Prior to the 250th anniversary of the United States, thousands came to the National Mall in Washington for "Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee Of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving." The eight-hour-long event, created and organized by Freedom 250 in collaboration with the White House, drew throngs of people over the weekend, who waited in line to stand in front of the center Stage. One of the attendees was Emma Cieslik, a queer Catholic religious scholar. Emma is the director for Queer and Catholic, and wrote in the National Catholic Reporter (NCR) how the Great Controversy book that was given away at Rededicate 250 contains anti-Catholic conspiracies, written by Ellen White. In Emma’s own words,
“I attended the event as a Catholic public historian, curious about the materials that attendees, organizers and protestors were distributing.
But the materials that I and other members of the public received revealed deep-seated tension between Catholics and Protestants at an event focused on Christian unity and featuring Catholic speakers. I saw echoes of the same anti-Catholic conspiracies that have existed since the very beginning of the United States, and have affected the way that American Christianity has been constructed. The juxtaposition between the event's anti-Catholic elements and its Catholic speakers emphasized the ongoing fracture between Protestants and Catholics in Trump's MAGA coalition.
I, like everyone who walked up from the Smithsonian metro stop, was handed a bag with the screenprinted logo "Religious Freedom 250" from Amazing Facts International, a multimillion dollar religious nonprofit organization run by Pastor Doug Batchelor.
In it was Ellen Gould White's The Fall and Rise of Jerusalem: The Great Controversy Between Good and Evil, along with a glossy magazine titled "Religious Freedom and America in Bible Prophecy: The Future of Earth's Last Superpower Revealed" published by Amazing Facts and other assorted leaflets. While not officially affiliated with the event, the bag and its contents closely mirrored Rededicate 250's design, and they were the only materials that I was handed while walking around the event.
I was already skeptical of the materials because [Ellen]White is well-known for her anti-Catholic views. In fact, her book The Great Controversy, which argues that the Catholic Church misinterprets the Second and Fourth Commandments, is a prominent source of anti-Catholic conspiracies.
But what I encountered inside of the magazine was even more blatant.
She continues:
“In articles stating that "an image of the first beast [prophesized in Revelation] would be a representation of the papacy," the magazine argued that Catholicism itself is the greatest threat to religious liberty in the United States.
"In order for the USA to make a copy of the papacy, a church-state government," the magazine read, "it would have to set aside its founding principles and combine church and state. Upon doing so, in imitation of the papacy at the height of its power during the Dark Ages, the USA will then legislate religious observance in accordance with the papacy. It will then influence all the nations of the world to follow its example."
From arguments about the Catholic Church observing commandments different from those in the Bible to conspiracy theories about the fabricated papal title Vicarius Filii Dei standing for 666, or a numerology indicative of the devil, this magazine regurgitated nativist, anti-Catholic conspiracies that have a long, dark history in America.
The anti-Catholic rhetoric of these materials stood in strange contrast to the high-profile Catholics speaking at the event including JD Vance and Marco Rubio, and ordained Catholic leaders Bishop Robert Barron and Cardinal Timothy Dolan. Barron himself may have been alluding to anti-Catholicism during his keynote address when he said that "I can stand on this National Mall today as both a proud Catholic bishop and a proud American citizen and say, 'God bless the United States of America.' "
By Emma Cieslik
(LINK)
Observations
The Great Controversy book’s view of the papacy is aligned with such Protestant Reformers as Martin Luther, John Calvin, and later, Joseph Tanner. As Adventists, we still believe that it's the reasonable way to understand these prophecies, arising from the text itself and not political correctness.
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“For the mystery of iniquity is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way” (2 Thessalonians 2:7).
