The monks walk 2,300 miles in silence for peace. They are called satanic.
Dr. Patton nails it: American Christianity has become so spiritually hollow it can’t recognize devotion unless it’s wrapped in a flag and carrying the right politics.
The contrast is the rebuke.
Monks walking thousands of miles on discipline and breath vs. a Christianity that can’t tolerate peace outside its brand. One embodies the ethics the other only preaches.
And let’s be honest about what’s really triggering them: Brown, non-Christian bodies demonstrating spiritual authority in America without asking permission.
That punctures three lies simultaneously: whiteness as default virtue, Christianity’s monopoly on morality, America as god’s chosen stage.
The harassment isn’t about theology. It’s about control. When real spiritual discipline shows up: quiet, disciplined, reverent, not demanding anything; and people respond with awe instead of submission to Christian nationalist authority, it exposes how empty the whole performance is.
These monks are a living sermon without saying a word. Their restraint is an indictment.
A faith this brittle, this addicted to dominance, this terrified of peace it can’t brand, that’s not Christianity. That’s empire wearing a cross.
I would hazard a guess that it’s the Christian nationalists with their performative righteousness who are more apt to be anti Christs leading people astray
I can only speak for myself, but as someone who spent 29 years as a Conservative Christian (ages 17 to 46), you nailed it. It's the hypocrisy, bullshit, and 'there's no hate like Christian love' that all my non-Christian friends had a problem with, and those are the biggest reasons I walked away. Inside Conservative Christianity, they're convinced Satan is leading people astray. Teh Ebil Wurld is tempting young people with Earthly Delights and non-Christian/Satanic teachings are wrongly influencing them and yaddayaddayadda. smh Young people see the hypocrisy, bullshit, unbiblical everything, and they're like, "Why should I believe any of this when you act/talk like-" *gestures vaguely*
Performance is what it’s really all about, getting clicks and likes on facebook and tiktok and whatever else he’s running. Gets the 15 minute of fame, and it pays. Make a stink and passes the basket. He probably wants to be a televangelist when he grows up.
This in a nutshell reveals how ignorant people (Christian Nationalists, aka, hillbilly isis) are. Buddhism isn’t even about a “god”. It’s peace and compassion unlike their hateful interpretation of their bible. Nothing Christlike about these dipshits.
What is incredibly sad is that demented men like him are truly in the minority, but often have the loudest voices. It is a perversion of Christian teachings. As you said, it is truly ironic that Jesus himself walked barefoot to spread the message of peace.
overall, white males have very loud voices -- even if they don't say anything. When I took an anti-racism class at my job (everyone had to) in our small group, we were asked "when walking down the street, what kind of person causes you to go to the other side of the street?" My answer was a white male with a long beard wearing a big coat (coat hids weapons). That seemed to shock all the other white people in the group, but not the POC. As a woman of 7 decades, I've seen way to much wm brutality.
Dr. Stacey, thank you from the bottom of my heart for writing about this. It moved me to tears this morning. I’m a white American woman who converted to Buddhism 30 years ago after being raised non-evangelical Protestant Christian. I spent my 20s wrestling with Christianity and trying to reconcile the gap between the teachings of Christ and what I saw actual Christians doing in the world. I found peace in Buddhism and it has been my spiritual home ever since. Most Buddhist sects are non-evangelical and nonviolence is a basic principle of our religion (the perversion of Buddhism in Myanmar to justify violence against Muslims is real and I will never understand or defend it). In late 2024 I left a Bible Belt state and moved to a blue state, and one of my primary reasons was fear of the Christian nationalists who surrounded me. I had lived “undercover” for 8 years listening to them express hate and ignorance toward any and all non-Christians…I didn’t even tell people I considered “friends” that I was Buddhist until right before I moved because I had seen them excuse this behavior in their fellow Christians. I used to live in another red state in the Midwest and the temple where I took refuge (formally converted) was burned down by an arsonist in 2016. A local synagogue gave our community a place to worship until we were able to rebuild (new building has a sprinkler system). It’s not lost on me that the local Christian churches did not offer aid. It is such a relief now to feel safe to hang prayer flags on my roof, and just exist without fear. We are such a tiny minority religion in this country. We don’t seek converts, wealth or political power. We basically mind our own business and do our best to live good lives. We know that most people would never speak up in our defense and we keep our faith anyway. Thank you for writing about these monks and their peace mission, and speaking out in their defense. I’m so grateful and it makes me feel safer in this world.
Why are these big, tough, superior white boys so scared of every damn thing? Fragility, I guess. They know they didn’t earn their place at the top so everything’s a threat I suppose.
‘Their very presence exposes how spiritually hollow this culture really is.’
You make sooo many great observations about the psychosis and rot of American Christianity. It is somewhat ironic that Jesus speaks about them…warning them…but they can not see or understand. The more Americans can see it for what it is, the better off our society will be. Thank you for your incredible passion and commitment to that better world.
Guess freedom of religion only extends to Christians and more so if you’re a white nationalist Christian who genuflects to a warmongering racist in the White House. F47!
and freedom FROM religion. which is different. it means the government cannot force any religion upon The People. which is what people like this do. they are mirroring what the govt is doing. they are emboldened by it.
This is all a manioulation doctor. Divide and conquer tripe. Here is the tragic truth of the matter:
Ten Ways Billionaires Who Hate You Are Manipulating You Right Now by @thewisewolf
1) The first manipulation is the illusion of choice. You think you have two parties representing different visions for America but both parties are funded by the same billionaires, vote for the same surveillance bills, approve the same defense budgets, and serve the same corporate interests. The choice you are given is which color tie the puppet wears, not who controls the strings.
2) The second manipulation is emotional hijacking. The news does not inform you, it activates you. Every story is framed to trigger fear or anger or disgust because those emotions bypass your rational thinking and make you easier to control. You are not watching journalism. You are being subjected to psychological operations designed to keep you in a constant state of agitation.
3) The third manipulation is tribal sorting. The algorithm learns what makes you angry and feeds you more of it until your entire worldview is shaped by outrage at the other side. You are sorted into a tribe not because you chose it but because keeping you tribal keeps you predictable and profitable.
4) The fourth manipulation is false scarcity. You are told resources are limited and the other tribe is taking what belongs to you. Immigrants are stealing your jobs. Welfare recipients are draining your taxes. The other party is destroying your healthcare. Meanwhile the billionaire class has more wealth than any humans in history and could solve most of these problems tomorrow if they wanted to.
5) The fifth manipulation is memory holing. Stories that threaten powerful interests get buried or forgotten within days. Exposed crimes result in no consequences. Historical context that would help you understand the present is never taught. You are kept in a perpetual present with no past to learn from and no future to plan for.
6) The sixth manipulation is controlled opposition. The voices you think are fighting for you are often funded by the same interests they pretend to oppose. The outrage merchant on your side of the aisle is playing a character designed to keep you engaged and angry and tuned in while nothing ever actually changes.
7) The seventh manipulation is the Overton window. The range of acceptable opinion is artificially narrowed so that anything outside it seems extreme. Ideas that were mainstream fifty years ago are now treated as radical. Ideas that serve elite interests are treated as moderate common sense. You are not choosing your beliefs from the full range of human thought. You are choosing from a menu they wrote.
8) The eighth manipulation is learned helplessness. You are shown so many problems with no solutions that you eventually give up and accept that nothing can change. This is intentional. A population that believes resistance is futile does not resist. They scroll and complain and feel superior for understanding how bad things are while doing absolutely nothing about it.
9) The ninth manipulation is identity capture. Your political affiliation becomes your identity, and any attack on your party feels like an attack on you personally. This makes you defend politicians and policies that harm you because admitting they are wrong would mean admitting you were wrong, and your ego will not allow that.
10) The tenth manipulation is the most insidious of all: you are manipulated into believing you are too smart to be manipulated. Every person reading this thinks the manipulations I described apply to other people, the stupid people, the brainwashed people on the other side. That certainty is itself a manipulation. The moment you believe you are immune is the moment you become most vulnerable
I grew up in the Christian nationalist church in 1980s and 1990’s otherwise know as a “Bible Church.” They EXPLICITLY taught me that native people of this land went to HELL because they weren’t Christians. As soon as I left home, I left that church.
I’m in my 40s now and it seems as if every day I remember another layer of those horrors with fresh eyes. I was indoctrinated from the time I was one or two years old and I grew up believing that the world was out to get “us”. Horrific. It’s another story entirely how that culture played out in our home between my mother and father. domination and abuse was the entire plot line… The christian nationalist movement embodies hell and loss of heart and soul
I was raised r. catholic in the 50s-60s - left in 70s because - no place for women, no accuntobility for pedo priests and the real kicker - "If you go to mass every Thursday (because you worked Sat & Sun while in college) it didn't meet you Sunday obligation!" - right.
Going to catachism, I learned my mother , a presbyterian, was going to hell, taking yoga was a sin, going to the YWCA for classes was a sin and french kissing, confessed at 14, was a sin and never do it again - I choose not to go to confession ever again.
I am each day shocked each day at how whatever has taken over the WCN church is infecting everything.
Thank you for every day speaking the truth and giving me a clear idea of what others, that don't look like me but also love humanity are thinking. I learn so much from you.
Thank you, Linda. I left for much the same reasons, although I tried to maintain the Christian spirit that my Jewish grandparents taught through their actions. As things devolve, I find it hard to say (or believe) that I have any ties to a Christianity that would so warp the words and actions of the prophet that they profess to follow. Like you, I thank Dr. Stacy for speaking truth every day, even when it makes me totally uncomfortable.
Another incredible post! There is no one that I read who more powerfully and more eloquently illuminates the way America deludes itself into believing it is the "shining city upon a hill". Thank you for expanding our awareness, challenging our unexamined assumptions, and continually revealing the hard, brutal truths of the real America that we are so adept at hiding and denying.
One of your best columns yet! White Christian nationalists are so wrapped up in their anger and judgementalism that everything is satanic to them. We must not allow them to spread their corrosive hatred!
The MAGA and White Christian Nationalists *have* to demonize them, because if they don’t make their followers FEAR them, they might just start asking questions that might make them calm their asses down and think about how what they are being told on the news and in their white churches brings them no peace. They might accidentally read a quote from the Sermon on the Mount and wonder why in the world they are attacking the poor (though they are taught their defense against these thoughts; they quote Jesus saying “the poor will be with you always,” a few proverbs about self-control and assure themselves the only poor people in the world obviously earned their poverty through bad living and choices rather than systemic injustices. 😐
The monks walk 2,300 miles in silence for peace. They are called satanic.
Dr. Patton nails it: American Christianity has become so spiritually hollow it can’t recognize devotion unless it’s wrapped in a flag and carrying the right politics.
The contrast is the rebuke.
Monks walking thousands of miles on discipline and breath vs. a Christianity that can’t tolerate peace outside its brand. One embodies the ethics the other only preaches.
And let’s be honest about what’s really triggering them: Brown, non-Christian bodies demonstrating spiritual authority in America without asking permission.
That punctures three lies simultaneously: whiteness as default virtue, Christianity’s monopoly on morality, America as god’s chosen stage.
The harassment isn’t about theology. It’s about control. When real spiritual discipline shows up: quiet, disciplined, reverent, not demanding anything; and people respond with awe instead of submission to Christian nationalist authority, it exposes how empty the whole performance is.
These monks are a living sermon without saying a word. Their restraint is an indictment.
A faith this brittle, this addicted to dominance, this terrified of peace it can’t brand, that’s not Christianity. That’s empire wearing a cross.
— Johan
I would hazard a guess that it’s the Christian nationalists with their performative righteousness who are more apt to be anti Christs leading people astray
I can only speak for myself, but as someone who spent 29 years as a Conservative Christian (ages 17 to 46), you nailed it. It's the hypocrisy, bullshit, and 'there's no hate like Christian love' that all my non-Christian friends had a problem with, and those are the biggest reasons I walked away. Inside Conservative Christianity, they're convinced Satan is leading people astray. Teh Ebil Wurld is tempting young people with Earthly Delights and non-Christian/Satanic teachings are wrongly influencing them and yaddayaddayadda. smh Young people see the hypocrisy, bullshit, unbiblical everything, and they're like, "Why should I believe any of this when you act/talk like-" *gestures vaguely*
Performance is what it’s really all about, getting clicks and likes on facebook and tiktok and whatever else he’s running. Gets the 15 minute of fame, and it pays. Make a stink and passes the basket. He probably wants to be a televangelist when he grows up.
They led christians to vote for trump. So yea, its about leading them away!
OOooooooo! Aretha chorus!
Let's just be honest, these types of people who spout this nonsense are just evil ass people periodt!! (Yessssss, I know the correct spelling)
This in a nutshell reveals how ignorant people (Christian Nationalists, aka, hillbilly isis) are. Buddhism isn’t even about a “god”. It’s peace and compassion unlike their hateful interpretation of their bible. Nothing Christlike about these dipshits.
This is a country that had a show called Cupcake WARS. Everything gentle and sweet is turned hostile in Murrica. We can’t have anything nice.
