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.

John Nichols on What Made Michelle Tick: $$$$$$

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John Nichols at the Nation on what has sustained Michelle Bachmann on the national political scene, despite her clownish statements about, inter alia, light bulbs and evolution (see Gail Collins at the New York Times): it's the $$$$$$. Nichols writes,

Geoffrey Stone on Why GOP Won House with Minority of Popular Votes

At Huffington Post, Geoffrey R. Stone explains how the Republicans won the House of Representatives last Tuesday--though more than half a million more votes were cast for Democratic House candidates nationwide than for Republican ones.  And though the Republicans ended up with 55% of House seats, while only 48% of votes nationwide were cast for the Republican presidential candidate Romney.

Dialing Back the Crazy: Leading Republicans Call Out Bachmann's Islamophobia

When even the crazies call Michelle Bachmann crazy, you know she's gone waaay 'round the bend.

In the News: Marcus Bachmann and Ex-Gay Therapy, Phelps and Westboro Baptist, God and GOP

More end-of-week religion and politics news: 

In the News: Siri, the Newt, Democrats as Anti-Catholic, and Bachmann's Inanity

In the news right  now:

The controversy about the Siri phone app continues, with the news media reporting that petitions are circulating online asking Apple to address the app's apparent gender bias as it provides information to users.  Cecile Richards thinks the disparity between how Siri answers questions about male health care needs and how it deals with women's questions illustrates the decisive tilt of our health care provision system in a male direction.  Jill Filipovic thinks* Apple is likely not a misogynistic organization, but "they're just reliant on too many dude programmers."  With technology (including the internet), we get what programmers decide to make accessible--and those programmers have social locations and social biases.

Michelle Bachmann: Gays Can, Too, Get Married!

Michelle Bachmann tells a high school student that, yes, a white man and black woman can too marry, only not each other.  All they have to do is find someone of their own race to marry and then the law--which they must obey, because it's right!--will permit them to marry.

Weekend News Round-Up: Bachmann and Gays, Post-Gay Discussion, and Bible Belt Family Values

A selection of articles from the week that caught my eye, on disparate topics:

CNN Reporter Don Lemon Shoved by Bachmann Staff (and Husband) in Iowa Yesterday

African-American CNN reporter Don Lemon, who came out as a gay man this past May, reports that Michelle Bachmann's staff members and husband Marcus Bachmann mahandled and shoved him when he sought to ask Bachmann questions in Iowa yesterday.

Classy behavior that tells us about the quality of leadership Ms. Bachmann would provide for our democracy, if elected . . . .

The Rapture Conundrum and American Politics: Michelle or Barack?

When the Rapture arrives:

We'll still have Mr. Obama with us.  But Ms. Palin will be with the Lord and all his angels.

Truth Wins Out Maintains Michelle Bachmann's Husband Practices "Ex-Gay" Therapy

And, speaking of the powerful role that religion continues to play in the public sphere in the U.S., particularly vis-a-vis human rights issues for LGBT human beings, Truth Wins Out has just released an important report showing that there's solid evidence that Republican presidential candidate Michelle Bachmann's husband Marcus Bachmann practices "ex-gay" conversion therapy.  Marcus Bachmann maintains a psychotherapeutic clinic in Minnesota, which receives significant funding both from the federal government and the state.  

Monday, with a Bit of Snark

Andrew Leonard writes at Salon:

Demonization, Distraction, the Rise of Fascism, and the Shameful Silence of Bishops

Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor of the Nation, appeared on MSNBC’s “Hardball” Friday to address remarks made by Minnesota Representative Michelle Bachmann earlier on the same program (www.alternet.org/blogs/video/103600). Bachmann’s observations got a lot of press this weekend.

As many news sites reported, Bachmann stated her concern that Barack Obama has “anti-American views,” and called on the media to investigate “anti-American liberals” in Congress. Various news commentators have compared Bachmann’s call for a congressional witch hunt with the platform of Joseph McCarthy.

I find Katrina Vanden Heuvel’s critique of Michelle Bachmann illuminating. It intersects with the analysis I have been developing of the proliferation of hate rhetoric in this nation and the implications of such rhetoric for our future, if it goes unchallenged.

The preceding Alternet citation links to a video of Vanden Heuvel talking to Chris Matthews on the "Hardball" program. Here’s a transcript of selected remarks from her response to Michelle Bachmann:

I fear for my country. I think what we just heard was a congresswoman channeling Joe McCarthy, channeling a politics of fear and loathing and demonization and division and distraction. Not a single issue mentioned. This is a politics at a moment of extreme economic pain in this country that is incendiary, that is so debased that I’m kind of almost having a hard time breathing, because I think it’s very scary. . . . .

I think Barack Obama’s going to win, and he’s going to have a lot of work, because there is an extremism unleashed in this nation which you’ve just heard on this program which could lead to violence and hatred and toxicity. And against the backdrop of the great depression we’re living through could lead, and I don’t use this word lightly, to a kind of American fascism which is against the great values of this nation and which people like that are fomenting.

And again—I have to say this, at the risk of beating a drum that others grow tired of hearing—as the politics of division foments hatred that, in the view of sober political analysts, could well lead to violence, the pro-life bishops of the American Catholic church remain silent.

Fear. Loathing. Demonization. Division. Distraction. Extremism. Violence. Hatred. American fascism. Backdrop of extreme economic pain.

Hard words. But the realities to which they point are hard. Just as they were as the Nazis rose to power in Germany and Austria. And the German and Austrian bishops remained silent.

And as these harsh realities begin to cast dark shadows across our national political life, the same bishops who claim to stand for life as the ultimate value not only keep their mouths shut about the spike of hatred and the violence to which it threatens to lead. They not only remain silent.

They actually tell us to side with those fomenting the hatred.

Shame. What shame they are bringing on their heads these days, the U.S. Catholic “pastoral” “leaders.”

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While the U.S. Catholic bishops remain silent—as a body—except when individual bishops choose to speak out on behalf of “the” “pro-life” party whose top leaders are fanning the flames of hate, one of their brother bishops in the Lutheran tradition has chosen to speak out.

Last Thursday, Mark Hanson, Presiding Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, issued a pastoral letter to the ELCA (www.elca.org/Who-We-Are/Our-Three-Expressions/Churchwide-Organization/Office-of-the-Presiding-Bishop/Messages-and-Statements.aspx). This letter calls for the presidential candidates to stop personal attacks and focus on the issues that concern all of us, chief among which is the economic crisis that disproportionatey affects the marginal.

Bishop Hanson encourages Lutheran voters to recall the core values of the ELCA social statement “The Church in Society.” That document focuses on building a humane society held together by a notion of the common good that crosses ethnic, racial, class, and gender lines. It states,

Jesus frees Christians to serve others and to walk with people who are hungry, forgotten, oppressed, and despised. The example of Jesus invites Christians to see people near and far away, people of all races, classes and cultures, friends and strangers, allies and enemies as their "neighbor."

The ELCA encourages church members to “be critical when groups of people are inadequately represented in political processes and decisions that affect their lives.”

One would like to think that Lutheran churches and bishops have learned an important lesson from the silence of Christian pastoral leaders when extremist forces, using hate rhetoric and tactics of demonization, distraction, and division, seized control of Germany in the 1920s at a time of economic crisis. I have no choice except to see Bishop Hanson’s pastoral letter in that historic light.

And, of course, that same historic perspective makes the continued silence of the U.S. bishops—as a body—and the choice of many individual bishops to endorse “the” “pro-life” party yet again, even more shameful. If history teaches us anything, it teaches us how much is at stake, when people of faith keep their mouths shut as forces of hatred, division, and demonization gain control at a moment of economic crisis.

When the need for words that place Christians on the side of love and not hate is so great, silence is even more shameful that it usually is, when love needs to be emphasized, and not hatred.