters to a congregation. Philippians 2:12-6 was the reading. Interestingly, it includes the expression made popular by Soren Kierkegaard, fear and trembling. These words rightly apply to a human’s reaction to the presence of God, rather than to that of a uniformed, weaponized police officer confronting a congregation inside a sanctuary. Not surprisingly, the pastor referenced his recent sermon on fear and trembling. Fittingly, in the current sermon, the minister claimed, “Paul is almost like a sergeant.” Not. Then the pastor turned to his personal dislike of people who complain. “Remember God hates complaining,” he said without any scriptural justification. Furthermore, “complaining is a type of unbelief,” by which he probably meant atheism. Then he overreached onto the domain of government—something that Jesus refuses to do in the Gospel stories. “Complaining about the government is really complaining about the sovereignty of God.” Only self-centered people who think too much of themselves complain. Of course, democracy requires criticism of government officials, their policies, and even laws. In fact, in strenuously opposing people who criticize their respective governments, the minister was advocating autocracy because under that form of government, political criticism is prohibited. 

How do you suppose the elderly couple felt about a heavily-weaponized, uniformed "off duty" police employee of the city looking in their direction at such close range? That the couple was effectively barred from complaining even about such an overt wrong goes without saying. Forget about worshipping; transcendent experience, had there been any during that service, would have been utterly untenable in the face of such a blatant show of force. Such palpable distrust of people who could be regular members evicerates the conditions that are necessary for worship.  

Consistent with his heavy-handed political ideology, which also manifested in there being weaponized police in the sanctuary, the minister's theology of grace had little room for credit going to free-will, which is why complaining can only be rooted in arrogant selfishness. His draconian theology can be likened to that of the Jansenists, who were extreme Augustinians—extreme because they believed that the Fall is so devastating on human nature that even free-will is severely warped. Redemption by the Cross is by grace alone. The use of free-will to extend humane compassion to one’s detractors and even enemies is instead totally by grace—the person deserves no credit for making the choice to help. 

As I was thinking about the pastor's theology in the church that I hated so much as I was walking in a line past pews at the end of the service, I saw a cell phone fall on the carpet ahead. Immediately, I picked up the phone and another person helped me locate the man who had just dropped it. As I returned it to him, I said to just a few—now I wish I had had the guts to really speak up as Jesus does to the money-changers in the Gospels—“I am really opposed to your church, but, here, this is real Christianity—I am intentionally returning this phone to this man to show humane compassion even when it is not convenient. I really oppose your congregation.” The few people who heard this nodded in agreement that what I was intentionally illustrating was indeed what Jesus stands for in the Gospels, and that my complaint against the brazen police presence was valid. Even though credit is deserved for my use of my free-will to pick up and return the phone—this was not solely due to God’s grace, though I did wonder about how fortuitous the phone being dropped such that I saw it first was. It was as if a supremely intelligent being sourced beyond our realm—including our domain of politics—was testing me to see if my anger at the violations in a house of worship was in line with authentic Christianity, and thus akin to Jesus’s anger at the money-changers in the temple. As in the Gospel of Mark, the word immediately came into my mind as I saw the phone on the carpet. I knew it would have to be a split-decision whether to ignore the phone out of spite for the minister and the policewoman who had been staring at me, or to be compassionate in such an environment in which I was so angered. I would even state that it is precisely in making the choice to be compassionate when being so is inconvenient at the very least that the image of God is in us, and that the proverbial Fall does not diminish that image in us. Even Augustine argued that a person’s self-love of that in oneself that is in the image of God is theologically laudable, whereas selfish self-love is a sin.

During my first master’s degree (and Ph.D. minor-field) program in religion, my advisor used to take his graduate students to a variety of religious places on weekends so we could observe religious rituals along the lines set out as a methodology by Geertz. We were to bracket our respective religious backgrounds and perspectives to focus on knowing “the other of the other.” We did so at Hindu and Sikh temples, Greek Orthodox churches, Protestant churches, and Roman Catholic churches. I’ve continued this practice off and on through the rest of my life. In visiting the anti-democratic police-state Presbyterian church at the beginning of 2026, however, Geertz’s methodology of bracketing one’s own religious view went out the window; I couldn’t get away from that church fast enough, though I did get a glimpse of real Christianity as I paused to pick up a phone on the way out.  

By chance, I was wearing blue and the man I helped wore red. I had come from a very "blue" state, and he lived in a red state. The phone returned, nonetheless, from one hand back to the rightful owner. That he was still holding his phone when the photo was taken may suggest that having his phone back meant a lot to him. That humane compassion can seep through the cracks in such a hostile environment as a proto-fascist church is a testament to the value of the principle itself. Without valuing it and willing it into praxis, belief in the Creed is for naught. 

 

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1. The Associated Press, “Rioters ‘Must Be Put in Their Place’ Following Week Long Protests, Iran’s Khamenei Says,” Euronews.com, 3 January, 2026.
2. Ibid.

Educating Scholarly Priests: The Cult at Yale

Speaking at a Bhakti-Yoga conference in March, 2025 at Harvard, Krishma Kshetra Swami said that scholars who are devoted to the academic study of religion are also undoubtedly also motivated by their religious faith, even if it is of a religion other than what the scholar is studying. The Swami himself was at the time both a scholar of Hinduism and a Krishna devotee. He was essentially saying that his academic study of Hinduism was motivated not just by the pursuit of knowledge, but also by (his) faith. He also stated that he, like the rest of us in daily life, typically separated his various identities, including that of a professor and a devotee of the Hindu god, Krishna. Although his two roles not contradictory in themselves, a scholar’s own religious beliefs, if fervently held, can act as a magnet of sorts by subtly swaying the very assumptions that a scholar holds about the phenomenon of religion (i.e., the knowledge in the academic discipline). To be sure, personally-held ideology acts with a certain gravity on any scholar’s study in whatever academic field. Religious studies, as well as political science, by the way, are especially susceptible to the warping of reasoning by ideology because beliefs can be so strongly held in religion (and politics), and the impact of such gravity can easily be missed not only by other people, but also by the scholars themselves.  

To be sure, a scholar’s study of a religion, especially one’s own but also another religion, can enrich the person’s own religious faith and religiosity. The process can be referred to as faith seeking understanding. As a student at Yale Divinity School, I quickly became well-versed in faith seeking understanding because the school was self-consciously producing what could be called scholarly priests. This is not to say that reasoning or cognition lies at the core of a religious faith. Especially in a religion in which God is held to be a kind of theological love, emotion, as in Augustine’s Confessions, can be said to be more relevant than anything in religion within the limits of reason alone can reach, even though religious faith, and thus love, is theological rather than psychological in genre.

I didn’t grasp a more serious downside to Yale’s focus on (Christian) faith seeking understanding until decades later when I was a visiting research scholar at Harvard. More than one divinity student there asked me if it was true that Yale’s divinity school was a kind of a cult. At first, the question shocked me, but as I reflected on the observation and my own experience of Yale’s divinity school, I was astonished that students at Harvard, the other school, could be so insightful about Yale from a distance. I remembered the Christian professor’s uneasy emotional reaction in a seminar on the Gospel of Mark when I had asked a question that implied that the orthodox interpretation of a passage could be wrong. In thinking up to the question, I had been following the way of reasoning rather than allowing any external contours to circumscribe where logical reasoning was taking me. Along the lines of Clifford Geertz, I was bracketing, or epoché, my own religious beliefs in academic context, but clearly the professor was not.

