Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission (created by executive order on May 1, 2025) gets the Sacrilegious Discourse treatment: suspicious side-eye, gallows humor, and a full roll-call of the “God Club” lineup, starting with chair Dan Patrick and vice-chair Ben Carson.

The hosts tear into what “religious liberty” actually means when it’s being pitched by Christian power brokers: not freedom from religion, but freedom to be religious at everyone else, especially in government and the military. The episode spotlights the Commission’s hearings (including the fourth hearing on religious liberty in the military on December 11) and why the “we just want to distribute Bibles” vibe is doing a lot of theocratic heavy lifting.

And then it gets even weirder: the list includes prosperity gospel powerhouse Paula White, political operator Pam Bondi, and, because reality is a prank, Dr. Phil. The conversation bounces between rage, sarcasm, and dark “are we getting hauled to a tribunal?” humor, plus a mini detour where the audience live-fact-checks a “robber barons” argument mid-recording.

👉 Listen now at sacrilegiousdiscourse.com

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📌 Topics Covered:

• Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission, created May 1, 2025 (and already giving “oops, all theocrats” energy)
• The “God Club” roster: Dan Patrick, Ben Carson, and an avalanche of culture-war Catholic/Christian operatives
• The December 11 hearing on “religious liberty in the military” and why that phrase should come with a warning label
• The quiet part out loud: “religious liberty” as a pipeline to Christian nationalism in public institutions
• IRS “won’t enforce the Johnson Amendment” and why that’s basically a tax-free megaphone for political church campaigns
• Prosperity gospel cameo: Paula White (because of course)
• The “worst timeline” casting choice: Dr. Phil on a religious liberty commission (make it stop)
• Live Discord fact-check energy: the robber barons argument that became an on-air victory lap

💬 Best Quote from the Episode (actual quote):

“Jesus Christ. Um, this is the worst possible timeline. It’s so badly written.”

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This week on Sacrilegious Discourse, we crack open 1 Maccabees 9 and immediately get hit with seasonal chaos (“Jingle bell, jingle bell…”), plus a refresher rant about the book’s absolute felony-level pronoun abuse. Husband and Wife are begging the text to pick a “they” and stay there—because it keeps swapping who the subject is mid-sentence like it’s trying to start a fight.

Chapter-wise, the big headline is: Judas goes full macho “die with honor” mode instead of doing the sensible thing (retreat, regroup), and—shocking twist—gets killed for it. The hosts call it: this was telegraphed, and the Maccabean “Klingon code” is not a survival strategy.

After Judas drops, the story lurches into famine, betrayal, and Bacchides playing whack-a-rebel—while Jonathan inherits the mess and tries to do war logistics with “storage unit” energy and a wedding ambush that even the hosts can’t confidently untangle. Then we get a Jordan River escape that turns into fantasy lore (“are they fae??”), and the episode closes out with a rare vibe for this book: basically no God involvement—just humans doing human violence and calling it destiny.

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📌 Topics Covered:

• 1 Maccabees 9 recap—Judas chooses “honor” and immediately eats consequences.
• Pronoun abuse so bad it becomes a recurring character.
• “Albus Dumbledore” and Bacchides return—because history needed a villain rerun.
• Jonathan takes over, everyone panics, and the plot starts sprinting sideways.
• The Jordan River escape… plus the theory that the enemy can’t cross water because fae rules, apparently.
• “Authors of wickedness” becomes an accidental career aspiration (briefly).
• The episode’s running theme: less “God did it,” more “people did war.”

💬 Best Quote from the Episode:

“I want to be an author of wickedness… Oh, my God. Oh, that is my… My goal in life now is to be an author of the wickedness.”

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1 Maccabees 8 is basically ancient geopolitics with the world’s worst pronoun problem. We spend half the episode doing live “pronoun triage” just to figure out who’s conquering whom (again). At one point, the text produces a sentence so cursed you both stop to verbally stare at it in disgust.

Then the chapter swerves into full Roman propaganda: “Rome is so valiant… and also valiant… and did we mention valiant?”—plus a highlight reel of Roman wins (Spain mines, elephants, tribute, yada yada) while we side-eye how this reads like a hype brochure for the future empire that will absolutely eat everyone later.

The punchline is Judas sending envoys to Rome to lock in an alliance and the treaty language lands like the ancient version of a mutual-defense pact. You clock it immediately: “Oh, my God. This is totally NATO.” Then we acknowledge the obvious: pulling in the Romans for help is… not a “long-term success strategy.”

👉 Listen now at sacrilegiousdiscourse.com

👉 Join our godless rebellion on Discord: discord.gg/VBnyTYV6nC

👉 Support the snark on Patreon: patreon.com/sacrilegiousdiscourse

📌 Topics Covered:

• 1 Maccabees 8 as an atheist Bible podcast case study in “pronouns: enemy of clarity.”
• Rome’s “we’re so badass” montage—Spain, tribute, elephants, and imperial chest-thumping.
• The hosts translating “they/them” into “Romans/Greeks” like it’s an emergency decoding session.
• Judas plays diplomacy: sending envoys to the Roman Senate for alliance and peace.
• The treaty reads like mutual defense—our “ancient NATO” moment.
• The ominous foreshadowing: Rome as the helpful “friend” who later becomes your whole problem.

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If you thought 1 Maccabees was confusing the first time through, welcome to the Q&A episode where we prove it wasn’t just you, it’s the text. The hosts dive into chapters 1–7 and immediately tackle the big brain question: is Eupator related to Jupiter? Short answer: nope. Longer answer: his name basically means “son of awesome dad,” because Antiochus IV Epiphanes was so full of himself he named his kid after his own greatness... right before we detour into how Darth Vader literally means “Dark Father.”

Then we finally untangle that maddening date-counting system. Every “in the 137th year…” line is pegged to the Seleucid Era starting around 312 BCE, but with Syrians counting autumn-to-autumn and Jews counting spring-to-spring, so all the dates are off by a year depending on whose calendar you’re using. It’s not you; it’s ancient imperial bookkeeping.

From there, the episode wades into the absolute pronoun soup of 1 Maccabees 7: Demetrius I murders the child-king Eupator, Alci–sorry, Albus Dumbledore (Alcimus) sells out Judas to the Greeks, Bacchides and Nicanor take turns trying to crush the revolt, and the so-called “wicked Jews” and “faithful Jews” mostly look like people just trying not to die under whichever empire currently has the bigger sword. The hosts call out how both sides weaponize “faithfulness,” and even tie it to modern intra-Jewish and Israel/Palestine tensions—same God, different factions, infinite bloodshed.

It all climaxes with Nicanor’s Day: Judas kills Nicanor, they chop off his head and right hand, and the Jews turn it into a yearly celebration on the 13th of Adar—basically the day before Purim—until later rabbis go, “Yeah, maybe we don’t center a mutilation festival in the liturgical calendar.” Now it survives mostly as an obscure historical footnote… or as an excuse for the hosts to propose atheist meetups involving a giant foam hand and a fake severed head.

👉 Listen now at sacrilegiousdiscourse.com

👉 Join our godless rebellion on Discord: discord.gg/VBnyTYV6nC

👉 Support the snark on Patreon: patreon.com/sacrilegiousdiscourse

📌 Topics Covered:

• Why Eupator is not Jupiter—and how his name basically translates to “Son of Awesome Me”
• The Seleucid Era date mess: autumn vs. spring years and why the numbers never quite line up
• Breaking down the chaos of 1 Maccabees 7: who killed whom, and why every “he” is a jump-scare for your brain
• Alcimus/“Albus Dumbledore” as a traitorous descendant of Aaron angling for that high priest clout
• The Hasideans: pious idealists, useful idiots, or just people who didn’t want to get murdered today
• Nicanor’s Day—the bloody holiday that got quietly yeeted from the Jewish calendar
• Parallels between Maccabean factionalism and modern fights over what it means to be a “good Jew” or “good believer”
• Foam hands, fake heads, and how to turn a forgotten holy day into an atheist block party

💬 Best Quote from the Episode:

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Judas Maccabeus is back on his murder tour, and this time 1 Maccabees 7 serves up beheaded generals, and one extremely “arrogant” right hand that ends up hanging "beside" Jerusalem like a bloody lawn ornament. The crew kicks off by trying (and failing) to untangle which Antiochus is which, who Demetrius is replacing, and whether anyone in this book has ever heard of clear pronouns. War elephants from the last chapter get a recap, John-Wick-style martyrdom included.

We meet new villains—Bacchides, Alcimus, and Nicanor, all of whom swear “peace” with the same sincerity as a televangelist asking for seed money. The hosts roast their oath-breaking nonsense, the constant ambushes, and the idea that cussing in the temple is somehow worse than slaughtering entire armies. They land on the 13th of Adar as a bloody victory day and start plotting how to celebrate it with a fake head and a giant foam hand nailed “beside the house.”

