MSNBC’s Scarborough: Far Right ‘Invented a Religion,’ Abortion Is Not a Christian Issue 

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough said Tuesday on his show “Morning Joe” that the far right invented a religion and made “abortion not just as a political issue” but a “religious issue.”

Scarborough said, “This bears repeating because of the self-righteousness of so many on the far, far, Trump right, they’ve invented a religion. This Christian nationalism, they’ve invented a religion. It keeps getting more extreme every week. IVF now is, I guess, the devil’s playhouse. Mike Pence had kids through IVF. So now what, is he a heretic? Are they going to hang him? They wanted to. Is his wife a witch? Are they going to have witch trials now?”

He continued, “When I was in high school, the Southern Baptist Convention was pro-choice. In fact, they were pro-choice from the time of Jesus through the time the Beatles broke up. Wait, there’s more, not only through the time the Beatles broke up, were these Protestant denominations pro choice, they were pro choice through the time the Eagles broke up.”

He added, “As they’re waving their bibles in your face and telling you that you are insufficiently Christian because you don’t believe what Jerry Falwell, Richard Viguerie, and Paul Weyrich decided, please stay with me, decided in 1979 they had to do to beat a Democratic president who happened to be Southern Baptist. They couldn’t say he was insufficiently Christian because he taught Sunday school every Sunday, basically. He was a good and decent man. So what did they do? Stay with me, I know you don’t want to hear it out there, but stay with me because it is the truth. they invented the issue of abortion as a religious, not just as a political issue. Jerry Falwell, Richard Viguerie a Republican operative and Paul Weyrich, a direct mail specialist, Republican said, we’re going to create abortion not just as a political issue, we’re going to make it a religious issue.”

Scarborough concluded, “They decided, we’re going to make abortion a religious issue. That way, Jimmy Carter can take votes from conservative Catholics and working class Protestants. That’s what they figured out. Now, you fast forward all these years later, and talk to most of my friends, they’ll tell you, abortion, that’s a religious issue.”

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