It's in the Code ep 194: “The Last Word”

Dan Miller: Hello, and welcome to It's in the Code, which serves as part of the podcast Straight White American Jesus. My name is Dan Miller. I'm Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College, and I am your host. As always, pleased to be with you. It's in the Code is a series that is driven by listeners in a way that I think some of the other things we do at Straight White American Jesus is not — it's unique in that regard. Send me your thoughts: Daniel Miller, SWAJ — danielmillerswaj@gmail.com. I also haunt the Discord. If you remember, you can check in there. Love to hear your thoughts on episodes, feedback, ideas for new series and episodes, and so on.

Starting in the next episode, I'm undertaking a new series: "Questions I Wasn't Allowed to Ask in Church," or "Questions I Wasn't Supposed to Ask in Church." What were the questions that got you in trouble? What were the questions that got you talking to by the authorities in your life, whether that's pastors, parents, whoever that might have been? Send those to me. Put in the header "Questions I Wasn't Supposed to Ask." I am continuing to compile those, and we're going to start exploring those next week. Also, as we've been talking about on the weekly roundup and other formats coming out of Axis Mundi Media and Straight White American Jesus, we're working toward live streaming the recordings of It's in the Code as well. So, the time will come when there can be some chat discussion about those questions and sort of live response to those. Please keep those coming — starting that next week. Can't do it without you. Appreciate all of you so much.

With that, I want to dive into today's topic, because we are, as I just suggested, concluding our exploration of Josh Hawley's book, Manhood. Again, Senator Josh Hawley, who wrote a book called Manhood — we have been exploring that, and all I want to do on this at this point is offer a few final reflections and connect the dots on some of the things we've talked about over the past weeks. Part of the reason I want to do that: Hawley — he's not done with his chapters, he has an epilogue, it's his sort of closing argument. If we want to stick with a lawyer theme for his book — after all, he is a lawyer — it's his sort of closing argument. It's not a good one. It recapitulates and rehashes a lot of the things he has said, like all closing arguments. He doesn't have to provide any evidence. The idea is that he's laid it all out in his book, and by now he shouldn't have to provide any evidence. But I, being me, couldn't let him have the last word. So I want to talk for just a few minutes in this episode with some final reflections on Hawley and his book, before we walk away.

So doing that, I think it's worth sort of remembering what Josh Hawley promised us in his book — what it is that we could go into this expecting, the selling points, if we were part of the crowd he's aiming at. I realize I am not part of the crowd he's aiming at, but if we were, what is the promise? Well, he promised to tell us what a biblical conception of manhood is. He promised to outline the masculine virtues that men are called to live out. And he promised that if men embody those virtues — if they embrace authentic masculinity, authentic manhood, and they embrace those virtues and they live those out and express them — they would save America, they would restore its promise. And I think tied in with this, and I think that this is really crucial: they were to restore the promise of a biblical vision of a patriarchal social order. That's what his book promises us. That's what he told us he was going to deliver, and I think reminding ourselves of that, sort of keeping that in front of us, is important for a number of reasons.

The first is that, as a reminder, Hawley is not unique in making this promise, and I've said this over and over.

Dan Miller: The reason we're looking at Hawley is not because he's unique or special, or he says something that other people don't say. It's because he's not unique or special. What he is putting forward, the idea he is sharing, is actually a core part of conservative Christianity in America, of American Christian nationalism, and I think it's a core component of the broader MAGA movement: a certain conception of masculinity, the centrality of masculinity, the centrality and importance of a proper patriarchal social order. These are all core components. It can be articulated with different variations and in different ways, but I think Hawley has essentially promised to articulate the core of this social and political vision — that's what he promised to deliver us in lawyerly fashion. I think he has promised to make the case for a masculinist, patriarchal, Christian vision of American society. So, I think when we look at Hawley, we're actually looking beyond him. There are a lot of other discourses about masculinity and the role of men in society that we could look at, and I think Hawley gives us a window into those discourses and into those other thinkers. So, that's the first point.

