Weekly Roundup: Pretty Fly for a White Guy
Some major announcements! We are now a proud partner of the Capps Center at UCSB! Capps is dedicated to ethics, religion, and public life in a way that matches up seamlessly with our approach on SWAJ. Check out their new series on indigenous religions!
We begin this episode by discussing the VP debate, particularly Mike Pence as a familiar type: The White Evangelical pastor.
We then discuss a cluster of issues surrounding science and COVID–Trump’s use of medicines that made from aborted fetuses (a big deal to the Religious Right, supposedly), the New England Journal of Medicine’s endorsement of Biden, and the general ignoring of scientific counsel on the part of the Trump administration.
We also analyze Senator Mike Lee’s comments that democracy is not necessarily the best form of government–statements in line with Dominionist theology and part of what Brad calls “the dangerous allure of totalitarianism.” The danger of these comments was brought into stark relief when news of a kidnapping plot against Governor Gretchen Whitmer emerged. While the major media outlets won’t call it what it is, we will: this was an act of homegrown White terrorism and it is related to Trump’s call to “liberate Michigan!”
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Trump’s COVID Diagnosis, the ACB “Celebration of Life,” and White Evangelical Racism with Prof. Anthea Butler
Brad speaks to Professor Anthea Butler, a captain in the Biden campaign’s “Catholics for Biden” initiative, and chair of the Religious Studies department at the University of Pennsylvania. They discuss the details of Trump’s COVID diagnosis and how his recklessness is fueled by four things:
- Prosperity Gospel positive thinking,
- racism,
- capitalism,
- hypermasculinity.
These themes ground a conversation that ranges from Trump’s lack of empathy for Americans, especially BIPOC, who have contracted the virus, his supporters’ call for empathy after telling the nation that it was okay if “grandma dies” to save the economy, the conservative Evangelicals and Catholics who held a superspreader prayer rally at the Lincoln Memorial, and the belief that whiteness is a shield against the iniquities that plague other people.
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Weekly Roundup: Trump’s Debate Coup and How the Office Warned us About 2020
On an abbreviated Weekly Roundup Brad discusses the first presidential debate, the media’s inability to call out Trump’s threats of violence and election delegitimization, the ways White Catholics and young Evangelicals might be souring on the president, the new documentary that shows how the White House worked with churches to radicalize marginalized people, and how “The Office” warned us about the 2020 hellscape.
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America First vs. the American Dream
Sarah Churchwell is Professor of American Literature and Chair of Public Understanding of the Humanities at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. In her book, Behold, America (Bloomsbury 2018) she explores the entangled history of America First and the American Dream.
‘The American dream is dead,’ Donald Trump said when announcing his candidacy for president in 2015. How would he revive it? By putting ‘America First’.
The ‘American Dream’ and ‘America First’ are two of the most loaded phrases in America today, and also two of the most misunderstood. The American Dream began as a pledge for equality rather than as a dream of supremacy and ‘making it big’. America First has not just served as an isolationist term, but as an early slogan of the Ku Klux Klan with surprising links to the present.
Both phrases were born nearly a century ago and instantly tangled over capitalism, democracy and race, coming to embody opposing views in the battle to define the soul of the nation. Behold, America recounts the unknown history of these two expressions using the voices that helped shape that debate, from Capitol Hill to the newsroom of the New York Times, students to senators, dreamers to dissenters.
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Weekly Roundup: RBG. Amy Coney Barrett. Breonna Taylor. And, Respectable Evangelicalism?
Brad and Dan discuss four main stories on this week’s roundup:
1. The passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg has led to Amy Coney Barrett as the frontrunner to replace her. Brad outlines the history and contours of the charismatic Catholic community to which she swore an oath and asks how it affects her nomination.
2. Through a discussion of Locke and American history, Dan helps us understand why protecting public property is always such a priority in cases involving the destruction of human life. Why was her apartment complex more valuable than Breonna Taylor’s life?
3. The peaceful transfer of power, the GOP’s ongoing efforts to suppress voting, and the threat of election insecurity.
4. Following on a new piece by Chrissy Stroop, we ask: Have “respectable” evangelicals lost control of the extremist movement they built?
