Calling the Bluff of Those Who Maintain That Roots of Southern White Evangelicals Don't Run Back to Defense of Slavery

I'm not a white evangelical now, but I was raised in the Southern Baptist church, with two Baptist grandmothers (one Southern and one Missionary) — so I know more than a little about white evangelical culture in the American South. My father's brother and his wife spent their academic careers teaching and (in my uncle's case) doing administrative work in Southern Baptist colleges. Their two sons are Southern Baptist ministers, as was their maternal grandfather.

Commentary: Political Fall-Out as Catholic Bishops Face Reckoning for Covering Abuse Crimes; German Catholic Discussion of Bible and Homosexuality

More commentary today that catches my attention, and is especially interesting when read side by side: 

Patricia Miller, "Is This Finally the Reckoning for the Catholic Church on Sexual Abuse?":

Internet Responds to POTUS' Personal Theologian Paula White & Her Clownish Theology of White Nationalism: "Do You Not Read Your Bible, Sis?"

.@Paula_White - who commits theological malpractice with nearly every word - advises the president of the United States.

Where did she get her theological education? She didn’t. Her highest degree is a high school diploma. https://t.co/s31RO8Ciws

— Rev. Dr. Chuck Currie (@RevChuckCurrie) July 11, 2018

Baptist theologian Fred Clark is superb today on precisely how the POTUS' personal theologian Paula White "beclowns herself" through her recent statement that Jesus — who was executed by the Romans via a sentence of capital punishment ordering his crucifixion, a punishment reserved in the Roman empire for the lowest order of criminals — never ran afoul of any laws, and "if he had broken the law then he would have been sinful and he would not have been our Messiah."Here's an excerpt from his commentary:

Quote for the Day: Fred Clark on How "Evangelical Christianity Is Turning into 8chan"

At his Slacktivist site today, Fred Clark reports on the decision of Jerry Falwell's Liberty University to make a biographical film about "firefighter prophet" Mark Taylor. As Kyle Mantyla explains at Right Wing Watch, Taylor is a former firefighter who states that as he was watching Fox News, God told him Donald Trump would become president, but only after President Obama had served a second term and built "righteous anger" among God's people that would lead to Trump's election. 

Fred Clark on Gerson and Ladd: "Helpful Corrective to Gerson's Longer, Larger Piece Because Ladd Centers the Defining Facts of Slavery, Jim Crow, and Civil Rights"

Yesterday, when I posted Twitter (and other) responses to Michael Gerson's recent essay on white evangelicals and Trump, I pointed you to an essay by Chris Ladd on the cruelty of white evangelicalism, about which Rachel Held Evans had tweeted, nothing that Ladd's essay fills in some of the missing pieces on evangelicalism and race that Gerson's essay had left out. I also told you that Ladd had published his essay as a blog post initially at the Forbes site, then Forbes removed it, apparently without explanation — and it would be interesting to know why Forbes took that step. Chris Ladd then reposted the essay at another site.

Two More Queer Catholics Fired, "Progressive" Evangelicals "Discern" Whether Queer Folks Should Be Treated Equally, CBF Discriminates Against Queer Employees: What's This All About?

Mark Guevarra writes,

"In early December 2017, a representative from the Archdiocese of Edmonton called me in for an investigation."

And we can stop Mark's painful testimony right there, at the opening line, can't we? Because we already see where this story of the firing of yet another LGBTQ employee of a Catholic institution — he was pastoral associate of a parish in Alberta, Canada — is going.

The Long and Short of It: Evangelical Mulligans and Idiot Winds — Religion in the News

“Family Research Council head says that evangelical conservatives are willing to overlook Trump’s past behavior so long as he delivers for them on policy” https://t.co/4I5tGy4WcZ

— Jonathan Merritt (@JonathanMerritt) January 23, 2018 

"We don't care how many women he has abused, cheated on, or objectified. We don't care how many black people he insults. We don't care how many refugees he turns away or non-American Christians he sends back to persecution, as long he helps US." US = white, American, men. https://t.co/h7HS0Drp1A

— Rachel Held Evans (@rachelheldevans) January 23, 2018

Eugene Peterson Suggests God May Love LGBTQ Human Beings, and White Evangelical Gatekeepers Go Ballistic: Tempest in a Stewpot

As readers who follow religion news, especially insofar as it relates to LGBTQ lives and issues, probably know, there has been an interesting little tempest in the stewpot* of white American evangelicalism in the past day or so. At Religious News Service, Jonathan Merritt has been publishing portions of an interview he has conducted with Eugene Peterson, a Presbyterian writer-pastor who is something of a superstar among U.S. white evangelicals. Two days ago, he published a portion of his Peterson interview in which Peterson made some mild statements about how maybe LGBT folks are human beings and if God loves all human beings, maybe She loves LGBT folks, too. After that, all hell broke loose.