The second point is, again, he has utterly failed to deliver on those promises. Now, I realize that ideologically I'm opposed to Josh Hawley. Okay, but I think that this is more than just an ideological statement. I think that if one just kind of really goes through and looks at the arguments he's made, the kind of evidence he offers, and so forth, he just hasn't delivered. He just hasn't delivered on the promise that he made, and I'm not going to re-litigate all of that — and there's another lawyer metaphor, if you're keeping track. I'm not going to re-litigate all of that here, but throughout the book, we have seen over and over and over that his case isn't biblical, despite the appeals to the Bible and so on. It isn't specifically Christian. I've made that point. There's nothing specifically or explicitly Christian in this presentation anywhere, which I find really, really striking, but also illustrative of Christian nationalism in a way that would require a lot more conversation. Okay. He doesn't seem to put forward anything to me that's particularly masculine, because we've seen this over and over, where he kind of falls back to, like, this is why God created humans, this is what people are called to do. He'll sometimes use, like, his mom as the exemplar of what he's putting forward as masculine virtues, and so forth. So, there's nothing specifically masculine. And I think his claims of how it'll fix what ails America — they're just merely assertions. He does what a lot of people do. He cites a lot of evidence and throws out a lot of data and numbers and says proper masculinity will fix it, but there's no proof of that, there's no evidence for that, there's no way of showing that.

So, what I think it really highlights — and why I want to, I'm not trying to belabor this point, but I am trying to highlight — is that I think what it shows is this vision of American society is simply a statement of dogma. Or if we wanted to put it in political terms, it's a statement of ideology. Either way you want to put it, it is a claim backed up by a supposedly unassailable authority. That's why he gets the appeal to the Bible all the time. But it is not based in reality or any desire to understand the facts of the world or of society. He throws out lots of data, but there's no real engagement with that. This is not some sort of an empirical piece or an articulation of social theory, looking at or starting with the situation on the ground. That's not what he's interested in. It is just a fantastical vision of what a subset of Americans want America to be, and an attempt to mask the fact that that's all it is — to mask the fact that it is just a fantasy and a statement of dogma, and nothing more. That's what they're trying to mask.

So, I think those are two key points, and we've spent weeks — we spent weeks going through this, we've spent enough time, maybe more than enough time, for some of you.

Dan Miller: I'm sure you're like, "We're ready to be done with Hawley." Cool. We've spent time looking at those failings, and what I want to do here, then, is again not rehash all of those, but to draw out what I think are some of the patterns that emerge from Hawley's book as a whole. If I was teaching this in a class — which I'm not planning on doing, but if I was — I would read the whole thing, and I would sort of distill, like, here are the key ideas or themes, and then those are what you would look at as you go forward with students, and so forth. I want to just pull out a few of those, because, again, I think those patterns also speak to Christian nationalism and high-control religion in the US, far beyond the confines of Hawley's book, I think.

What Hawley shows us, what he kind of enacts or performs in his book, as it were, are these kind of themes that tell us about American Christian nationalism and high-control religion in America. Okay, so I want to begin drawing out these themes. I want to begin with a little story. It's a short story, I promise, but years ago — several years ago now — I got in a weird Facebook discussion, slash argument, slash exchange, with an evangelical about philosophy. This was somebody who was well-educated, a conservative evangelical Christian, and we got into some discussion about philosophy — maybe epistemology, I don't remember, but some discussion. And he did something similar to what I think Hawley would do. You could just smell the training in evangelical apologetics coming off of this guy — the line that he was taking was such a Christian apologetics 101 kind of thing. But he accused secularists like me — secularists and humanists, or nihilists, or whatever else he wanted to call us — he accused us of having presuppositions that we weren't willing to call into question. So, basically, what he said is, "Hey, I'm willing to engage you, but you're going to have to play fair. You're going to have to be willing to really question your presuppositions. You can't just sneak in presuppositions or elevate them above critique," and so forth. And I think in doing that, he was trying to claim this kind of intellectual high ground — that he, the evangelical, was the one who was really reasonable, who was ready to really engage, who was open-minded, and that I, as the secularist liberal humanist, whatever, was the one who wasn't.

And I responded by saying to him that I was willing to allow that, you know, none of us can set aside all of our presuppositions all at once, but we can bring them into view, sort of one by one, and we can engage them, and we can explore where they come from, and why we might hold them, or why we might need to change them, and so forth. And I said, "You know, I'm open to doing that. I said, on the condition that you — conservative evangelical — if you can tell me here and now, before we engage, that you are willing to consider the possibility, to even allow the possibility, that the Bible is not the authority you think it is." In other words, what I was trying to say: you can talk a good game about how the secularists have these presuppositions that they bring in, or whatever, but you have this core conviction about the Bible as this absolute, unassailable authority. So, if you can just trace any position to the Bible, it doesn't have to be defended anymore.

Dan Miller: I said, "If you're willing to call that presupposition into question" — I didn't say abandon it, I said be open to the idea that it might be a presupposition that doesn't hold up — "if you're willing to do that, sure, I'm willing to engage." And it ended the discussion. He bailed at that point — he basically ghosted me, or said, "Well, secularists can't act in good faith," whatever. It was a presupposition he was not willing to give up.

And I tell that story because I think what it highlights is that appeal to the Bible as this kind of absolute, fundamental authority that cannot be questioned within that kind of framework. And Christians like Hawley rely on the Bible a lot. Christians like Josh Hawley, Christians like the guy that I was talking to — if you engage them at all, and all of you who grew up in this world know this, all of you who have engaged those who are in this world know this, all of you who have studied this know this — you're going to hear a lot of appeals to the Bible. But they tend not to actually appeal to the Bible in the way that I think they think that they do. In other words, I think that most of the Christians who appeal to the Bible that way truly believe that their ideas come from the Bible — that the positions they hold most dear, they hold because the Bible told them that that is biblical truth, or whatever. And I don't think that that's how the Bible works for most of them.

A scholar of the Bible named Bart Ehrman — a lot of you will be familiar with Ehrman's work — made a statement. I'm not sure if I'm getting it exactly right, but it was something like this: he said that the Bible is much revered and little read. And that is true even of Christians who appeal to the Bible the most. Just because they appeal to it doesn't mean that they actually know what's in it, doesn't mean that they've actually studied it, doesn't mean that they've actually read it. When they tell you, as Hawley does over and over and over — "Well, the Bible teaches," or "the Bible says" — and you say, "Well, where? Tell me where it says that," they often can't point you to a place. They often appeal to the Bible, and they do so in ways that are often not actually appeals to what the Bible says or teaches.

Sometimes those appeals to the Bible — and I would say most of the time they can be more than one thing at once — but most of the time they are identity statements. I've talked about this in the past. They're planting a flag and claiming a certain kind of Christian identity. They are telling themselves and you and others who they are. It's an identity statement. It's not actually a statement about what the Bible says. It's a kind of "us versus them" statement: who are my people, what is my tribe, what is my camp, and who are my opponents? It's an identity statement. It's also a kind of conservative virtue signaling. Everything you hold to is supposed to be "biblical," so whenever you appeal to the Bible, it's a kind of virtue signaling. And no, conservatives are not the only ones that can do this — they're not the only ones that will invoke certain terms or authorities as a way of virtue signaling to others in their community, and so forth. But it is that. And it is also — and this is what I think is the most important and relevant for us — this is what we've seen in Hawley throughout this book: claims to be "biblical" are also a shortcut claim to authority. If they — whoever it is, whoever is appealing to the Bible — if they can persuade us or themselves that the positions they hold are "biblical," then nothing more needs to be done. Their work is done.

That's why the evangelical guy that I was talking with was not willing to give that up. I can tell you now: all of his arguments were ultimately going to come down to an appeal to some Bible verse or another, and if he doesn't have that authority, he had nothing, and he knew that, and that's why he withdrew from the conversation. If they can persuade us that the positions are biblical, nothing more needs to be done, because if something is "biblical," it is authoritative — it's now beyond question, it cannot be questioned, real questions cannot be asked of it. Which means if you're engaging somebody like this, and you're in a debate, or you're in a back-and-forth, or you're asking them for clarification, or whatever, they don't need to defend their ideas any further once they can point to the Bible. And they also don't need to take any challenges to those ideas seriously, because what you're going to run into over and over and over is essentially: "But the Bible. But the Bible says. Paul says. The Gospels say. The Hebrew Bible says. The story of Joshua shows us." Whatever it is, they're just going to appeal to that over and over and over again. And if you say, "Well, yeah, okay, but you know what — what if the Bible isn't that, or what if that's not historically accurate, or like it feels like you're taking that verse out of context, or whatever" — they don't have to actually respond to that. Their work is done.

And when you combine that kind of blind faith in the Bible with ignorance of what it actually says — and that is where most of the people on the ground are, they are ignorant of what the Bible actually says —

Dan Miller: Most of those Christians who will hold to a view and say it is "biblical," who will appeal to that authority, they don't know what the Bible says. They couldn't tell you where it says it, let alone defend it if you offer a different interpretation or challenge the authority of the Bible, or whatever. If they are ignorant of it, as Hawley is, I think it's a recipe for just the kind of patriarchal and authoritarian social and political positions he holds. Because what happens when you combine that blind faith in the Bible with a kind of ignorant approach to it is you get exactly what we've seen Hawley do for weeks. What you get is somebody who can take whatever views they hold — whatever social or political views, whatever views on gender, whatever views on economics, whatever views on immigration, whatever they hold, whatever they believe about anything — they can take it, they can sort of feed it into the Bible and pretend to pull it out of there, and it has now been baptized. Their idea is now supposedly coming from the Bible and has an unassailable authority. And that's what we've seen Hawley do time and time again.

And why am I talking about it again? Like, why am I always sort of pounding on this issue? Because it's not just Hawley. It's not just big-name MAGA figures like JD Vance or Pete Hegseth — we talk about them all the time on our weekly roundups and other contexts. We could go through the stuff that they say, we could trace this dynamic. But it's not just about them, it's not about the big names. This is how Uncle Ron uses the Bible. This is how his pastor uses the Bible. This is how the pastor you grew up with uses the Bible. This is how the Bible is used in Christian charter schools that our public taxes support, because the courts have weakened the separation of church and state for the past several decades. It is how the Bible was used by many of our parents when they were bringing us up under its dictates. It's how the Bible is used by, you know, the brother-in-law you have who doesn't want his wife to work outside the home because the Bible says she's not supposed to. It is a common pattern.

So, when we see it in Hawley, we're getting a window into that world. I could go on and on about this, but here's the point: it's a key dynamic that drives high-control Christianity in America, and for me it is one that you have to watch for whenever you encounter high-control religionists. If you're somebody who wants to engage them, if you have these people in your life, if you have family members who are in that world, I think you have to understand this dynamic. And I would suggest that if it comes to those heavy conversations and things, it is worth trying to draw that out the way that I did with that interlocutor — that conservative evangelical I was talking to — and say, "Are you willing to even consider the possibility that what you believe about the Bible could be incorrect? I'm willing to look at my core presuppositions and see if they hold up. I'm willing to entertain the possibility that, as a fallible human being, I could be wrong in some of the things that I value. Are you willing to do the same thing?" And if they're not, you've got to decide if that's something that's worth engaging any further. Because it's not going to be a fruitful conversation. It's not going to be a conversation taking place in good faith. It's not going to be a conversation where you're approaching somebody who actually thinks that you're an equal and valuable person to them, who values your insights. You are always going to be somebody who is resisting an authority that, for them, is unassailable.

So, that's the first kind of takeaway — that's the first theme that runs through this book, I think, and illustrates how things work far beyond Josh Hawley.

The second one — and maybe the most obvious one in this book — is what I'm calling the reduction of masculinity.

Dan Miller: Okay, there is no doubt that Josh Hawley, like everyone on the right, has a vision of what he thinks masculinity is. And it's a vision of man as alpha, as powerful, as strong, as — just like Hawley says — as a warrior, as a priest, as a king. And yes, as a father and a husband, and all those things. It's a vision of masculinity as strength and power, and also a vision of masculinity as inherently straight and inherently cisgender. It is a vision of all of that. But all of that becomes the sole basis of authority — that vision of masculinity is what authority is, because men are called to exercise authority and dominion. But I said Hawley fails over and over and over to actually show us why we should think that that is all that masculinity can really be.

He fails over and over and over, and that failure, I think, is significant. I think it illustrates something, I think it brings something to light. Because what I think it does is that time and time again, when he tries to show that masculinity is only this and he fails, I think it shows us that this is a reductive view of masculinity. That is, I think, the reason why Hawley and everybody else fails to prove that this is what masculinity has to be: masculinity is like every other social identity in this sense — it is not any one thing. There are multiple masculinities, there are multiple femininities, there are multiple articulations of the same sexual identity. Racial identities are articulated in almost an infinite variety of ways. It is no one thing. Masculinity is not expressed in any one way. There is no normative, authorized, or "natural" version of what masculinity is. And if anybody tries to tell you that there is, they're pushing an agenda. That is what Hawley's failure to demonstrate this reveals for me — what it brings to light. The reason he can't show us definitively that this is what masculinity is, even on a so-called biblical model, is because it's not all that masculinity is. It's that simple.

And when somebody tries to do away with that complexity and present you with a vision that says "this, and only this, is what masculinity — or any other social identity — can be," they have something to gain by advancing that particular vision. Josh Hawley wants this to be the vision of masculinity, and he has a huge political and social interest in trying to make that the only authorized vision. And I think that again this is demonstrated by the vehemence — just the level of energy with which people like Hawley insist on this vision of masculinity, the visceral rage that they express when they're confronted with any other conception of masculinity. That rage, that reaction — they don't react that way because they're defending an authentic or natural or God-given model of masculinity. I think that they react that way because they know that they're not. It comes from a fundamental insecurity.

I think that if you probe just a little under the Hawleys or the Hegseths or the JD Vances — when you probe just a little, what you find is a fundamental insecurity, a fear that what they are holding forward as a vision of masculinity, what they are often trying to live out as a vision of masculinity, is not all that masculinity is. It's not an expression of assurance or confidence. It's an expression of fundamental insecurity. If they were as confident about their preferred version of masculinity as they want us to believe, they wouldn't have to attack people who disagree with them. They wouldn't have to commit character assassination of everyone who suggests otherwise. They wouldn't have to simplify the complexities of social reality to try to make their positions seem to make sense.

Simple illustration of this: everybody knows, if you listen to Straight White American Jesus, I'm a big metal fan. I go to metal shows, I get in the mosh pit, I do all those things. Folks, I am very well aware that most people's musical tastes are not the same as mine. They're not. And there was a time in my life when I would run around trying to kind of convert people to metal — "Oh, you've got to check out this band," or "Don't you love this," or "You should give this one a try," or whatever. I think it was a time in my life, as a younger person — pretty normal for that age — that I was insecure about that. I was insecure about my taste in music. And if I couldn't convince others that it was a valid, legitimate taste in music, about the great elements of metal, that somehow or another it was a knock on me, man. That is so far in the past. Now I've listened — it's been years since I tried to convert anyone. I don't care. I like the music. I do. I like the music. I like the musicianship. I think it has depth. I think it's significant. Whatever — if people want to talk about it, I'm happy to talk about it. But I am not going to get angry when somebody else is like, "Yeah, that's not my style," or "I don't like it," or "I think it's just screaming," or whatever. I'll just smile and be like, "Cool, yeah, it's not for everybody," and move on.

It's a trivial example, okay? But I think it does illustrate the point. When somebody like Hawley, or Uncle Ron, or your pastor, or your husband, or your brother-in-law, or whoever, is so angry when somebody embodies masculinity in a different way than what they propose, it communicates a fundamental insecurity. And it brings to light that what they are doing is pushing an agenda of some sort.

So, that's the second thing that I think stands out about this. And the third thing that I want to highlight is this: several times in discussing Hawley, I have referenced a phrase that I first introduced in an episode years ago. I have said repeatedly that Hawley presents a kinder, gentler vision of patriarchy and Christian nationalist America — the kinder, gentler articulation. His is a presentation that, as he himself says — he says this a few times in the book — he's trying to be more inviting, he's trying to be less strident, he's trying to sound more reasonable, he's trying to sound more folksy, and so forth. He attempts to soften and humanize a patriarchal social vision. And I think that this is important, because it represents an entire subspecies of high-control religionists in America — everything from, like, the old language of a sort of bygone era, but the practice is still there — the sort of seeker-sensitive church, or the church that you go to their website or you hear them open and say, "No matter where you are in your spiritual journey, we welcome you here," and so on. But there's always a "but" lurking there, with a bunch of exceptions.

Don't be fooled by that kinder, gentler vision. When you cut away all the qualifications and look past the folksy presentation — when you tear Hawley's presentation down to the studs and look at how it's really put together, which is what I've been trying to do — when you look at what he's actually saying, the patriarchal, high-control dimensions show clearly.

Dan Miller: And folks, this is not limited to Hawley. Once again, you go to a lot of those churches that talk a game about inclusion. I mean, there are truly inclusive Christian communities — let me say that. There are Christian — not all Christian communities, not all religious communities have to be high-control. Religion does not have to be high-control. And there are truly inclusive religious communities in this country, including Christian communities. I know that, I recognize that. Okay. But you've got to probe, and you've got to look. And when you get a Christian community that says they welcome everybody, that says, "No matter where you are in your spiritual journey, you're welcome here" — you've got to dig down, you've got to probe, and you've got to see if, when you get down to the studs, is that really what they're saying, or are they saying something else? And oftentimes, most of the time, it is masking something else. I think it makes it one of the most effective forms — one of the most effective articulations — of high-control religion: the high-control religion that feels softer, that feels more inviting, that is kinder and gentler, and masks those high-control dimensions.

Hawley illustrates this, but again, I think he illustrates something that is really, really prevalent within American high-control religion. There's more that we could say about this, but I'm done with Josh Hawley. I'll just draw those three broad themes that I think he illustrates — themes that are part of American high-control religion, American patriarchy, American Christian nationalism. I think his book tells us a lot about Josh Hawley, but I think it tells us perhaps more about the contemporary Christian nationalist movement and about the shape of conservative American Christianity — about how the Bible is used within that, about the way that a kinder, gentler Christian nationalism works, about the way that a particular vision of masculinity is sort of baptized and sanctified as the "Christian" vision.

As always, I continue to welcome your thoughts and comments on Hawley or Christian nationalism or anything related to them. Let me know — Daniel Miller, SWAJ — danielmillerswaj@gmail.com. I still welcome those. Come to office hours and talk about those with me. When we start live streaming, feel free to bring those in. Come to the live events with those kinds of questions and comments. Would love to hear them. I do respond to as many emails as I can, but I get more than I can respond to. Would love to hear it.

But we're moving on from Josh Hawley. Those of you who are like, "I've had enough, thank you for reading it, but like you're a glutton for punishment, I can't do it anymore" — I'm with you. We're done with Josh Hawley. Next week, starting this series on "Questions I Wasn't Supposed to Ask in Church," or "Wasn't Allowed to Ask in Church." Really looking forward to this, looking forward to sharing the kinds of questions that people have brought up. I think if you're listening, you're going to find a lot of commonality. I've got some of my own, and I know I've heard these from other people as well. So, really looking forward to that. Until then, as always, please be well. Until we get a chance to talk again — thank you so much for listening. Bye.