Moloch, Mormons, and Mike Lee  🔗 **Source:** [Moloch, Mormons, and Mike Lee](https://share.snipd.com/episode/9f365d52-9775-4eb1-ba21-18c46776d06a) ## Highlights - **Moloch Image Weaponized Against Abortion** - Mike Lee uses the image of Moloch to rhetorically equate abortion with child sacrifice to inflame his base. - Dan Beecher and Dan McClellan show this collapses distinct categories: abortion (pre-birth, legally treated differently) vs. post-birth child sacrifice in ancient texts. Transcript: Dan Beecher And his play on it is James Tallarico will put you first on the altar to moloch yes and he included in that a uh a very famous image it is used an awful lot on social media okay yeah this um kind Of sepia tone looking, probably wood carving from the late 19th century showing a bunch of worshipers and one of them is holding out an infant and there's a bronze hybrid anthropomorphic Bovine statue seated there that has a fire underneath it. That means a cow-headed dude. Cow-headed dude holding out arms and the idea is that the baby gets put on there and is burnt up in the process. Dan McClellan And this time Mike Lee went cool and had Grok make it animated. Oh, did Grok? So it's got like the flames are burning. Dan Beecher Oh, gosh. Yeah, so the flames are rising, and the wind is billowing the robes. So good. So there you go. Dan McClellan Why is he why is Mike Lee talking? First of all, I don't know what what we should do is we should just mention that because I lefty that I am big guy who like, likes, you know, I follow politics from the left and I am a left-wing Guy and there are dog whistles on the right that I know about. And then there are dog whistles on the right that I don't know about. Cause they're stupid. Like, well, yeah. So, uh, this is a dog whistle that i wasn't aware of and so i had to do some research okay and uh and the research that i did pointed to the idea that uh at least the political operatives on The right people like based mike lee are using the image of this, this character that they believe the named Moloch as an abortion stand in. Yes. People they're talking about the idea that abortion is, they're framing it as a child sacrifice. Right. And so they're saying that the people who have abortions are sacrificing their children to an evil God. Yes. And therefore they are evil and therefore Democrats are evil. And therefore anyone who wants women to have reproductive rights are evil. Yes. And they're all worshipers of Moloch. Yes. So, Dan. Yes, sir. How does that line up with the Bible? I feel like he's got it right. At the very least, I went and looked up some scriptures and found, for instance, in 2 Kings, a whole thing about, you shall not give up any of your offspring to sacrifice them to, and in The NRSVUE, it says Moloch. Moloch or Moloch, yeah. So there you go. It's right there. Don't sacrifice your offspring to Moloch. Dan Beecher So Mike Lee is right, and we should just end this episode. The problems with this rhetoric are legion. And we can start with the fact that the attempt to rhetorically equate abortion to child sacrifice is problematized by the fact that abortion takes place before birth, child sacrifice Takes place after birth. There's a big difference between those two things. And there's also the problem of the fact that if we go look in the Hebrew Bible, as we've discussed before on the program, the Hebrew Bible does not treat a fetus as a full legal and moral Person. It treats it as a piece of property whose accidental destruction is recompensed by the payment of a fine. And in the exact same passage where it's saying the accidental destruction of a fetus is recompensed with the payment of a fine, it says the accidental destruction of the mother who Is injured in the act. Dan McClellan Who presumably is a fully born human. Dan Beecher Yes, yes. That's the death penalty. Yeah. So they're drawing a pretty clear distinction between born humans and fetuses. One is a full legal and moral person. The other is not, is property and property of the husband because the fine is paid to the husband. Right. And this agrees with a lot of other ancient rhetoric where abortion is primarily punished legally as a property crime against the father. In other words, when they didn't like abortion, it was because it was taking away the father's property. But a father could cause that. In fact, in most ancient societies, and we're not sure exactly what the situation would have been in Israel and Judah, a father could expose, end the life of a newborn if he was not interested In it. So societies that said a woman can't have an abortion would have said a father could cause it, a father could do these things. So there's a lot more complexity. The water is a lot muddier when it comes to what's going on with abortion in the Hebrew Bible. But what is very clear is that child sacrifice and abortion are two very different things. So this is an attempt to rhetorically collapse a very clear distinction between two different types of beings, one a fetus and one a born human. It is a means for people to cheerlead to among their own group. It's a way to preach to the choir by basically just ginning up this, oh yeah, we think that abortion is child sacrifice. So we're going to go out there and just baffle thoughtful people capable of critical thought by spreading this rhetoric around. ([Time 