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Christian Nazis, the Third Reich, and Our Current Political Moment
Brad speaks with historian Ricard Steigmann-Gall, author of the Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity 1919-1945. They discuss how the Nazi party used a Christian social identity as a way to signal who the true and good citizens were, how the melding of religious and national identities was the first step for racism and anti-semitism, and how the USA was an example for Nazi eugenicists. Throughout the conversation both of them make comparisons to the pervasiveness of Christian nationalism in the contemporary United States and how it is feeding fascist instincts, violence, and division.
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Weekly Roundup: Patriotic Miseducation
Brad and Dan discuss a coterie of stories at the intersection of race, nation, and religion. First, they dissect the president’s announcement of a new commission on “patriotic education” as a thoroughly Christian nationalist move. They then turn to William Barr’s comments about how COVID shutdowns are the worst annulation of civil liberties in American history except for slavery. They link both these things to the “1619 Project,” clarifying how this is a struggle over who gets to tell the story of the United States and what it means for our implications in it. This leads to a discussion of the many White folks who are recognizing that they can no longer identify with the GOP or the term evangelical because those groups are unwilling to face the realities–and responsibilities–of the American narrative. Finally, they reveal the hypocrisy of pro-life groups silent on the mass hysterectomies reportedly taking place at ICE detention centers.
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Purity Culture, National Security, and Racism
Brad speaks with Dr. Sara Moslener, author of Virgin Nation: Sexual Purity and American Adolescence from Oxford University Press. Dr. Moslener outlines the history of purity culture from the 19th century to the present, highlighting the eugenicist and racist ideologies that fueled it. One of the often overlooked tropes is how sexual purity was enforced […]
Weekly Roundup: 9/11, COVID, and the Promises and Perils of Civil Religion
Brad and Dan begin by discussing how 9/11 is an event marked by acts of civil religion–ceremonies, rituals, and symbols that enable the nation to remember and mourn. Brad asks why we haven’t had such things implemented to help grieve the loss of the 200,000 Americans who have died of COVID. Dan breaks down the explosive recordings/material in the new book from Bob Woodward–including Trump’s recognition of its deadly airborne transmission in February. They finish with a detailed discussion of how Trump has slipped with White Evangelicals and Catholics, how Biden has gained ground with those groups, and if there will be some real payoff there for the Democrats. Biden has crafted his message to these groups through his national director for faith outreach–who is an ex-evangelical. It’s a complicated debate that includes issues like abortion, Christian nationalism, and religious liberty.
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Racism at the Start: History of the Religious Right (re-issue)
During the first half of this episode Brad and Dan trace the racist and nationalistic origins of white evangelical politics. On the second half, Brad talks with Dartmouth scholar Randall Balmer, who is perhaps the world’s leading scholar of the history of the Religious Right in American politics. He explains that racism in the form of opposition to the integration of schools and segregated churches was the catalyst for the rise of the Religious Right.
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Sex Scandals, Christianity, and America
Brad interviews Dr. Leslie Dorrough Smith about her new book, Compromising Positions: Scandals, Politics, and American Christianity. She breaks down an important concept: Sex scandals are not about sex. They are about the stories the nation tells about itself, gender dynamics, masculinity, and above all power. This means certain white, straight, heterosexual politicians survive such scandals unscathed, while others have their political careers ended by even minor mishaps. It also means that in a strange way certain facets of American Christianity actually encourage sexual misbehavior as part and parcel of the political and religious status quo.
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Weekly Roundup September 4, 2020: Man. Woman. Losers. Suckers. Soldiers.
Dan confesses that 1st grade on Zoom is more intimidating than translating French philosophy or reading Hebrew. He and Brad then discuss the bombshell report on Trump calling soldiers losers, his defense of white nationalist vigilantism, and his encouraging people to vote twice. They then discuss the latest polls and Biden’s chances in the electoral college. They then discuss how our political landscape has been reduced to an infuriating binary–as evidenced by Franklin Graham’s approach to this election. They finish by covering terrifying stories from QAnon, Trump pushing through a vaccine unsafely, and the sidelining of Dr. Fauci.
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