The U.S. Has a White Christian Problem, and It's Imperiling American Democracy: My Commentary on New PRRI Report re: American Attitudes Towards Immigrants

Today, Public Religion Research Group (PRRI) published results of a study it has just done entitled "Are Immigrants a Threat? Most Americans Don’t Think So, but Those Receptive to the 'Threat' Narrative Are Predictably More Anti-immigrant." Some key findings of this report:

Yesterday's Vote and What It Tells Us About Americans and Abortion: Whither U.S. Catholic Leaders Now?

PRRI, 2022 American Values  Survey

As Oriana Gonzalez reports, not only did voters in Michigan, California, and Vermont just vote  for constitutional protections for abortion rights in their states, but voters in the conservative state of Kentucky voted against a proposed amendment stating that a constitutional right to abortion does not exist in Kentucky. The Supreme Court and the Republican party are clearly out of step with where most Americans are when it comes to the issue of abortion rights, but, as Gonzalez also notes, Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America (and a Catholic), has stated that if Republicans gain control of either house of Congress, her group's "number one issue" will be to see a national abortion ban enacted.

Snapshots of Intersection of Religion and Politics, American Style, as Indicators Point to Biden Win

Moi on Twitter, pointing to an AP Report by Elana Schor and David Crary, 6 November

On this day when the worm may be turning (if at sloth's pace) in the US presidential election, when many folks are expressing baffled surprise that four years of that person in the White House have resulted in even more exultation of "religious" people in his rule over us, a few snapshots. These are who we are, and we need not to unsee what they show us.

National Catholic Reporter Review of Sarah Posner, Unholy — "Sarah Posner's 'Unholy' implicates Catholics as well as evangelicals"

Here's a review I wrote of Sarah Posner's Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump, which appeared in the 2-15 October print edition of National Catholic Reporter and is now also online at the NCR website. It's entitled, "Sarah Posner's 'Unholy' implicates Catholics as well as evangelicals":

News Commentary in Time of Plague: 43 Pages of Obituaries in Houston Today (and the Role Many US Christians Are Playing in the Pandemic)

OUR LOCAL PAPER: The Houston Chronicle
obituary section was 43 pages today.

Let that sink in.

— Rogelio Garcia Lawyer (@LawyerRogelio) July 13, 2020

(P.S. As Newsweek reports, this is a standalone section of obituaries for the year up to now. Read the Newsweek report, and you'll see a lot of commenters on social media are stating that it's likely a high percentage of those deaths are Covid deaths.)

"As the Nation Grapples with Demographic Changes and the Legacy of Racism, Christianity's Role as a Cornerstone of White Supremacy Has Been Largely Overlooked"

Germany confronted its racist legacy. Britain and the US must do the same | Susan Neiman https://t.co/VrmrtGM2x2

We cannot have a just and decent present as long as we refuse to face our pasts.

— 𝕎𝕚𝕝𝕝𝕚𝕒𝕞 𝔻. 𝕃𝕚𝕟𝕕𝕤𝕖𝕪 🌈 (@wdlindsy) June 14, 2020

Commentary on Trump's Powerful Religious Enablers Pence, Barr, Pompeo: "Have Convinced Themselves That They Are in a Biblical Moment"

Trump officials claim there is no systemic racism in policing as protests sweep US https://t.co/ms1pX6dd9a pic.twitter.com/k3ZnN4Au5G

— The Hill (@thehill) June 8, 2020

Wisconsin as Worst Place to Be Black in US and Recent Voting Débacle: These Are Related, in a State Whose Citizens Are a Quarter Catholic

Take a cue from Wisconsin voters who stuck it out during a torrential rain & hail storm to make sure the Republican judge lost his seat. pic.twitter.com/Tu5jUwYWyt

— KD (@Fly_Sistah) April 14, 2020

For those seeking to understand the strange goings on recently in Wisconsin, where the US Supreme Court — to be precise, the bloc of right-wing Catholic men on the Supreme bench — forced Wisconsin voters to go out and vote during a lethal pandemic, rather than permitting them to cast votes by mail, a 2018 essay by S. Ani Mukherji's in Boston Review is necessary reading. It's entitled "The Worst Place to Black in the U.S. Is Wisconsin: Racism and the Wisconsin Idea." The essay is a review of Dan Kaufman's book The Fall of Wisconsin, which offers a rose-tinted version of a progressive Wisconsin dismantled by the Koch brothers who — this is an open secret — bought themselves a governor in Scott Walker, who turned the state into something of a Koch bros' paradise for Republicans and a nightmarish dystopia for everyone else.

Facts, Numbers, Trump's Real Pandemic Record — and Continued Truth-Skirting of "Pro-Life" White Christians as Death Tolls Mount

In my absolutely darkest moments right after the 2016 election I could not imagine this moment: thousands of Americans dying a day, an economic contraction to rival the Great Depression and Trump just listing off the names of CEOs while congratulating himself for a job well done

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) April 14, 2020

 

Jonathan V. Last, "The Real COVID-19 Death Toll Is Higher Than We Think":

"One of the themes we’ve been talking about for the last month is that the official American death toll right now is almost certainly an undercount which will eventually be revised upwards after the epidemic has passed and we have time to sift through the records. 

Why? Because most localities seem to be ascribing deaths to COVID-19 only in the presence of a positive test. And since we've had a persistent shortage of tests, many patients in serious condition are admitted without being tested, since they are presumed positive cases and the test can be better used on someone else. 

Also we have home-deaths, in which case no testing is performed.

"Jesus Paid It All": How the Pushback of Some US Catholics Vs. Church Closings Reflects Captivity of Catholic Imagination to a Capitalist Worldview

Jesus paid it all,

All to him I owe.