0:07:21](https://share.snipd.com/snip/cfc33d62-317c-449c-8a3e-19d43ad95366)) - **Biblical Law Treats Fetuses As Property** - Ancient Israelite law treated fetuses differently from born persons, often as property rather than full legal persons. - Dan Beecher points to fine-for-accidental-destruction language where compensation goes to the husband, showing a property-law approach. Transcript: Dan Beecher There's a big difference between those two things. And there's also the problem of the fact that if we go look in the Hebrew Bible, as we've discussed before on the program, the Hebrew Bible does not treat a fetus as a full legal and moral Person. It treats it as a piece of property whose accidental destruction is recompensed by the payment of a fine. And in the exact same passage where it's saying the accidental destruction of a fetus is recompensed with the payment of a fine, it says the accidental destruction of the mother who Is injured in the act. Dan McClellan Who presumably is a fully born human. Dan Beecher Yes, yes. That's the death penalty. Yeah. So they're drawing a pretty clear distinction between born humans and fetuses. One is a full legal and moral person. The other is not, is property and property of the husband because the fine is paid to the husband. Right. And this agrees with a lot of other ancient rhetoric where abortion is primarily punished legally as a property crime against the father. In other words, when they didn't like abortion, it was because it was taking away the father's property. But a father could cause that. In fact, in most ancient societies, and we're not sure exactly what the situation would have been in Israel and Judah, a father could expose, end the life of a newborn if he was not interested In it. So societies that said a woman can't have an abortion would have said a father could cause it, a father could do these things. So there's a lot more complexity. The water is a lot muddier when it comes to what's going on with abortion in the Hebrew Bible. ([Time 0:11:07](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4465d462-8f52-4f45-b8d6-b53a988ea12a)) - **Child Sacrifice Themes Appear Within Biblical Tradition** - The Hebrew Bible contains moments where God or Israelite texts endorse child-firstborn claims that read like child sacrifice, requiring later redaction or reinterpretation. - Examples: the Akedah (Abraham and Isaac), Exodus firstborn of Egypt, and Exodus 22's demand for firstborn offerings later replaced by redemption payments. Transcript: Dan Beecher In fact, I think it is correct that the God of Israel demands child sacrifice in the Hebrew Bible. Dan McClellan I was thinking we might need to bring that up because, yeah, there's so many, you know, when you hear all of people like Mike Lee talking about their sacrifice and their children and only The most evil ever people in the history of the world would do child sacrifice. I got bad news for you, bro. So talk about that a little bit. Dan Beecher Yeah, well, there are a few different things to talk about, including the fact that within Judaism, as well as within Christianity, central events of the entire faith are child sacrifice. Right. Like Jesus is a child sacrifice. He's an adult sacrifice. You can dress it up, offspring sacrifice. You can dress it up in a lot of different ways rhetorically, but it is God offering their child, their son, as a sacrifice. Right. And, you know pretty clear. And then the Akedah, this is Abraham's offer of Isaac. I think we've talked about this on the show before as well. Right at the last second, God goes, psych, just kidding. Dan McClellan I just wanted to see if you'd do it. Yeah. I didn't know you were going to do it, man. That was crazy. Dan Beecher But when we look at the text, as we've discussed before, it's a little fuzzy on what exactly happened. Because you have, it talks explicitly about Abraham and Isaac. They walked on. They went up the mountain. They did this. They did that. Whatever happens, happens. And then it says, so Abraham returned to his young men. Two go up the mountain. Only one comes down. And there are medieval and later Jewish traditions that actually understand the sacrifice to have taken place. Because Isaac vanishes from the narrative for a bit. And so there's this idea that, oh, he was sacrificed and he lived in heaven for a couple of years before he was reconstituted on earth. Or there's one where the ashes, he was burnt as a burnt offering and the ashes were scattered around the grasses of Moriah and the dew mixed with the ashes and Isaac, you know, kind of was Again, reconstituted. Like a phoenix rising. Yes, rising from the ashes. And so anyway, even within Judaism, child sacrifice is kind of central to the story. Dan McClellan I mean, the Exodus starts with God just sacrificing all the firstborn sons of Egypt to his self. And here's where it gets really weird. Dan Beecher Then God gives the covenant code to Israel, which we see in Exodus 20 as the Ten Commandments. Exodus 21 and 22 and a little bit of 23 have the covenant code. And the end of Exodus 22 sounds an awful like a command to offer a child sacrifice. Yeah. Because it says in English, verse 29 in English, it's verse 28 in Hebrew, you shall not delay to make offerings from the fullness of your harvest and from the outflow of your presses. The firstborn of your sons you shall give to me. You shall do the same with your oxen and the sheep, give it to me means sacrifice it to me. So it sounds like that's what is being referred to in terms of the firstborn. Now, everybody immediately, or at least people who are informed about their Bible, will immediately go, wait a minute, Exodus 13 and Exodus 34. Say you're supposed to start walking in that direction. And then at the last moment, you go, just kidding. I'm going to pay you money. And then I don't have to sacrifice my child. Or they'll point to numbers where it says this is really about dedicating the child to priesthood service or something like that. So we have circumlocutions of the commandment. Now, I think the majority of scholars agree that the covenant code is the earliest legislative stuff in all the Hebrew Bible. And so these other passages are coming from later and they're having to renegotiate what's going on here because they've found this peculiar commandment that says, I want your firstborn Kids. And they're like, oh, we don't like that. And presumably nobody was doing it. We have no data that indicates that there was actually the sacrifice of children going on in Israel. This kind of thing did happen in the ancient world. Sure. It was more likely than not any child you successfully gave birth to was not going to live past a year. Calculus of this frequently resulted in, well, maybe if we sacrifice the firstborn, then God will bless us so that other children will survive. That was the calculus of whether or not it worked. But we have in the later renegotiations, they're substituting things, money or priesthood service or something like that. But notice that the foundation is still child sacrifice. We've just shellacked a hard left right at the last second over it. We've just said, just kidding, don't actually sacrifice the kid, which betrays that underlying all of this is something buried deep in hoary antiquity that actually said, sacrifice Your kids. You don't need to say, let's pretend to have them sacrifice their kids if that was not actually what you wanted initially. You can just not have a commandment about sacrificing your child. Dan McClellan Nobody's even talking about sacrificing children. You don't need to have any commandments about it. Dan Beecher Yeah. It's not like somebody is like, you know what? Here's what we got to do. We're going to command them to sacrifice their children and then say, just kidding right at the last second. And then, because everybody around the boardroom table would have been like, why don't we just not command them to check? Yeah. If you just want the money, just say, yeah, you got to pay this money if you have a kid. If you just want the priesthood service, you can just say, yeah, you got to give your child over to priesthood service. You don't have to say, well, sacrifice them. Just kidding. We're going to leap in in the last second and say, do it. ([Time 0:30:33](https://share.snipd.com/snip/44d6f7d7-77fe-42df-8e7a-5f470752474e)) - **Reduce Abortions With Public Health Measures** - If you want fewer abortions, support public health measures rather than solely criminalizing abortion. - Dan Beecher names effective policies: comprehensive sex education, accessible contraception, and better women's healthcare. Transcript: Dan Beecher It's things like comprehensive sex education. It's things like greater access to women's health care. It's things like greater access to contraceptions. And guess what? Three things the people who rail against abortion are also railing against. Right. Those things. Yeah. So they don't want abortion to happen at lower rates. Dan McClellan If they were serious about abortion, they wouldn't be calling it. They would call the pill an abortion prevention pills. They wouldn't call it. They wouldn't be calling those. You know, you shouldn't be using that. But they're not serious about any of these things. They're serious about having a wedge issue. And getting elected. ([Time 0:37:39](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6425e7d1-e655-44ac-a648-036d71d33c3b)) - **Christianity Boundaries Are Social Not Official** - No single institution or person can definitively decide who counts as Christian; religious identity is primarily self-identification. - Dan McClellan argues the Pentagon labeling spat is identity politics and power signaling, not theology. Transcript: Dan Beecher Yes. Dan McClellan And the original list had a bunch of things. It was like Christian hyphen Methodist, Christian hyphen Catholic, Christian hyphen Jehovah's Witness, Christian hyphen blah, blah, blah. And then its own category was the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Yes. Without that Christian thing at the front. So people like Mike Lee and our other senator, Chris Stewart, raised holy hell and blah, blah, blah. And so the Pentagon then released the list again, but without listing all of these different things as Catholic or as Christian. Dan Beecher As Christian, yeah. They didn't say, okay, Mormons are Christians. We'll add the label. They just said, fine, we'll take the Christian label off. Yeah. And so you have now a list of denominations and know this is Christian super category. Dan McClellan Right. And also, yeah, like you say, no one at the Pentagon, no one at the White House, no one in the U.S. Government said, oops, sorry, of course you're Christians, LDS. No one has said that. So I think that this is a really interesting moment for the