Along the way, they rant about divine hitman prayers (“Dear God, please kill these dudes for us”), the Bible’s obsession with vengeance, and how every “great army” somehow folds like wet cardboard the second Judas shows up. If you like your Bible with a side of profanity, historical snark, and total disrespect for holy war propaganda, this one’s for you.

👉 Listen now at sacrilegiousdiscourse.com

👉 Join our godless rebellion on Discord: discord.gg/VBnyTYV6nC

👉 Support the snark on Patreon: patreon.com/sacrilegiousdiscourse

📌 Topics Covered:

• Judas Maccabeus vs. Demetrius, Bacchides, Alcimus, and Nicanor – the never-ending war of guy-with-army vs. guy-with-army
• Oath-breaking “men of peace” who always show up with swords and backup troops
• Priests begging God to commit mass murder because someone blasphemed in the temple
• The 13th of Adar, Nicanor’s defeat, and why his chopped-off head and right hand become party décor
• Bible propaganda 101: how to spin slaughter into “godly justice”
• The hosts’ total confusion over who killed whom… and righteous mockery of biblical pronoun soup
• Brainstorming a modern Nicanor Day with foam hands and plastic heads on the lawn

💬 Best Quote from the Episode:

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In this episode, the Maccabees aren’t the only drama queens — King Antiochus IV basically has a full-on meltdown because he didn’t get to steal enough gold, then decides he’s dying of feelings instead of, you know, old age. The hosts walk through 1 Maccabees 6, dragging the idea that this genocidal tyrant suddenly grew a conscience about Jerusalem while he’s still out looting temples and throwing imperial tantrums. We also get into how “history is written by the winners” translates into “of course they made the villain repent on his deathbed,” and why that’s some seriously self-serving fanfic.

From there, things escalate into absolute chaos: mercenaries, massive armies, and the world’s saddest war elephant snuff scene. The text lovingly details a huge Hellenistic army with 100,000 infantry, cavalry, and thirty-two war elephants in armored towers… only for the story to pivot into John-Wick-meets-Disney as one dude dives under an elephant, kills it, and gets flattened like a Looney Tunes gag. The hosts roast the absurd battle math (600 casualties out of 120,000? really?), the propaganda spin, and the way both ancient Israel and modern states weaponize “self-defense” to justify collective punishment and ethnic cleansing.

We also detour into aliens, Trump’s ketchup-on-the-wall energy, Taylor Swift learning football, and why every empire — ancient or modern — swears it’s “defending itself” while committing atrocities. And just when it looks like there might be a political compromise, King Antiochus V swears an oath, marches up to Mount Zion, sees how strong it is… and immediately breaks his promise and tears down the walls. Because of course he does. If you’ve ever wondered how Bible stories normalize betrayal, conquest, and genocidal vibes while pretending it’s all holy and justified — this episode is your poison.

👉 Listen now at sacrilegiousdiscourse.com

👉 Join our godless rebellion on Discord: discord.gg/VBnyTYV6nC

👉 Support the snark on Patreon: patreon.com/sacrilegiousdiscourse

📌 Topics Covered:

• War elephants and battlefield cosplay in 1 Maccabees 6 — 32 armored elephants, towers, Indian drivers, and maximum overcompensation
• How Antiochus IV’s “I’m dying of grief” monologue is pure propaganda, not a real moral awakening
• The Maccabees as “freedom fighters”… who also commit genocide and ethnic cleansing, just like every other empire in this book
• Parallels between ancient “we’re just defending ourselves” rhetoric and modern justifications for collective punishment and occupation
• The absolutely ridiculous “one guy versus an army” hero narrative, complete with elephant assassination and cartoon-level physics
• Oath-breaking kings, broken walls, and why political power in the Bible is just vibes plus violence
• Side quests: Trump’s temper tantrums, Taylor Swift learning football, Rogue One, John Wick, and why good writing clearly did not inspire this chapter

💬 Best Quote from the Episode:

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Judas Maccabeus is back, and this time he’s on full genocidal tour mode. In 1 Maccabees 5, our hosts walk through a chapter that reads less like “faith heroism” and more like “war crime highlight reel” — burning people alive in towers, slaughtering “all the males,” torching temples, and then calling it holy victory. They dig into how the text frames this as righteous defense while clearly crossing the line into mass murder, drawing sharp (and uncomfortable) parallels to modern “we’re just defending ourselves” rhetoric around Israel, Hamas, and the language of genocide.

Along the way, they wrestle with the Bible’s absolute mess of pronouns (“this isn’t representation, it’s pronoun abuse”), try to untangle who’s killing whom in Gilead, and mock the hilariously lazy body counts where 3,000 soldiers somehow kill… exactly 3,000 enemies. Judas keeps burning cities, temples, and altars like a Yahweh-flavored arsonist, while the hosts point out that this is the winner’s version of history — and it still makes Judas look like a monster.

Because it’s Sacrilegious Discourse, the carnage is broken up with digressions about Starbucks honey bear mugs, Stanley Cups culture, and how manufactured scarcity is the capitalist cousin of religious gatekeeping. There’s snark about priests “doing exploits unadvisedly,” a side rant about how this book probably didn’t make the canon because it’s badly written and obsessed with war porn, and a whole mini-bit about how much easier life would be if everyone was on Husband’s wavelength… which, frankly, might still be less terrifying than Yahweh’s.

If you love an atheist Bible podcast that calls genocide genocide — even when the Bible tries to wrap it in incense and altar smoke — this episode is for you. Listen to the chaos, rage-laugh at the theology, and then come yell about it with other godless nerds.

👉 Listen now at sacrilegiousdiscourse.com

• Join our godless rebellion on Discord: discord.gg/VBnyTYV6nC

• Support the snark on Patreon: patreon.com/sacrilegiousdiscourse

📌 Topics Covered:

• Judas Maccabeus as Yahweh’s favorite war criminal — burning towers, temples, and whole cities in 1 Maccabees 5
• “Defense” vs. genocide: how the text sounds uncomfortably similar to modern Israel/Palestine rhetoric
• The Bible’s pronoun problem: when “they” makes the plot completely incomprehensible
• Copy-paste body counts: why every battle somehow ends with perfectly round numbers of dead guys
• Priests doing “exploits” and getting slaughtered for absolutely no good reason
• Burning other people’s altars while complaining when yours get smashed — religious hypocrisy in real time
• Starbucks bears, Stanley cups, and the unholy trinity of manufactured scarcity, capitalism, and fandom

💬 Best Quote from the Episode:

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In this chaotic tour through 1 Kings and 2 Kings, your favorite godless duo wraps up the Deuteronomistic history by time-lining Israel’s slow-motion trainwreck into exile. We’re talking Solomon’s “wisest man alive” era that still somehow ends in idolatry, dick-led decision-making, and a kingdom split because his son Rehoboam is a petty little tyrant. From Jerusalem to Samaria, golden calves to pop-up worship centers, they drag every bad leadership choice that supposedly made God big mad—while also side-eyeing how convenient it is that women and “foreign wives” get blamed for everything.

Then it’s on to 2 Kings, where the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah take turns face-planting into history. Assyria sacks the north, Babylon finishes off the south, and a parade of prophets—Elijah, Elisha, Amos, Hosea, Micah, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, maybe even Obadiah if the timeline behaves—show up just in time to be ignored. The hosts roast the idea that God is “teaching lessons” through mass suffering, point out how wildly unjust it is to blame entire nations on one king’s theology, and land on the real thesis: God is a retrofitted explanation for whatever political disaster already happened—a literal plug-and-play tool.

📌 Topics Covered:

• Solomon the “wise” king who still manages to get led astray by wealth, wives, and weaponized misogyny
• Rehoboam and Jeroboam: how bad leadership and rival worship sites fracture the so-called united kingdom
• Elijah vs. Ahab and Jezebel on Mount Carmel—fire from heaven, Baal drama, and theological dick-measuring contests
• The rise and fall of Israel (north) to Assyria and Judah (south) to Babylon—aka “covenant loyalty” spin versus obvious political failure
• Minor prophets in their actual timeline: Amos, Hosea, Micah, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Jonah and more, shoved back into Second Kings where they belong
• Why blaming entire national collapses on one king’s “idolatry” is morally disgusting—and historically lazy
• The hosts’ take that God is basically a political post-it note slapped on events after the fact: “This is why terrible or wonderful things happen.”
• A final “hopeful” note with a half-free king in Babylon… that doesn’t really fix the centuries of divine abuse and exile

💬 Best Quote from the Episode:

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