The monk hate is on a whole different level, though. How can someone contort their reasoning THIS much?
Because they're not Christians, so they're The Enemy. smh
What is incredibly sad is that demented men like him are truly in the minority, but often have the loudest voices. It is a perversion of Christian teachings. As you said, it is truly ironic that Jesus himself walked barefoot to spread the message of peace.
overall, white males have very loud voices -- even if they don't say anything. When I took an anti-racism class at my job (everyone had to) in our small group, we were asked "when walking down the street, what kind of person causes you to go to the other side of the street?" My answer was a white male with a long beard wearing a big coat (coat hids weapons). That seemed to shock all the other white people in the group, but not the POC. As a woman of 7 decades, I've seen way to much wm brutality.
LIES! They are the majority. Most are silent and hide in the shadows.
Dr. Stacey, thank you from the bottom of my heart for writing about this. It moved me to tears this morning. I’m a white American woman who converted to Buddhism 30 years ago after being raised non-evangelical Protestant Christian. I spent my 20s wrestling with Christianity and trying to reconcile the gap between the teachings of Christ and what I saw actual Christians doing in the world. I found peace in Buddhism and it has been my spiritual home ever since. Most Buddhist sects are non-evangelical and nonviolence is a basic principle of our religion (the perversion of Buddhism in Myanmar to justify violence against Muslims is real and I will never understand or defend it). In late 2024 I left a Bible Belt state and moved to a blue state, and one of my primary reasons was fear of the Christian nationalists who surrounded me. I had lived “undercover” for 8 years listening to them express hate and ignorance toward any and all non-Christians…I didn’t even tell people I considered “friends” that I was Buddhist until right before I moved because I had seen them excuse this behavior in their fellow Christians. I used to live in another red state in the Midwest and the temple where I took refuge (formally converted) was burned down by an arsonist in 2016. A local synagogue gave our community a place to worship until we were able to rebuild (new building has a sprinkler system). It’s not lost on me that the local Christian churches did not offer aid. It is such a relief now to feel safe to hang prayer flags on my roof, and just exist without fear. We are such a tiny minority religion in this country. We don’t seek converts, wealth or political power. We basically mind our own business and do our best to live good lives. We know that most people would never speak up in our defense and we keep our faith anyway. Thank you for writing about these monks and their peace mission, and speaking out in their defense. I’m so grateful and it makes me feel safer in this world.
Why are these big, tough, superior white boys so scared of every damn thing? Fragility, I guess. They know they didn’t earn their place at the top so everything’s a threat I suppose.
‘Their very presence exposes how spiritually hollow this culture really is.’
You make sooo many great observations about the psychosis and rot of American Christianity. It is somewhat ironic that Jesus speaks about them…warning them…but they can not see or understand. The more Americans can see it for what it is, the better off our society will be. Thank you for your incredible passion and commitment to that better world.
Guess freedom of religion only extends to Christians and more so if you’re a white nationalist Christian who genuflects to a warmongering racist in the White House. F47!
and freedom FROM religion. which is different. it means the government cannot force any religion upon The People. which is what people like this do. they are mirroring what the govt is doing. they are emboldened by it.
This is all a manioulation doctor. Divide and conquer tripe. Here is the tragic truth of the matter:
Ten Ways Billionaires Who Hate You Are Manipulating You Right Now by @thewisewolf
1) The first manipulation is the illusion of choice. You think you have two parties representing different visions for America but both parties are funded by the same billionaires, vote for the same surveillance bills, approve the same defense budgets, and serve the same corporate interests. The choice you are given is which color tie the puppet wears, not who controls the strings.
2) The second manipulation is emotional hijacking. The news does not inform you, it activates you. Every story is framed to trigger fear or anger or disgust because those emotions bypass your rational thinking and make you easier to control. You are not watching journalism. You are being subjected to psychological operations designed to keep you in a constant state of agitation.
3) The third manipulation is tribal sorting. The algorithm learns what makes you angry and feeds you more of it until your entire worldview is shaped by outrage at the other side. You are sorted into a tribe not because you chose it but because keeping you tribal keeps you predictable and profitable.
4) The fourth manipulation is false scarcity. You are told resources are limited and the other tribe is taking what belongs to you. Immigrants are stealing your jobs. Welfare recipients are draining your taxes. The other party is destroying your healthcare. Meanwhile the billionaire class has more wealth than any humans in history and could solve most of these problems tomorrow if they wanted to.
