Blasphemy laws depend on public outrage over the violation of religious boundaries. Those boundaries, however, have been established over an ever-shifting landscape defined by competing claims of invisible magic powers.
The invisibility of the fundamental basis for standards of blasphemy makes credible arguments about rational blasphemy policies impossible.
When a religion depends upon invisible spiritual authorities that no one can see for the definition of its boundaries, any person can come in and redefine those boundaries.
All the person has to do is claim that they have been speaking to the religion’s invisible spirit leaders. They can say anything they want, and claim that the invisible spirits told them that the rules have changed, and there are no standards in place to refute them.
Any dispute within the religion becomes nothing more than an argument about who is really talking to invisible spirits, and who is just pretending. There’s no reality-based standard for determining who is telling the truth, or whether all of the human religious authorities are just telling different lies.
A case in point is Julie Green, an American member of the New Apostolic Reformation, a right wing Christian Nationalist movement. Julie Green claims that she receives daily communications from the Christian god. She then shares those prophecies with her followers, claiming that her words are actually the words of the creator of the entire universe.
The strange thing is that the Christian prophecies of Julie Green just so happen to align with the political agenda of Donald Trump. Julie Green makes it seem as if the Christian god wants Donald Trump to have absolute political power over the United States.
Many people have noted that Donald Trump was never mentioned in the Bible. Traditional, strictly Bible-based Christians are outraged that Julie Green is attempting to update Christian texts, writing what is in essence a new book of the Christian Bible that is centered around the right wing authoritarianism of Donald Trump.
Who is to say which side in this argument is right or wrong? Who can say whether Julie Green is committing blasphemy by claiming to speak for the Christian god, or her opponents are committing blasphemy by failing to recognize her prophecies?
What’s especially unsettling is that this dispute, which might ordinarily be dismissed as a squabble among marginal religious zealots, is planted squarely within the US presidential election of 2024.
Julie Green is an assistant pastor to Jerry Reynolds of the Faith Family Fellowship QC in the Quad Cities region of Iowa. Jerry Reynolds is also Green’s father.
Jerry Reynolds was recruited to join the Donald Trump for President campaign as a member of Trump’s Iowa Faith Leader Coalition during the 2024 Iowa caucuses.
Not only did Jerry Reynolds endorse the Trump for President campaign, but Donald Trump effectively endorsed the prophetic religious beliefs of Reynolds as well, including Julie Green’s political religious prophecies.
The problem is that Julie Green’s prophecies are infamously wrong. Green claimed, for example, that the Christian god had told her that certain Republicans, such as Doug Mastriano, would win in the 2022 midterm elections. Those Republicans lost.
If the Christian god really did tell Julie Green that Doug Mastriano would win, then that makes the Christian god a liar.
Is it blasphemy for me to suggest that’s the case?
No one can say whether Julie Green is the blasphemer, or I am. These arguments about blasphemy are arguments about magic and voices in people’s heads that no one else can hear.
The case of the mistaken prophecies of Julie Green shows why it’s folly to base any aspect of real-world government upon the fanciful prophecies of any religion. Religious claims about reality can never be firmly established.
Power in theocratic regimes such as the one that Donald Trump and his Christian Nationalist followers seek to establish is really just a matter of which religious authorities have the loudest voices, and the most ruthless networks of power behind the scenes.
For a nation to remain free, its government must stay far away from religious matters. The freedom to blaspheme is essential for the preservation of democracy.