Recent Religion + Politics Commentary: "Pro-Life" Movement, Christian Nationalism, Southern Baptists and United Methodists, Leonard Leo and New USCCB President

Here are some valuable articles I've read in the past week or two about religion and politics and their intersection:

A Report from Trump Country on the United Methodist Split Over Whether to Welcome LGBTQ People or Not

This is a report from the ground, which is to say, from the white evangelical heartland of the U.S. that is solidly Trump country. It's a report of an encounter a cousin of mine had several days back at a bible-study group he attends, which is connected to a United Methodist church he no longer attends. He left that church — and, without a formal resignation, the United Methodist Church in general and any church in general — after the election of Donald Trump. As he says to me, "I told them that if I had wanted to join a Republican country club, I wouldn't have joined a church."

Connections: UMC Hardening vs. Queer People to Catholic School Barring Child of Gay Couple to Failure of Utah Bill Outlawing "Conversion" Therapy to "Pro-Life" Administration Caging Children

I offer you today these selections from items I have been reading lately, because — to my way of thinking, and I am hoping you'll agree — there's a common theme here. These stories interlink:

Betsy DeVos' Attack on Obama-Administration Regulations re: Sexual Harassment on Campuses: It's What Heterosexual Males Want

Trump, DeVos, and the Creation of an American Oligarchy https://t.co/tOhKEXYIYv pic.twitter.com/UJ3jOB1Oxs

— April Spivey (@a35362) September 1, 2017

Trump's education secretary Betsy DeVos has ripped up Obama-administration regulations that sought to put teeth into the attempt of women in university settings to report sexual harassment and rape. She's actually defending rapists: that's the gist of her comments about her decision to ditch Obama-administration policies in this area. (See here, here, here, here, and here).

Trump's Education Secretary DeVos Presents Commencement Address at Bethune-Cookman University: Things Do Not Go Well for Her

Mr. Trump's Secretary of Education (and right-wing Christian activist) Betsy DeVos was the commencement speaker yesterday at the historically black United Methodist university founded by Mary McLeod Bethune, Bethune-Cookman University. Things did not go well.

Lions' Dens Are Not Comfortable Places for Humans: A Post-Trial Report on Psychopaths and Those Who Prop Them Up

4 in 5 white evangelicals, 3 in 5 white Catholics and Mormons — "pro-life" voters — brought us the Trump nightmare.

I will not forget.

— Bill Lindsey (@wdlindsy) December 15, 2016

I'm back from the trial in which I testified. Back, and thinking about psychopaths . . . . As my friend Wendell Griffen says in a posting he made at his Justice is a verb! blog a day ago, "Reasonable people do not wittingly employ a psychopath for morally and socially responsible work."

A Reader Writes: "Oh, But It Isn't Rome Burning, It's Everywhere Else" — And I Reply: Yes, the Burning Is Everywhere; Instead of Talking Rome, How About We Talk Trump?

In response to my posting yesterday about Pope Francis' recent remarks about "gender theory" and the need of Catholic clergy to "accompany" gay (as in LGBTQ) folks, ClevelandGirl writes,

"This Is Actually Happening, and It's Real, and It's Right Now": Christian Churches Responding (or Refusing to Respond) to Pastoral Needs of LGBTQ Human Beings

Gay (former) Mormon Tyler Glenn in a video he posted to Facebook on 5 July (the video above), about the suicide of LGBTQ Mormon youth after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints enacted its policy punishing same-sex couples and their children and excluding them from church participation:

This is actually happening, and it's real, and it's right now.

Quote for Day: "Christianity's Long, Shameful History of Teaching That Gays and Lesbians Are Abhorrent Sinners Is Coming Home to Roost in a Costly Global Way"

Bill Tammeus (who, in addition to being one of the best religion journalists in the U.S. is a Presbyterian elder) compares the struggle of the United Methodist church to welcome and love LGBTQ human beings with the similar struggle of the Catholic church. In both cases, he notes, the "global" dimension of the church is used as a kind of brake on welcoming and loving LGBTQ people, as adherents in the global South (egged on, I'd note, by right-wing political and religious leaders in the U.S. and elsewhere) use the "bible says" argument to veto a welcoming, loving response to LGBTQ people in their global churches. Ironically, this is the very same argument used a half century ago by white Christians in the U.S. to veto a welcoming, loving response to people of color seeking civil rights.

The United Methodist Church's General Conference and the Question of Welcoming and Including LGBTQ People: A Reflection and Prediction (UMC Will Not Move to Welcome LGBTQ People)

* UMC offer of "all" does not include LGBTQ people.

The videotaped theological conversation between Ivone Gebara and me that I've just posted here mentions several times the prophetic witness of Rev. Gilbert Caldwell, a longtime civil rights activist who marched with Dr. King — it mentions Gil Caldwell's prophetic witness within the United Methodist Church, as he stands with fellow Methodists calling on their church to welcome and include LGBTQ human beings. As I've noted several times in discussing Gil Caldwell's civil rights activism, he and other United Methodists who protest the exclusive and condemnatory policy of the UMC towards LGBT people have been arrested at General Conference for doing so.