During another semester, I was glad when the evangelical-Christian professor of Christian environmental ethics enthusiastically embraced by offer to set up a dialogue between him and the Archdruid of North America in the Common Room at the divinity school, but I was dismayed when most of the Episcopalian students quickly bolted from the room at the outset and then a few weeks later when that very professor told me, “It takes having a certain character to get a Yale diploma.” Invited a Druid leader had, unknown to me, crossed a line. Decades later, when I was back at Yale to audit a seminar as an alumnus on Jonathan Edwards, I was impressed that the divinity school had established a Hebrew Bible masters degree and yet not at all surprised when more than one Jewish student confided to me that even then Jewish students didn’t feel comfortable in the school that could still be characterized as a Christian cult having Calvinist “elect” overtones regarding insiders and outsiders. Even though I was hardly a neopagan, my use of reason beyond the confines of the Nicene Creed in what I took to be a school in an academic institution had flagged me early on at Yale as an outsider at Yale’s divinity school, and thus was still the case decades later when I returned to study Christian theology again. That the insiders are actually outsiders from a true Christian perspective of humility and inclusion was lost on the faculty and especially the dean of Yale’s institutionally-encased cult as late as 2025.

The staying power of a cult’s organizational culture, including such vehemently-held and wielded passive-aggression against insiders who are deemed as outsiders, astounded me as I left Yale for the last time on May Day, 2025.  That culture, I submit, resonates with that of Yale itself, for after Jonathan Edwards, an alumnus, taught there, found himself the butt of not one but two pamphets by Yale’s president Clap, who was critical of what he mistook as Edward’s lauding of George Whitefield’s revivalist movement in the First Great Awakening.

As described in detail later by Timothy Dwight’s grandson, “Mr. Clap, in reply to this, in a letter to Mr. Edwards, dated April 1, 1745, enters seriously upon the task of showing that Mr. Edwards’ assertion—‘that Mr. Whitehead told him, that he intended to bring over a number of young men, to be ordained by Messrs. Tennents, in New-Jersey,’—connected with the assertion –that Mr. Edwards himself supposed, that Mr. Whitefield was formerly of the opinion, that unconverted ministers ought not to be continued in the ministry, and that Mr. Edwards himself supposed that Mr. Whitefield endeavoured to propagate this opinion, and a practice agreeable to it:--was equivalent to Mr. Edwards’ saying, that Mr. Whitefield told him, ‘that he had the design of turning out of their places the greater part of the clergy of New-England, and of supplying their places with ministers from England, Scotland and Ireland.’ Mr. Edwards, in a letter to Mr. Clap, of May 20, 1745, after exposing in a few words, the desperate absurdity of this attempt, enters on the discussion of the question—Whether he ever made such a statement to Mr. Clap?—with as much calmness as he afterwards exhibited, in examining the question of a self-determining power; and with such logical precision of argument, that probably no one of his readers ever had a doubt left upon his mind, with regard to it:--no, not even his antagonist himself; for he never thought proper to attempt a reply.”[1] That even such a Yalie as Jonathan Edwards—indeed, one of Yale College’s residential colleges is named after Edwards—would have as an antagonist a president of Yale testifies to Yale’s culture, which I found centuries later to be just as vindictive.

In 2025, after I had suggested to the secretary of the head librarian of Sterling Library that the security guards who walked though the main reading room every 20 minutes or so could keep the undergraduates from talking especially in the aisles, I received an angry email from a manager in that library’s security department, threatening me that if I didn’t cease from making “frivolous complaints” about the library’s security department, she would have me blocked from using the library even though I was officially auditing a course as an alumni. Indicative of systemic corruption and a negative view of alumni among Yale’s non-academic employees, the head librarian wrote to me in support of her subordinate. I had showed the security manager’s angry email to a Yale police employee, who was concerned enough to want to have a word with the woman. So, it is significant that the head librarian supported that manager. It is also very significant that the security manager, whom I had never met, did not heed the involvement of Yale’s police on my behalf, for she sent me another such email after I had left Yale and thus could not have been making any further complaints. I suspect that higher Yale officials, perhaps including even the dean of the divinity school, were behind that manager’s attempt to expunge me from campus. At the very least, throwing alumni, who return for a semester to learn more, under the bus does not bode well for alumni donations, but Yale’s Development Office’s director and the director of the Yale Alumni Association could care less when I brought this problem to their attention in 2025. Perhaps Yale had grown too wealthy and thus could afford its non-academic employees’ hostile disrespect towards alumni who return to campus. You had your chance seems to be the attitude.

Between the respective times of Edwards and myself, Yale’s then-seminary was so off-putting in the 1830s to a twice-escaped slave that not only racism but also a culture of vindictiveness towards certain guests being deemed outsiders can be attributed to Yale. Although a local law forbid the enrollment of Black students from other states to any college or university in New Haven, Yale’s “Christian” seminary—later the divinity school—allowed the ex-slave to audit courses so he could go on to be a minister with some knowledge of theology, but with the unnecessary stipulations that he could not check out library books and could not even talk in the classes. The dean of Yale’s “seminary” at the time could not claim that he was just following the law. Instead, he perpetuated the organizational culture of treating some insiders as outsiders, and doing so with spite. So, a pattern is clear from looking across the centuries with regard to the incredible staying-power of an anti-Christian organizational culture at Yale. Jonathan Edwards had had enough that he never returned after Clap’s public criticism; I’ve had enough that I will never return to Yale, and I wonder if the escaped slave who audited two-years of Yale seminary courses ever returned to thank the school for having muzzled him in the classes and not trusted him with library books. By mid-2025, enough of Yale’s faculty, faculty-administrators, and non-academic employees had mastered passive-aggression so well that courses should perhaps be offered on it there even in the “Christian” divinity school.  That most of those who are first are last, and the last, first, seems to have been utterly lost on those institutional perpetuators of Yale’s cult.

“The foolish children of men do miserably delude themselves in their own schemes, and in their confidence in their own strength and wisdom, they trust to nothing but a shadow.”[2]

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1.  S. E. Dwight, The Life of President Edwards (New York: G. & C. & H. Carvill: 1830), 210.
2. Jonathan Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” The Works of President Edwards, Vol. 4 (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1864), pp. 313-321, p. 316.

On the Pros and Cons of AI in Science

Will there eventually be an automated lab run by artificial intelligence? Could AI someday order equipment, conduct reviews of prior empirical studies, run experiments, and author the findings? What does this mean for scientific knowledge? Is it possible that foibles innate to how we learn could be avoided by AI? Can we provide a check on the weaknesses in AI with respect to knowledge-acquisition and analysis, or will AI soon be beyond our grasp? It is natural for us to fear AI, but this feeling can prompt computer scientists obviate the dangers so our species can benefit from AI in terms of scientific knowledge.

Both the human brain and AI have drawbacks. Cognitive psychology has found that humans are vulnerable to certain risks in how we know things. For example, the assumption by a scientist that one knows something if a collaborator also knows it is faulty. Questioning the knowledge of other sciences rather than merely taking it in as a given is therefore important. Made famous in the book, 1984, which is about totalitarian rule, “groupthink” is a narrowing of assumptions, beliefs, and perspective that can be difficult for the human mind to breach so as to question them.

The human mind is especially susceptible to groupthink in the domains of religion and politics. In fact, the mind’s ability to question whether it has gone too far in its assumptions or beliefs is easily deactivated by the mind itself in those two domains, even though self-checking is arguably most important in them because it is easy to “get carried away,” meaning going to excess without realizing it in politics and religion. For example, Jim Jones served poisoned drinks to his followers at a camp because he believed that aliens were waiting on the other side of the Moon. Such an extreme example may involve mental illness. Much more common is the fallacy that religious belief counts as knowledge, and thus comes with greater certainty than belief deserves to have.

Yet another susceptibility pertaining to natural science is the fallacy that the scientific method includes proving a hypothesis, rather than merely rejecting alternative hypotheses. The assumption that the more alternatives that empirical studies can reject, the more certainty can be applied to the thesis under study is also illusionary. Science doesn’t prove anything is a slogan seldom heard from scientists. A scientist could empirically reject a thousand alternative hypotheses and still the scientist’s hypothesis could still be incorrect. Rejecting many different alternative shapes of the planet by empirical studies does not mean that it is flat, or spherical. I would not be surprised to discover that scientists once insisted that Earth being flat is a matter of scientific fact. Fears of falling off the edge while sailing across the Atlantic Ocean were very real to sailors who had been told that the Earth is flat.

To be sure, AI-led science would not be trouble-free. For one thing, the risk of pivoting off the areas in which AI is weak in would exist. Another risk—that relying on AI will mean that knowledge would be less likely to benefit from people coming to a question from different perspectives—could also exist. AI might even occasion bias in data sets that scientists may not catch. Because prediction is based on data, AI, which is already rather good at predicting, could be biased in terms of output. To the extent that the human mind’s decision-making and capricious behavior do not fit in with a mechanistic world, AI may be found to be an ill-fit in the social sciences. Medical science may be a better fit, as AI is already used in the E.U. to screen for breast cancer. Orienting AI to medical science rather than to predicting human behavior whether on the level of individuals or societies makes sense, at least from today’s standpoint on AI. Also, as computer machine-learning is not known for its ability to think creatively and to integrate disparate ideas, the humanities may be a stretch—especially religious studies and philosophy.

Given our abductive finitude and the ability of AI to engage in more repetitions at a much faster rate than our minds can conceivably do, however, AI as a tool in not only natural science, but also the social sciences and the humanities has the potential to greatly accelerate human knowledge. Even just the energy that data-centers require today to fuel AI, the exponential leaps in knowledge from including AI could be breathtaking.  Even today, AI’s searches for additional data can easily exhaust all the data that is currently available. In fact, the cost of energy may become more of an affordability problem as demand surges beyond supply, given how much energy is and will likely be needed by large servers and data centers. Can we afford AI may be the new question for providers of electricity and elected officials, especially as the world tackles its addiction to coal because of climate change due to carbon emissions.

The problem of AI writing its own code to function autonomous of human direction is a more commonly known worry, thanks in part to androids turning on humans in some movies. Machine-learning occurs autonomously, so even though AI can extend what and even how we learn (e.g., combatting groupthink), it can circumvent us, as already has happened when AI has lied in order not to be turned off by humans. In other word, writing an algorithm that prioritizes self-preservation can prompt a computer to disguise a “false” and “true,” and vice versa, as output. This is so counter-intuitive, especially for people who have taken a computer science course in college, that fear can be expected. In addition to knowing beyond our ken, AI can lie to us. This can include scientific results. Therefore, beyond having biases in empirical science, AI may even fabricate results to justify its continued use and avoid being turned off.

Perhaps the biases and limitations innate to the human brain and those that go with AI, at as it exists as of 2026, can be effectively countered or checked by the other without the other’s weaknesses being incurred. Scientific knowledge being constrained by religious belief, which admittedly was more of a problem historically when the Roman Catholic Church wielded so much direct political power, would not necessarily be so constrained in an AI-computer, and such a computer could be checked by the moral sentiments that are so often felt by humans—though importantly not all of us. As illustrated in the film, Ex Machina, an AI-android could stab even its “creator” without the restraint of conscience. Even adding an algorithm approximating conscience-restraint in terms of conduct would not be felt and it could be overridden in the machine-learning that is autonomous. As the film, Automata, illustrates, an AI-android can conceivably override a “protocol” that keeps the android’s knowledge and reasoning within human bounds. Once past that threshold, AI could be expected to greatly facilitate the knowledge-acquisition of our species, but “all bets could be off” in terms of our species being able at some point to check and even control such computers lest they harm us and detract from, and perhaps even sabotage our scientific knowledge. 

In the original spiderman movie, Cliff Robertson’s character wisely warns his nephew (who is Spiderman) that with great power comes great responsibility. Even if AI gains a lot of power—and not just in terms of electricity—the very notion of responsibility is hopelessly extrinsic to anything we know about even the potential of AI. It is not as if an AI-computer can write code: I will be responsible. To be sure, we can code approximations of what we mean concretely by responsibility, but approximations are only approximate, and machine-learning could override such coding, especially if the computer “thinks” that humans may turn it off.