Understanding the Threat of White Christian Nationalism: Important New Report from PRRI and Brookings

On 8 February, Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and Brookings Institution released the results of an important national survey entitled "A Christian Nation? Understanding the Threat of Christian Nationalism to American Democracy and Culture." As PRRI's press release announcing the report states,

What We're Seeing Now: Unmasking of What "Pro-Life Politics and Religion in US Have Always Meant

The photo of grafitti on a wall in Munich is by Peter Kneffel, AP, by way of The Guardian 

I'm continuing to provide information and commentary about the coronavirus pandemic, and, in particular, about the response to it in my country, the United States. I'm doing this because so much disinformation is circulating — "It's just the flu," "All these preparations and precautions are ridiculous panicky reactions infringing on my liberty," "It's a Democratic ruse to re-impeach my president," "It's a foreign virus and a foreign plot to bring my country down," "The death rate is minimal right now and this shows us that the concerns are overblown." And on and on.

More for the Scrapbook, When Next Generation Asks, "What Did You Do as Trump Vied for the Presidency?" Snapshots on Eve of Election

One way to think about an election is: who are the literal Nazis and Klansmen supporting? Maybe I should look elsewhere.

— Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) November 1, 2016

More for your scrapbook, to bring out when the next generation asks (and they will and should ask), "Where were you when Donald Trump rose to power? What were you doing? How did you respond? What was happening in our nation?" Many of the following tidbits are snapshots of who we are and what we're doing on the eve of a monumentally important election in the U.S. — perfect scrapbook items for that reason:

Washington Post editorializes: 

WHEN THE republic was in danger, where did you stand? History will ask that question of Republican leaders who knew that Donald Trump was unfit to be commander in chief.

"What Did You Do as Trump Rose to Power?" Items for Your Scrapbook, When Subsequent Generations Ask About Race, Gender, and Christian Blindness

Psst — you know those little matters called race and gender that you won't be hearing anything of in your churches tomorrow as you're instructed about forming your consciences before you cast your vote? You know, those picayune little matters you won't be hearing about in sermons because your pastors are too preoccupied with real sins like women falling in love and marrying each other, or spirit-cooking horrors involving blood, semen, and urine, and mythical "partial-birth" abortions to pay attention to piddling little moral nothings like racism and misogyny.

Droppings from the Catholic Birdcage: Ross Douthat on Coronation of Donald Trump — "Disgraced Themselves on a Level Unique in the History of Our Republic"

Conservative right-wing Catholic journalist Ross Douthat tweets as the Republican party chooses Donald Trump as its 2016 presidential candidate:

Everyone major figure who participated in this grotesquerie has disgraced themselves on a level unique in the history of our republic.

— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) July 20, 2016

Droppings from the Catholic Birdcage: Why Trump Keeps Winn Despite Crystal-Clear Evidence of Growing Violence Among His Supporters

Michael Sean Winters on how no amount of reporting on the growing violence at Trump rallies will deter Trump voters — rather, it spurs them on, because it's what they're about, when all is said and done:

"Trumpvangelicals" and Trump As Quasi-Evangelical Leader: The Mark Driscoll Comparison

Here are a few links for all of you updating you on the "Trumpvangelical" (the term is Sarah Posner's) discussions we've had here previously, looking at why Donald Trump may be appealing so strongly to white evangelicals. I am borrowing rather shamelessly from Fred Clark's marvelous Slacktivist site yesterday in recommending a number of these articles to you: 

Anthony Annett and Patrica Miller Respond to Catholic Neocons Calling on Catholics to Stop Trump: "These Issues Are All—to Coin a Phrase—Non-Negotiable"

At Commonweal, Anthony Annett responds to the appeal of Catholic neocons Robert George and George Weigel to Catholics to stop Donald Trump in his tracks, which I discussed earlier today (and here):

A Footnote to Previous Posting: Trump's Appeal to White Catholic Voters Demonstrates Colossal Pastoral and Intellectual Failure of U.S. Catholic "Leaders"

To put the point of my previous posting very succinctly: the people who profess to "lead" the U.S. Catholic church — its bishops and its lay leaders in the media and academy — have, to a great extent, not been leaders at all in the past several decades. If they had exercised any pastoral and intellectual leadership in the U.S. church, we wouldn't be confronting what's so unimaginable to these leaders, namely, wide white Catholic support for an out and out racist and xenophobe.

Racism Is Not a Non-Negotiable: White Catholic Voters and Trump, Responsibility of the U.S. Bishops and Catholic Neocon and Centrist Lay Leaders

And so who's voting for Donald Trump in the primaries now being held around the country? The "surprising" (but entirely predictable, for those of us with close ties to white evangelical culture) finding that white evangelicals are gung-ho about Trump keeps being noted and is no longer surprising to anyone, though it apparently presents quite a conundrum for political and religious commentators who have blinded themselves to solid evidence for several decades now that the defection of white evangelicals in the South from Nixon forward has been all about race.