Wendell Griffen: "Chickens of Racism, Materialism and Militarism Have Come Home to Roost in the Convergence of Trump’s Presidency and the COVID-19 Pandemic"

 I'd like to point readers to a valuable essay my friend Wendell Griffen published two days ago in Baptist News Global. It's entitled "Our national curse: the cruel convergence of Trump’s presidency and the COVID-19 pandemic." Wendell does an impressive job of connecting the dots to show that "the chickens of racism, materialism and militarism have come home to roost in the convergence of Trump’s presidency and the COVID-19 pandemic." He writes:

Recommended Commentary: White Evangelicals, U.S. Culture of Violence, "Pro-Life" Politics, Intersectionality, Etc.

All of this rhetoric about white evangelical Protestantism “losing its way” makes me wonder what you think white evangelical Protestants did during the civil rights movement, each wave of feminism, and this era of #blacklivesmatter.

— Broderick Greer (@BroderickGreer) March 7, 2018

I'm now over the hump of having my bad tooth removed and am thankfully on the mend. Because I've been distracted by all of that, I haven't been able to follow the news as systematically as I usually try to do — but I still do have bits and pieces of commentary from recent days to share with you today, commentary on many different topics that interest us here, which I think is worth sharing. I hope you'll agree. Here goes:

Rachel Held Evans Responds to Rev. Mike Huckabee's Defense of Trail of Tears: White Male Christian Leaders Pounce on Her

Hard to believe there are some like @GovMikeHuckabee who see the Trail of Tears as a bright spot in American history. https://t.co/4M9xEa8mJU

— Rachel Held Evans (@rachelheldevans) March 16, 2017

Trail of Tears went through my hometown. There are markers. @GovMikeHuckabee's nostalgia for that event is evil. He is no follower of Jesus.

— Rachel Held Evans (@rachelheldevans) March 16, 2017

Rachel Held Evans made the preceding two tweets yesterday after Southern Baptist minister Reverend Mike Huckabee had tweeted that he hoped Mr. Trump would treat the ruling of Judge Derrick Watson putting a hold on his anti-Muslim travel ban the same way Andrew Jackson treated the Supreme Court ruling declaring the eviction of the Cherokees from their homes unconstitutional. The result of Jackson's defiance of the Supreme Court was the Trail of Tears, on which some 4,000 of 15,000 Cherokees forcibly removed from their land and homes died.

Why Does Kim Davis Keep at It? The Resilience of the Anti-Gay Stance in American Culture on Eve of Pope's Visit

So why does Kim Davis keep at it? Why do she and her followers persist, though they have, to all intents and purposes, lost a culture-war battle that ended when the Supremes handed down the Obergefell decision? As Michelangelo Signorile has just pointed out, though media pundits love to tell us that the religious right is waning and the culture wars are over and done with — and that there's some mythic GOP "center" that's going to save the Republican party from anti-gay extremism — at this week's GOP debate, the mythic "moderate" candidate, Jeb Bush, told us that he stands with the extremist Mike Huckabee regarding Kim Davis and her "religious freedom" to deny rights to LGBT citizens.

Poll Indicates Faux "Religious Liberty" Stunt of Reverend Huckabee and Mat Staver Involving Kim Davis Is Backfiring — Except Among White Evangelicals

Several days ago, I predicted that the phony "religious freedom" drama Reverend Mike Huckabee and Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel have been staging with Kim Davis in Kentucky was going to backfire on the U.S. religious right. I cited Mark Joseph Stern who had noted what a "terrible poster girl" Ms. Davis has been for the religious right and its faux "religious freedom" crusade. And I stated,

Concluding Thoughts on the Huckabee-Staver Show Involving Kim Davis: It's a Catholic Show, Too

As this work week wraps up, and as we reach the level of full glut (and concomitant dyspepsia) with more news about Kim Davis, some wrap-up thoughts about her story:

Brittney Cooper on Kim Davis and Her Handlers: "Social Grammar of White Evangelicalism Inheres in the Deployment of Moral Claims to Obscure the Systemic Operations of Structural Inequality"

Following on yesterday's Liberty Counsel-Rev. Mike Huckabee faux "religious liberty" show involving Kim Davis, some outstanding commentary this morning to which I'd like to point you:

Fred Clark on Kim Davis: "57 Years to the Day After Other White Evangelical Christians in the South Defied a Court Order" Contradicting Their Religious Views

Fred Clark's neat summary of the parallel between the Kim Davis story and the Orval Faubus story: 

From My Garden for You: LGBT Catholics Excluded from World Conference on Families; Kentucky Clerk Defying Supreme Court (the Money Trail); "Republican Religion" and Betrayal of Core Christian Values

As I gather blooms and tend to weeds, a posey (perhaps intermixed with some weeds?) for you from my garden today:

The Duggars Speak Out: Victims? What Victims? The Duggar Story and the Gospel

The Duggars just don't get it, do they? The fact is, they can't get it, because they live in a little countercultural bubble of religious truth that trumps all other truths from the world outside their bubble, the world in which the rest of us poor sinners live — a world that is, to their certain knowledge, going to hell in a handbasket. They and their kind do not answer to the authorities of that world, the one in which the rest of us live. They answer to another authority hidden to those of us going to hell.

Duggar Saga: From Curioser and Curioser to Sleazier and Sleazier — Police Reports Ordered Destroyed by Huckabee-Allied Judge, Female Police Chief Under Fire, SNAP Weighs In

News about the model Christian family in my home state of Arkansas, the Duggars, continues to pop so fast and furious that it's hard to keep up with. I appreciate links a number of you good readers have provided to previous threads about the Duggars, who are attracting much attention now that the story of Josh Duggar has become public, because of the way in which they have represented themselves for years now as the model Christian family, and the way in which they have viciously attacked the LGBT community as a threat to children — when Josh Duggar and his parents knew of his molestation of minor girls who appear to have included his own sisters.

Marriage Equality Comes to Alabama, as Grandstanding of "Faith-Based" Southern Leaders Continues

Olanda and Dinah are getting married pic.twitter.com/NJcwZEua8r
— Clare Huddleston (@Fox6Clare) February 9, 2015

Huckabee. Huckabee. Huckabee. Gay. Gay. Gay. (And Bacon-Wrapped Shrimp.)

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Well, former Arkansas governor, current GOP presidential contender, and Southern Baptist minister Mike Huckabee surely got press coverage this weekend, didn't he? Here's commentary about his shenanigans that has caught my eye — Caitlin McNeal summarizes the story for TPM:

The Supremes and Gay Marriage: Mike Huckabee Talks Nullification, Ben Carson Wants Congress to Intervene, Jim Bakker Shouts Hallelujah

On same day #SCOTUS granted marriage cases, @HRC Mississippi flagged this hateful graffiti in downtown Jackson. pic.twitter.com/tPMs99DY14
— Chad Griffin (@ChadHGriffin) January 16, 2015

Election Consequences from the Ground: Monica Potts on How Arkansas Has Pulled a Full Huckabee — From Politics of Compassion to Control by Wealthy Elites

Ex-pat Arkansan Monica Potts writes about how working-class Arkansans cut off their economic noses to spite their culture-war faces in the 2014 election:

Sarah Posner on Uncle Sugar as Religious Bogeyman: Religious Right and Concern with Women's Place

I find Sarah Posner's take on Rev. Mike Huckabee's recent Uncle-Sugar-encourages-women's-libido remarks insightful: Sarah situates Huckabee's concern that the federal government (aka "Uncle Sugar") is  encouraging women to turn into, well, libidinous bad girls within the broader context of the model of biblical patriarchy promoted by churches of the religious right. As she notes, as a Southern Baptist, Rev. Huckabee has long had to contend with questions about the official 1998 Family Statement of his Southern Baptist Convention that explicitly maintains the following:

Religious Right (and Catholic Bishops) Discover Contraception: Steve Benen on Rev. Huckabee and "Uncle Sugar," Patricia Miller on the Catholic Bishops

As Steve Benen notes for the Maddow Blog, it's sort of . . . funny . . . that "Republican politician/preacher/media-personality Mike Huckabee" is now ranting about "Uncle Sugar" and women's unbridled libidos and the federal government and contraception, when, as Bill Scher points out,

That's What Hate Speech Is: Spreading Toxic Lies About Targeted Minorities ➞➞ Violence

"Huckabee later clarified that he did not mean to refer to all 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide. How nice."

Fred Clarkson on Huckabee's Response to Sandy Hook Shootings, and More Reflections on Intersection of Catholic Hierarchy and U.S. Religious Right

God-Talk and the American Public Square: Responses to Sandy Hook Massacre

One of the noteworthy aftershock effects of the unthinkable massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, has been to cast a spotlight on a national conversation that never quite vanishes from the American public square, but which becomes subliminal in non-crisis moments. What kind of God does the nation with the soul of a church worship? Who is He? Or should it be, Who is She?