As social gospel theologian Shailer Mathews noted in the early 20th century, those words from a beloved American hymn signal to us how deeply imbued American Christianity is with a capitalistic worldview and capitalist values.* The substitutionary atonement of Christ's death on the cross is celebrated in the hymn as a financial transaction — we sinners owe a debt; Jesus pays it on our behalf.

Today's Guardian on Growing Backlash to Appeals to Cease Religious Gatherings, Fueled by Top GOP Leaders

Since it appears some people just do not intend to get what's going on with some communities of faith — churches, notably — in the US during the pandemic, and the serious dangers some behaviors are posing to all of us, I'm glad the media keep hammering away at the backlash movement to keep churches open where they are now open and hosting meetings, or to reopen them where they have been closed. This is a largely American phenomenon, and it speaks volumes about the kind of American Christianity, especially "pro-life" white Christianity, that placed Donald Trump in the White House.

"Pro-Life" Christians May Yet Be the Death of Us All: Who's Driving Trump's Nonchalance About Coronavirus and Why

Yesterday, I pointed you to a recent article by Ruth Graham about why Trump-friendly Christian leaders are feeling fine about coronavirus. As that article notes, if Mr. Trump says the virus is contained and it's no worse than the flu and his "numbers" are good, his white Christian fan club will fall into formation and cheer him on — though they claim they support him to the moon because he's "pro-life," and lying about and ignoring an impending pandemic that's killing lots of people seems hardly congruent with any meaningful "pro-life" values.

Ruth Krall, Historical Meandering: Ideologies of Abuse and Exclusion (3)

Vasily Polenov, Le droit du Seigneur (1874), in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow

This is the third and final installment of an essay by Ruth Krall entitled "Historical Meandering: Ideologies of Abuse and Exclusion." The previous two parts of this essay have appeared here and here. This essay is one in a series of essays Ruth is publishing on Bilgrimage under the series title  "Recapitulation: Affinity Sexual Violence in a Religious Voice." The first of the two links above will give you links to each previous essay. In this essay series, Ruth is focusing on the endemic nature of religious and spiritual leader sexual abuse of followers. 

Ed Kilgore on White Evangelicals as Heart of Trump Base: "Committed to a Common Desire to Take America Back to Its Days of Greatness in the 1950s"

In "White Evangelicals Are Still the Heart of Trump's Base," Ed Kilgore comments on new Pew Research Center data that some commentators are erroneously interpreting to mean that white evangelical support for Donald Trump is waning. As Ed Kilgore notes, it's not waning. To the contrary, it remains robust, especially among the most churchgoing and committed of white evangelicals, 70 percent of whom report strong support for Trump.

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:

Tara Westover's Educated: Questions re: the Anti-Government, Anti-Schools, Anti-Science, Anti-Medicine Lifestyle of Many Americans Today

Sorry to have been silent the past week. As I mentioned previously, I have had an onerous textual revision process on my hands, and I was also asked last week to do a media event on behalf of SNAP, which is calling on the Catholic bishop of Little Rock to explain why several names of credibly accused priests on other lists have been left off his diocesan list of credibly accused priests with ties to Arkansas, and to add those names to his list.

Stephanie Krehbiel on Religious Groups Facing Abuse Revelations: "Godly Men, Be Quiet"

This map shows routes of several Southern #Baptist "travelers;" men who preyed on people in one church role & went on to another church to do it again. Please read part 2 in @HoustonChron @ExpressNews series #Abuse of Faith. https://t.co/QuyuuKRr3N @John_Tedesco @RobDownenChron pic.twitter.com/ZMoTTbYPwL

— Lise Olsen (@chrondigger) February 12, 2019

I have written here in the past about Stephanie Krehbiel's important commentary on abuse in religious communities. If you click her name in the tags below this posting, the string of other posts in which I've featured or mentioned her will pop up. Stephanie is a scholar with a background in American studies and gender and sexuality studies. She's executive director and co-founder of Into Account, a group that provides resources and advocates for survivors of abuse as they seek accountability.

Yes, More on Catholic MAGA Boys: Conversation White Americans (& Especially White Christians) Refuse to Have, or Why Trump Is in the White House

Nothing has changed, essentially, since Robert P. Jones offered us the analysis of our serious cultural-political-religious crisis in 2016 in the passages highlighted below.

This is a crisis in which white U.S. Christians are singularly, critically implicated. /1 pic.twitter.com/AObT14hixb

— 𝚆𝚒𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚊𝚖 𝙳. 𝙻𝚒𝚗𝚍𝚜𝚎𝚢 (@wdlindsy) January 30, 2019

Headlines Keep Pouring Forth: "Pope Francis Goes Full Homophobic"; "Pope Tells Gay Clergy to Quit" — Some Mercy. Some Hope. Some Welcome!

Newshub (New Zealand)

And the headlines just keep pouring out around the world: "Pope Francis goes full homophobic"; "Pope Francis doesn’t want homosexuals to join the priesthood"; "The Catholic Church is still homophobic"; "Pope Francis says gay life has become 'fashionable' and is hurting the Catholic Church"; "Pope tells gay clergy to quit"; "Gay people not welcome in clergy."

I Have a Dream: As Pope Francis Announces that Gay Men Shouldn't Enter Priesthood, as Advent Begins — "Leave the LGBTQ Community the Hell Alone"

This is a meditation for the first Sunday of Advent. It has specific reference to what Pope Francis said (or is said to have said: let the Catholic games begin!) in a book released in Italy yesterday, which is being represented widely in headlines throughout the mainstream media like this one today from The Guardian in London: "Gay people should not join Catholic clergy, Pope Francis says." Given that we know that there already are gay men in the Catholic priesthood and hierarchy — galore — this statement will rightly strike people with functioning consciences and access to much information at all as downright silly. As malicious….