Is It That the Democrats "Lost" White Christians, or That Obama's Elections Re-Energized GOP's "White Christian Strategy"?

Yesterday's PRRI "Morning Buzz" email newsletter* discusses a recent article by Jack Jenkins' entitled "Democrats lost white Christians. Can they win them back?" As I read this article yesterday, the thought that kept running around in my head was this: But the Democratic party did not "lose" white Christians. White Christians have walked away from the Democratic party because US white Christianity is deeply racist.

More Reports on Shared Goal of Putin and U.S. White Evangelicals: Deconstructing Democracy

The story reported by Peter Montgomery, which I shared with you on Friday — that the neo-Confederate League of the South, classified as a hate group by Southern Poverty Law Center, is inaugurating a Russian-language section on its website — has now been reported by other venues including Newsweek and The Hill. As Peter Montgomery reports (and this is echoed in the other two articles I've linked; I'm also repeating what I posted Friday),

Frank Schaeffer on Why White Evangelicals Love Trump: "The Context Is American Racism" — Implications for White Catholic "Pro-Life" Voters

This is the kind of testimony that white Catholics who claim to be motivated solely by opposition to abortion as they cast their votes do not want to hear. I wonder why?

"Christendom Adjusts Itself Far Too Easily to the Worship of Power": Theological Bases for Resistance in the Trump Era

John Pavlovitz:* 

And so right now a large portion of the American Evangelical Church sits pretty, believing itself victorious; momentarily giddy at its spoils, gloating in its apparent advantage, and oblivious to the cost. 

The cost, is that the Church itself, though winning this political battle has lost the greater war for its humanity and its dignity. It has been fully separated from its namesake. It is no longer synonymous with Jesus. It is no longer good news for the poor, the marginalized, the hurting, the downtrodden. It is an exclusive brothel where power lusting white Christians fornicate freely. 

The Evangelical Church is no longer a brilliant beacon of God's love in a dark place, it is simply another building upon which Donald Trump will slap his name, exploit for a bit, and eventually abandon, leaving behind lots of people hurting who are broken and bankrupt.

Singing Songs of Resistance: I Will Not Go Back As Trump Presidency Seeks to Pull My Nation Back While Right-Wing White Christians Applaud

Ruthless exploitative capitalism has decisively unmasked itself now as a deeply anti-human force, as it colludes with white ethnonationalism and right-wing Christianity to dismantle liberal democracy throughout the world. The election of Donald Trump is one result of this collusion.

How Right Robert P. Jones Turns Out to Be: "Obama Presidency Provided a Unique Focal Point for Many White Christian Voters"

Back in late July, when I began a report for you (in a series of postings) about Robert P. Jones' book The End of White Christian America, I wrote, 

Bloody Summer of 2016 and Coming U.S. Elections: "A Great Sorting on the Trump Question Is Coming" (As Guns Fail [Again] to Save Us)

America,
Put the gun on the ground and step away.
Please.

— Amanda Kerri (@eternalkerri) July 8, 2016

More on the Conundrum Confounding Beltway Media and GOP Establishment: Explain to Me Again Why White Evangelicals Are Going for Trump?!

My headline for the posting I just published mentions the continued strong support of white evangelicals for Donald Trump, support that is confounding the beltway media and the Republican establishment, but will astound no one who lives among white evangelicals and has had his or her finger on the pulse of white evangelical culture since this religious group began trending Republican in the South following the enactment of the Civil Rights Act (It's about the racism). Here's some commentary on why white evangelicals are, for the most part, deliriously happy about Donald Trump:

A Week of Amazing Grace, and of No Grace at All: Reading the Testimony of the Mother Emanuel Martyrs Alongside the Dissenting Obergefell v. Hodges Statements of Four Supreme Catholic Men

What's a church for?, President Barack Obama asked the American people on the day on which the highest court of the land struck down barriers to legal civil marriage for same-sex couples What's a church for?, President Obama asks us as he delivers a deep-souled eulogy for the martyred pastor of Mother Emanuel A.M.E. church in Charleston, South Carolina, that will go down in history as one of the most significant orations made by any U.S. president.

More on Institutionalized Racism in U.S. (and Michael Brown and Eric Garner): Chris Hedges, Geoffrey Stone, Ta-Nehisi Coates

More commentary hot off the internet presses that strikes me as very important this morning:

Provocative One-Liners from This Week's News: Pete, SOTU, Women and Their Place, The Gays, Etc.

One-liners (loosely speaking, in two cases) about what's in the news now: Pete Seeger, reactions to the U.S. State of the Union Address, women and their place, gays, etc.:

Abby Zimet on a Tale of Two Men

Abby Zimet at Common Dreams on how the two presidential candidates spent last Tuesday night and Wednesday morning:

Winners of U.S. Elections: Women, Gays, Latinos, People of Color, Climate, Young People (Losers: Angry White Males, Catholic Bishops, Knights of Columbus)

Well, that was quite a night, wasn't it?  I couldn't be happier to have been proven very wrong about my fears that the Republicans would find a way back into power last evening.  And at the risk of boring readers who are already thoroughly saturated with news commentary, including the many good readers of this blog outside the U.S., for whom our American navel-gazing is surely a bore, I thought I'd simply recap here some of my favorite quips and comments from folks following the election results last evening:

Politicians and Pundits Talking (or Not) about Global Warming Following Sandy

Politicians and pundits talking about climate change and global warming (or not talking, as the case may be) following megastorm Sandy:

Gerald T. Slevin: After Elections, Who Will Prosecute More Predatory Priests? Constitutional Lawyer Obama Or The Three R's---Romney, Ryan & Ratzinger? And Why Does It Matter?

Another hard-hitting and exhaustively researched essay by the Harvard-trained former Wall Street lawyer Jerry Slevin today.  Jerry looks at the two U.S. presidential candidates in light of their records in dealing with issues of child abuse and of church and state, and challenges Catholics to inform our consciences as we select a candidate by thinking carefully about why the Vatican and U.S. bishops appear to be playing very overt partisan politics in this election cycle--to assure that the candidate (Romney) more likely to be lenient to Catholic officials prosecuted for criminal activity with child abuse cases is elected.  What follows is Jerry's essay:

Talking about Race (and Republicans, Mormons, and Catholics): Important Recent Discussions

Several very important articles this morning that I recommend readers read side-by-side with each other, since each glosses the other in significant ways:

Andrew Sullivan, "Religion, Race, and Double Standards," at the Dish

Joanna Brooks, "Andrew Sullivan Is Right and Wrong on Racism, Romney, and the Book of Mormon," at Religion Dispatches

Ta-Nehisi Coates, "The Burden of a Black President," at The Atlantic

Chauncey Vega, "The Real Burdens of a Black President?  Double Standards and Polite White Racism" at Alternet

Last Night's Debate: Mr. Romney as Soft Kitty

About last night's debacle show:

Gene Lyons on Why So Many Republicans Hate Obama: A Report from Arkansas

At the National Memo site this morning, my fellow Arkansan Gene Lyon has an important insider report about why so many Southern white evangelicals hate Barack Obama.  As he notes, we Southerners inhabit a landscape in which "a never-ending series of conspiratorial threats and eschatological panics" stalk the land.  Satan worshippers!  Secular humanists!  Barcodes with the Mark of the Beast!  Logos on boxes of laundry detergent with hidden diabolical charms woven into them!  Birth control pills flooding our water supplies!  (No, wait, the latter is from the Catholic world of apocalypto-evangelical urban-legend nutjobbery, isn't it?)

Big News: Obama and Democrats Enjoying Wide Lead Among Catholics

The big news now vis-a-vis Catholics and politics in the U.S.: as Daniel Burke reports at Religion News Service, a Pew Research Center poll conducted on 16 September shows Obama leading Romney among American Catholics by 54-39 percent.  As Burke notes, this widening lead is despite the U.S. bishops' "fortnight for freedom" shock-and-awe events this summer, and despite Romney's having selected Catholic Paul Ryan as his running mate.

Pictures, Words: Images Capturing Inconvenient Truth

Ken and Barbie sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g: Vancouver photographer Dina Goldstein produces a photographic meditation about what may have gone wrong when Ken married Barbie.*