Claim That the Culture Wars are Over and Religious Right Is Obsolescent Links to Claim That Political Left and Identity Politics Are Responsible for Trump: My Take

One thing I suppose many of us can agree on about the current U.S. presidential election cycle is that it has been full of surprises. Not the least of those has been the surprising way in which Mr. Trump has risen to the top of the GOP heap, when one media guru and statistician after another — most of these folks living in media bubbles and elite enclaves set apart from the rest of the nation — smugly assured us as the campaign began that we could safely laugh at him, since he had a snowball's chance in hell of being the Republican presidential candidate.

Embracing and Affirming LGBTQ Diversity Within the Black Church: Notes from a Conference Sponsored by New Millennium Baptist Church, Little Rock

Fred Clark, Slacktivist

As I mentioned on Saturday, this weekend, Steve and I attended a conference on "Embracing and Affirming LGBTQ Diversity Within the Black Church" sponsored by New Millennium Baptist church in Little Rock. Those of us attending this wonderful event made a covenant not to tweet or share personal information revealed by participants in conference discussions, but unless I completely misunderstand, we're welcome to share information about the conference itself and about the important discussions that took place over the course of the weekend.

United Methodists Discuss Anglican Communion's Sanctioning of Episcopal Church USA for Support of Same-Sex Marriage: Implications for UMC Future?

Robert Schotter writes, 

Reported Spike in Suicides of LGBT Mormon Youth After LDS Church Enacts New Gay-Excluding Policy: Some Links for You

As Chris Morley notes in a series of comments here yesterday (this is his initial comment in the thread), a story has made the rounds this weekend about the new policy the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints recently enacted punishing the children of same-sex couples (previous commentary on this story is here, here, and here). On 28th January, the Salt Lake Tribune published a report citing data from the group Mama Dragons, Mormon mothers supporting their gay children, which indicates that there have been 32 suicides of young LGBT Mormons following the church's adoption of its new gay-excluding policy.

African-American United Methodist Minister Asks Other African-American Ministers to Support LGBT Rights: Heads of White Heterosexual Catholic Men Explode at NCR

I know some Bilgrimage readers have been following (and participating in) the mind-blowing discussion of Gil Caldwell's Religion News Service article at National Catholic Reporter in the past several days, because I can see your contributions in the discussion thread. For those who don't know what this discussion is about: Reverend Gilbert H. Caldwell is a United Methodist minister with a long, admirable history of advocating for equal rights for people of color within the United States and in the church in which he's ordained. His book Something Within recounts his life story, his days of marching with Martin Luther King, Jr., in the Civil Rights movement, his years of work for racial justice and reconciliation in both the culture at large and the Christian churches. (I've blogged about Gil Caldwell's work in the past: click his name in the labels below for my previous postings about him.)

Local "Religious Liberty" Conference Sponsored by LDS Church with Assistance of Catholic Bishop of Arkansas: Right-Wing Politics Disguised as Religion

Someone I know heard the presentations today at this interfaith program on religious liberty sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Little Rock. He did not attend, but happened to be at the LDS church as the presentations were broadcast over a loudspeaker for anyone in the church to hear while the conference took place. 

More News: Updates to Stories about Archbishop Nienstedt, Rev. Frank Schaefer, David Gushee, and LDS Church

And finally this morning, some odds and ends providing updates on stories we've discussed here in the past: 

In United Methodist Church, "Ecclesiastical Disobedience Is on the Rise" Over Issue of Gay Marriage

For the New Yorker, Casey N. Cep reports that the United Methodist Church is deeply divided over the issue of full inclusion of LGBTI members in the life of the church--especially after the church started putting fathers on trial for officiating at the weddings of their gay sons. At its latest General Conference, UMC conference delegates voted 61% to 39% against the full inclusion of gay members and for upholding the ban on such inclusion that has been inscribed in the church's Book of Discipline since 1972.

"I Will Never Be Silent Again": Pastor Frank Schaefer to United Methodist Church Court

Rev. Frank Schaefer

"I will never be silent again," United Methodist pastor Frank Schaefer told the church court that tried him for officiating at the wedding of his gay son. (And, as an aside that's not really an aside, isn't it amazing that Jesus so decisively excoriated the legalism of the scribes and pharisees, while churches that claim him as their founder have ended up with intricate judicial mechanisms that place people on trial--as if the scribes and pharisees and not Jesus founded the Christian movement?)

In the News: Cheneys, Zimmerman Again, UMC Censure of Pastor, Women's Special Roles, Doris Lessing

Don't you love Thanksgiving? The holiday when we celebrate good, all-American families and good, all-American family values? But then there's this: