Susan Neiman's Learning from the Germans and Working Off the Nazi Past and the American Racist Past: A Report with Excerpts

In February, I blogged a number of times about Susan Neiman's book Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2019). As I told you in one of those postings, one reason Neiman's important book caught my attention and made me decide to read it is that Susan Neiman grew up in the American South during the Civil Rights era, as I did. Neiman is, however, Jewish, and she saw the struggles for African-American rights in Atlanta through the lens of her own marginalization as a Jew, an experience I did not have growing up as a white Anglo Southerner descended from slaveholding ancestors. 

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.

More from Frances Fitzgerald's The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America: Race and the Shift of White Evangelicals to Republican Party

And, as a complement to what I have just posted about Trump's analysis of the Civil War and Andrew Jackson and how both reflect white supremacist ideology, here aresome more excerpts from Frances FitzGerald, The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America (NY: Simon & Schuster, 2017).  These are not in the least unrelated to Trump's remarks about the Civil War and Jackson:

"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,

On This Day in 1958: Defiance of Supreme Court Decision Brown v. Board of Education in Arkansas — How Little Some People Learn from History

"Gov Faubus Save Our Christian America"

As Richard Kreitner reminds us at The Nation today, on this day in 1958 in my hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas, the governor of Arkansas Orval Faubus called out the national guard to prevent the integration of our city's white Central High School after the Supreme Court found, in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in 1954, that segregation of public schools violated the 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Things I'm Reading at Week's End: Marriage, Bible, Catholics, Women's Rights, Recovering from Religious Trauma, Pope Francis and Women

Things I'm reading as this week ends — these items all connected in that they talk about issues of religion in the public square:

Quote for Day: Conservative Evangelicals Resisting Gay Rights Use Bible Today in Very Same Way They Did to Support Segregation in Past

William N. Eskridge, Jr., professor of law at Yale Law School, writing yesterday in the New York Times:

Quote for Day: "Whenever Established Power Brokers Have Felt Threatened in America's History, They Have Responded by Stirring Up Sexual Fears"

In a very powerful essay, William Barber and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, who have been leaders in North Carolina's "Moral Monday" movement, note how sexual baiting has long been used in the U.S. by established power brokers to deflect challenges to the powerful, when they sense that these challenges are having an effect. Barbar and Wilson-Hartgrove point out that, following the passing of the 14th amendment removing African Americans from the category of three-fifths of a person, the white power structure of the South, led by white preachers, stirred a backlash centered on the idea that black men would become unrestrained beasts raping white women if they were not put back into "their place."

Disreputable Racist Genealogy of Anti-Gay "Religious Liberty" Arguments and Abdication of Pastoral Responsibility by U.S. Catholic Leaders: So Much for Healing the World

Ed Kilgore, who grew up in Georgia and knows whereof he speaks, points out that the current battle over "religious freedom" and the belief-based right to discriminate is déjà vu all over again: we Americans have been here before. We were here during the Civil Rights kerfuffle of the 1950s and 1960s — though anti-gay activists foam at the mouth when one suggests that they're carrying on today, vis-a-vis gay rights, the same gesture of religion-grounded defiance of civil rights for a minority group that energized the political and religious right in the mid-20th century.

Marriage Equality Comes to Alabama, as Grandstanding of "Faith-Based" Southern Leaders Continues

Olanda and Dinah are getting married pic.twitter.com/NJcwZEua8r
— Clare Huddleston (@Fox6Clare) February 9, 2015

The Supremes and Gay Marriage: Mike Huckabee Talks Nullification, Ben Carson Wants Congress to Intervene, Jim Bakker Shouts Hallelujah

On same day #SCOTUS granted marriage cases, @HRC Mississippi flagged this hateful graffiti in downtown Jackson. pic.twitter.com/tPMs99DY14
— Chad Griffin (@ChadHGriffin) January 16, 2015

County Clerks in Florida Refusing to Marry Anyone if Gays Can Marry: A Footnote

A quick footnote to my posting earlier today about the decision of some county clerks in Florida to shut down courthouse marriages altogether — for everyone — rather than marry the gays: on my Facebook page, I posted a link to Mark Joseph Stern's Slate article about the Florida story, an article that I discussed in my posting here earlier today

County Clerks in Florida Refuse to Permit Anyone to Marry if Gay Couples May Marry: Segregationist Roots of "Principled" Resistance to Marriage Equality

I remember it as if it happened yesterday. And as I read the announcements of several county clerks in Florida that, rather than marry same-sex couples, they'll shut down courthouse weddings for everyone, the memories come flooding back all over again:

Alliance Defending Freedom on "Right" to Anti-Gay Discrimination: "Objections Based on Race Are a Lot Different from Objections Based on Sexual Behavior and Morality"

Attorney Jeremy Tedesco of the Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented New Mexico photographer Elaine Huguenin as she claimed the right to refuse to photograph a same-sex wedding because it violated her faith, tells Greg Stohr of Bloomberg: 

Religion and the Struggle for Rights for Women and Gay Folks Today: Fred Clark on the Significance of the Backdrop — The Struggle for Rights of People of Color

I've repeatedly noted here my frustration that many of those commenting on civil rights issues today, particularly within the academic and journalistic commentariat of my own Catholic community in the U.S., seem lamentably ill-informed about the history of slavery in the U.S. and how religion was used for many centuries to justify slavery and then to defend the legal segregation of the races up into the 1960s. For instance, back in 2011, I took issue with the assertion of Eduardo Moisés Peñalver (a Commonweal contributor whose work I respect) that

Ta-Nehisi Coates's Case for Reparations: Do We Really Want to Know about the Experience of African Americans (or of Women) in the U.S.?

John Stewart cleverly suggests that we don't want to know the truth — not about the recent Isla Vista shootings and the deep roots of misogyny that constantly fuel violence in American culture. The "we" on whom Stewart is focusing in the clip to which this link points is largely the mainstream media with its big talking heads, who have now so thoroughly befouled all conversations about mass shootings in this country that "we" have ended up throwing up our hands in defeat and concluding, "Well, these things do happen, don't they?"

Quote for Day: "The Love Between a Black Man and a White Man Punches a Hole Through the Wall of Racism"

Andrew Sullivan on the kiss just seen 'round the world, between Michael Sam and Vito Cammisano:

On the "Tipping Point" Metaphor, Gay Rights, and the Notion of Progress

Some of you pressed me this week (and here and here) about what it means to say American culture is at a "tipping point" regarding questions of gay rights. You were right to do so. 

As Promised: My Perspective on the "Religious Freedom" Argument That Christian Florists and Bakers Should Enjoy a "Right" to Discriminate

Okay, I’m going to bite the bullet and write (again) about the “religious freedom” argument that Christian florists and Christian bakers who object to selling their wares to gays should be accommodated. Because scruples. Because conscience. Because God and because religious freedom.