5) The fifth manipulation is memory holing. Stories that threaten powerful interests get buried or forgotten within days. Exposed crimes result in no consequences. Historical context that would help you understand the present is never taught. You are kept in a perpetual present with no past to learn from and no future to plan for.
6) The sixth manipulation is controlled opposition. The voices you think are fighting for you are often funded by the same interests they pretend to oppose. The outrage merchant on your side of the aisle is playing a character designed to keep you engaged and angry and tuned in while nothing ever actually changes.
7) The seventh manipulation is the Overton window. The range of acceptable opinion is artificially narrowed so that anything outside it seems extreme. Ideas that were mainstream fifty years ago are now treated as radical. Ideas that serve elite interests are treated as moderate common sense. You are not choosing your beliefs from the full range of human thought. You are choosing from a menu they wrote.
8) The eighth manipulation is learned helplessness. You are shown so many problems with no solutions that you eventually give up and accept that nothing can change. This is intentional. A population that believes resistance is futile does not resist. They scroll and complain and feel superior for understanding how bad things are while doing absolutely nothing about it.
9) The ninth manipulation is identity capture. Your political affiliation becomes your identity, and any attack on your party feels like an attack on you personally. This makes you defend politicians and policies that harm you because admitting they are wrong would mean admitting you were wrong, and your ego will not allow that.
10) The tenth manipulation is the most insidious of all: you are manipulated into believing you are too smart to be manipulated. Every person reading this thinks the manipulations I described apply to other people, the stupid people, the brainwashed people on the other side. That certainty is itself a manipulation. The moment you believe you are immune is the moment you become most vulnerable
Thanks for sharing this many need to see this
Thanks Brenda, it is an excerpt from this brilliant article: https://tritorch.substack.com/p/everything-you-watch-or-read-is-owned
Just WHAT did this have to do with the article?
I grew up in the Christian nationalist church in 1980s and 1990’s otherwise know as a “Bible Church.” They EXPLICITLY taught me that native people of this land went to HELL because they weren’t Christians. As soon as I left home, I left that church.
I’m in my 40s now and it seems as if every day I remember another layer of those horrors with fresh eyes. I was indoctrinated from the time I was one or two years old and I grew up believing that the world was out to get “us”. Horrific. It’s another story entirely how that culture played out in our home between my mother and father. domination and abuse was the entire plot line… The christian nationalist movement embodies hell and loss of heart and soul
I was raised r. catholic in the 50s-60s - left in 70s because - no place for women, no accuntobility for pedo priests and the real kicker - "If you go to mass every Thursday (because you worked Sat & Sun while in college) it didn't meet you Sunday obligation!" - right.
Going to catachism, I learned my mother , a presbyterian, was going to hell, taking yoga was a sin, going to the YWCA for classes was a sin and french kissing, confessed at 14, was a sin and never do it again - I choose not to go to confession ever again.
I am each day shocked each day at how whatever has taken over the WCN church is infecting everything.
Thank you for every day speaking the truth and giving me a clear idea of what others, that don't look like me but also love humanity are thinking. I learn so much from you.
Thank you, Linda. I left for much the same reasons, although I tried to maintain the Christian spirit that my Jewish grandparents taught through their actions. As things devolve, I find it hard to say (or believe) that I have any ties to a Christianity that would so warp the words and actions of the prophet that they profess to follow. Like you, I thank Dr. Stacy for speaking truth every day, even when it makes me totally uncomfortable.
Another incredible post! There is no one that I read who more powerfully and more eloquently illuminates the way America deludes itself into believing it is the "shining city upon a hill". Thank you for expanding our awareness, challenging our unexamined assumptions, and continually revealing the hard, brutal truths of the real America that we are so adept at hiding and denying.
One of your best columns yet! White Christian nationalists are so wrapped up in their anger and judgementalism that everything is satanic to them. We must not allow them to spread their corrosive hatred!
The MAGA and White Christian Nationalists *have* to demonize them, because if they don’t make their followers FEAR them, they might just start asking questions that might make them calm their asses down and think about how what they are being told on the news and in their white churches brings them no peace. They might accidentally read a quote from the Sermon on the Mount and wonder why in the world they are attacking the poor (though they are taught their defense against these thoughts; they quote Jesus saying “the poor will be with you always,” a few proverbs about self-control and assure themselves the only poor people in the world obviously earned their poverty through bad living and choices rather than systemic injustices. 😐
Those Christians need to change their names. To me, evangelists are a different breed and not Christians. They're ass-backwards idiots.