LDS people. But it's also an interesting reason for us to talk about the heck is a Christian. Dan Beecher Yeah. And some people have pointed out Pete Hegseth's pastor is Doug Wilson. We've talked about Doug Wilson in the past. He is a piece of work. That's one way of saying it. A bygone era, yes. But he is very much Mormons aren't Christian. And so there are those who think that Doug Wilson's influence may have trickled down into the categorization of Mormons as not Christian on this Pentagon list. But but yeah, it does. It did start a debate on social media that is still raging on Twitter. Yeah. Among the least qualified commentators, which which is where, you know, that's kind of Twitter is like if you want to find the highest concentration of people who have no business speaking On certain issues, that's where you go. Dan McClellan People who have no business speaking on certain issues who are willing to portray themselves as experts on that issue yes i think i yeah i it's shocking the amount of certainty that you See in uh in social media circles especially on X. Yes. That from people who have just nothing but vibes guiding them. Yes. Your team just added its 67th AI tool and also your 67th security blind spot. Dan Beecher The good news? The Vanta agent works like a GRC engineer in the background, finding every app your team uses, scoring the risk, and drafting fixes for you. Vanta is the platform used by over 16,000 fast-moving companies like Ramp, Cursor, and Harvey, who are shaping the future with AI and staying ahead of AI risk. Get started at Vanta.com. Starting a business can seem like a daunting task, unless you have a partner like Shopify. They have the tools you need to start and grow your business. From designing a website, to marketing, to selling, and beyond, Shopify can help with everything you need. There's a reason millions of companies like Mattel, Heinz, and Allbirds continue to trust and use them. With Shopify on your side, turn your big business idea into... Sign up for your $ scrolling spreadsheets? Dan McClellan Yes? Good. This is for you. Because on Spotify, there's an audience that's different. Locked in. Loyal. Invested. They're called fans. Fans don't just listen to music. They feel seen by it like it belongs to them. So when your brand shows up on Spotify, that's who you're talking to. And you're right next to artists like me, Lizzo. So are you ready to talk to fans? Spotify advertising. You're among fans. Dan Beecher And so there are an awful lot of people who are like, well, of course Mormons aren't Christian. And you have a bunch of different cases that they're trying to make. Most of them center on the Trinity, but others center on, you know, they'll rattle off a list of things that make Mormonism not Christian, including a doctrine of deification. Study your history, Christians. Deification was a central part of ancient Christianity. Dan McClellan And by that, I just want to clarify that there is a central Mormon theology that humans, us, we, through belief in the teachings of the gospel, can become gods ourselves. Dan Beecher Well, through the principles and ordinances. And ordinances, that's right. Because it's not just beliefs. That would be a very Protestant way to approach it that a lot of Mormons would disagree with. However, again, this is something that is actually in a lot of Orthodox traditions and we find in earlier Christianity now. That does not mean that that early Christian version is a proto-Mormon doctrine. The first thing I ever published was a paper called Latter-day Saints and Patristics, where I basically wagged my finger at Latter-day Saint apologists and said, stop identifying Patristic ideas about deification and things like that as proto-Mormonism. It's not. But mostly people are focusing on concepts of deity and particularly the Latter-day Saint rejection of the triune God or the Trinity. The Nicene Creed basically is supposed to be the essence, the very beating heart of what it means to be a Christian, which is bad news for everybody before Nicaea who is now no longer a Christian. Right, right. All the way down to Peter James and John. Dan McClellan De-Christified along with anyone who happens to follow the teachings of Jesus now but happens to take a Unitarian view of the Godhead or whatever. Dan Beecher Yeah. Oh, and guess who got left right out of the list when it was whittled down to 31? Unitarian Universalists. So they were just omitted. There were other groups that were like combined into other groups. Dan McClellan The U unitarian universalist just deleted out completely i was i was eliminated uh atheists yeah atheists are no longer on the group they they left agnostics which just feels like they're You know that they're they're just winking ([Time 0:41:44](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2c5b3a1d-375b-4f8a-8969-32b1d34f68c7)) - **You Can't Test Someone's Christianity With Paper** - Dan McClellan recounts that neither the Pentagon nor senators can 'rub a piece of paper on a Mormon' to declare them non-Christian. - He uses humor and imagined tests (paper, acid) to illustrate absurdity of gatekeeping. Transcript: Dan McClellan It's a little here and there. Dan Beecher The issue is none of these people have the authority to declare who is or is not Christian. There's only one person who has ever existed who would hypothetically have that authority. And we ain't heard from him in 2,000 years. We keep leaving messages saying we've been trying to get in touch with you about your car's extended warranty, and we've been ghosted, basically. Ghosted by the Holy Ghost. Jesus has not clarified regarding that, and we can't look to the New Testament for any help because it doesn't really tell us where the boundaries sit. Well, because the New Testament didn't imagine a sect called Christianity. We don't see that until late in the book of Acts. Right. And the word Christian only occurs a couple of times. So, yeah, it's just not considered. And so when it comes to who is or isn't a Christian, the folks who look into religious identity and look into membership and boundaries and all that kind of stuff, the folks who study this, Myself included, would say that self-identification ought to be the most important factor. Not the only factor, but the most important factor. And then it radiates out to other factors as well. But none of these people have rubbed a piece of paper on a Mormon and said, ha, it turned pink, not a Christian. Like, it doesn't work that way. None of them can dip a Mormon in acid and say, see the reaction? That means not a Christian. It doesn't work that way. So really all they're doing is preaching to the choir. What if they weigh the same as a duck? Dan McClellan Then they're a witch. Oh, okay. Oh, that's not a Christian thing. That's a witch thing, right? There's overlap. Now, don't get me wrong. There's overlap. Dan Beecher Yeah, we won't go there. But it's just, it's not how it works. You don't get to decide beyond yourself and whatever group you might happen to have any kind of institutional authority within. And so it's really just a person who's a part of a collection of social identities speaking to the other people who are part of the same identities saying, we don't like them. ([Time 0:50:23](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8d08d4b6-3d58-430f-a3df-dda0c2d4c7d5)) - **Exclusion Debates Reveal Social Power Motives** - Policing who is 'real' Christian often serves social-club and power-maintenance goals more than theological truth. - Dan Beecher and Dan McClellan note appeals to Nicaea or creeds are historically contingent acts of boundary-making backed by political power. Transcript: Dan Beecher We're the real Christians and everybody else is a pretend Christian. Like this is playground behavior writ large and playing out on Twitter of all places. And among senators. Excuse me. Dan McClellan Yeah, I do think that you said who cares whether this group or that group labels themselves as Christian. I think, though, that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints should care. Because this was, I don't think there was anything accidental about this at all. This was a decision that was made purposefully to exclude them. And honestly, it shocks me that more LDS people aren't standing up and saying, hey, you don't respect us at all. Like they're one of the most reliable right wing voting blocs in the country. Dan Beecher Oh, yeah. I mean, I think white evangelicals are the only group that voted for Trump in higher percentages. Dan McClellan Yeah. And yet they're willing to just stomp all over. They don't respect the LDS. You know what I mean? The right wing of this country just sees it as a joke. Dan Beecher Yeah. And it's just about structuring power. Yeah. They'll accept the votes of Latter-day Saints. They'll let them help them gain power. But yeah, they don't want them. They don't like them. Which is why I have said, you know, MAGA Mormons, you made this bed. You sleep in it. You've been told for years they don't want you. You're trying to hitch your wagon to evangelicalism to gain greater access to power and resources socially and politically. And they couldn't care less about you. They don't want you. Dan McClellan More to the point, they hate you. Yeah. They don't respect you. They do care because they enjoy not liking you. So, all right. Yeah, there you go. I think it's problematic. Dan Beecher I'll just find the last thing to say. I think it's problematic when the majority of the things that you're doing in exercising your religion is trying to clarify who you don't like and who doesn't belong. Dan McClellan Right. That's a terrible way to be religious. Dan Beecher Yes. You don't find that in the sermon on the Mount. That's a, it's a, it's a terrible way to be religious. ([Time 0:56:52](https://share.snipd.com/snip/fd7ad9d3-7db0-42d4-8352-33002f5232a0)) - **MAGA Mormons Were Warned They're Not Fully Accepted** - Dan Beecher warns MAGA-aligned Mormons they've been told evangelicals don't fully accept them despite political alliance. - He points to recent Pentagon list and right-wing dismissal as evidence evangelicals accept votes but not full inclusion. Transcript: Dan Beecher Yeah. And it's just about structuring power. Yeah. They'll accept the votes of Latter-day Saints. They'll let them help them gain power. But yeah, they don't want them. They don't like them. Which is why I have said, you know, MAGA Mormons, you made this bed. You sleep in it. You've been told for years they don't want you. You're trying to hitch your wagon to evangelicalism to gain greater access to power and resources socially and politically. And they couldn't care less about you. ([Time 0:58:23](https://share.snipd.com/snip/24a37d26-8bee-4ba7-9cd6-10849e103154))