Quote for Day: "Deny Them That 'We' — That Vast and Inclusive Plural"

How do we fight back now? Fred Clark's suggestion, as a white evangelical Christian who moves against the pro-Trump tide of his white evangelical community: Deny them the use of the word "we" to describe all of us:

Anthea Butler on Disarray Under Evangelical Umbrella Due to Trump

A valuable footnote to our discussion yesterday of Fred Clark's take on the shenanigans of those trying to rescue the white evangelical brand from Trumpism: in that posting, I cited a series of tweets by Anthea Butler in which she asserts that "for American Evangelicalism, Trump has severed and destroyed their message, movement, and future." Yesterday, The Guardian published an essay by Anthea Butler in which she develops this assertion.

Fred Clark on Shenanigans of Those Trying to Rescue White Evangelical Brand from Trumpism

With impeccable evangelical cred, Fred Clark cries foul on the attempt of some leading white evangelical commentators right now to try to rescue the white evangelical brand from Trumpism, and to maintain that evangelicals are more diverse than the some seven in ten white evangelicals voting for the Donald:

Where Have All the Christian Intellectuals Gone? (Does Anyone Remember John Paul's and Ratzinger's Purge of Catholic Theologians?)

It's a thing now among journalists and religion commentators to ask what has happened to the public intellectuals of the churches in the past few decades — as Catholic commentator E.J. Dionne does in this Commonweal essay. Where have they gone? Why are they not with us any longer — the Niebuhrs (or, as Fred Clark points out, the Martin Luther Kings who never get mentioned in this discussion, and isn't that curious, and noteworthy)?

Fred Clark on Rev. William J. Barber's Moral Revolution: A Rebuke to White Evangelical Reading of the Bible

As Fred Clark says, there's a reason Rev. William J. Barber cited "Revive Us Again," a venerable hymn long beloved by Southern white evangelicals, in his stirring commentary at the Democratic National Convention. I blogged about this commentary yesterday; a video of Rev. Barber's address to DNC is at this posting.

More on the Claim That Religious Right Is Waning, as Evidence Mounts of Massive White Evangelical Support for Donald Trump

Two days ago, I posted commentary expressing my own strong reservations about the argument — often pushed by liberal-centrist political commentators — that the religious right and its culture wars are waning in the U.S. political sphere. Here's Rob Boston today at Talk to Action making a similar point: 

Want to Know Why "Pro-Life" Democrats Are Vanishing Breed? Go See "Spotlight," Fred Clark Advises: On the Catholic Bishops, the Culture Wars, and Mr. Trump

Want to know why the "pro-life" Democrats have vanished, Fred Clark asks? And then he recommends: "Go see 'Spotlight.' " Fred writes,

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.

Quote for Day: The Current Trans-Panic and "A Process Which, If Followed to the End, Will Make Us Into Devils"

Fred Clark at Slacktivist, commenting on a lurid fantasy being peddled by conservative Christian commentator Rod Dreher, about gangs of "transgendered" thugs who are, we're told, terrorizing upstanding theater-going Texas suburbanites:

"The Church Came Early to the Hanging": Deciphering Conversations About Race and Religion (and LGBTQ Humanity), As Trump Rises to Power

The current political context is forcing Americans to discuss race, and churchpeople have some serious reckoning to do. Not only did the church turn a blind eye to racism, but congregations would often let out early on days there was to be a lynching in the town square so parishioners could get a good seat for the festivities. The church came early to the hanging. 

~ Sandhya Jha in a review of Drew G.I. Hart's Trouble I've Seen: Changing the Way the Church Views Racism (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2016) in Christian Century

Once Again, Why Are White Evangelicals (and Working-Class White Catholics) Gung-Ho About Trump? — "A Form of Identity Politics That Has Always Tied Together Jesus, America, and Whiteness"

The discussion about the (by now, clearly demonstrated) fact that Donald Trump is mopping up in the evangelical voting market continues, with Tobin Grant offering statistical analysis at Religion Dispatches a few days ago of this phenomenon in several recent primaries, and noting,

Quote for Day: Fred Clark on Antonin Scalia and How to Avoid Having One's Death Perceived As a Source of Liberation

Fred Clark on the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia: