End of Year Takes & Hot New Year Takes on Religion in American Politics & Culture: Evangelicals White & Black, Exvangelicals, & King Cyrus in the White House

Lisa Sharon Harper via Eliza Griswold, "Evangelicals of Color Fight Back Against the Religious Right""

They're more white than Christian.

Two Threads Not to Miss in Treason of U.S. POTUS: Solidaristic White Nationalism and Its Religious Incarnation in Religious Right

Patriot: A person who loves, supports, and defends his or her country and its interests with devotion.

Traitor: A person who commits treason by betraying his or her country.https://t.co/Keq4fhTlRB

— Dictionary.com (@Dictionarycom) July 16, 2018

About yesterday's act of treason on the part of the man occupying the U.S. White House: here are threads that stand out for me as very much worth pursuing, from the wealth of immediate commentary I've read as the treason has unfolded:

Robert Leonard on Why Rural America Voted for Trump: A Critique of the Argument

Robert Leonard's recent op-ed piece in New York Times on why rural America voted Trump is receiving a lot of attention as a cogent new statement in the growing body of literature upbraiding American liberals for their failure to understand the thinking and mores of heartland citizens who voted for Trump. This literature inevitably proceeds from the assumption that liberals live for the most part in "elite" enclaves on the two coasts of the nation, and have done too little to inform themselves about what people think and feel in flyover country — hence their abasement in the 2016 elections.

Frederick Clarkson on Pastor Steven Anderson's Call to Religiously Fueled Violence vs. Gays

Baptist pastor Steven Anderson of Tempe, Arizona, is at it again. This time, he's calling for homos gay folks to be killed as a cure for AIDS (never mind that the majority of people in the world living with HIV-AIDS are African heterosexuals, including millions of children). As Frederick Clarkson reminds us, in 2009, this man of God called on his church members to pray for the death of President Obama and encouraged a member of his congregation to carry an automatic rifle when the president spoke in Phoenix. 

A Reader Writes: "Are These Conservative Churches Really . . . a Weird Kind of New World Hebraic Cult?" — Reflections on the Neo-Calvinist Movement in U.S. Evangelicalism

Several days ago, in response to my posting about how Steve's two aunts who are nuns received the news of our marriage in May, tinywriting posted some very good questions (and here) about how we can discern when Christian movements have departed in essential ways from the foundations of the Christian message and no longer adequately represent Christianity. Tiny notes that "when these conservative Christian churches take conservative life-style positions it's always the Old Testament that they quote."

Frank Cocozzelli on Opus Dei Ties of Supreme Catholic Men: "I Am Concerned about the Strong Influence of an Ultra-Traditionalist Catholic Mindset on the U.S. Supreme Court"

In light of the recent Hobby Lobby ruling of the five Supreme Catholic men, Talk to Action has chosen to republish an outstanding series of articles Frank Cocozzelli posted at that site in 2007, about the close ties of most of these five Supreme Catholic men to the ultra-secretive, wealthy, and very influential right-wing Catholic movement Opus Dei. Here are some excerpts from each of the three articles in the series:

As Southern Baptists, Catholic Bishops, and Mormons Keep Gays in Crosshairs, Other Public Figures Talk of Bloody Revolution

While the men leading the Southern Baptists, U.S. Catholics, and Latter Day Saints are shoring up the battlements and notching their arrows for stepped-up war with the gays (and the culture at large, since it's caving in to the gays), this is what's going on at a broader level in our culture — and is not being addressed by the men leading the Southern Baptists, U.S. Catholics, and Latter Day Saints:

The Fusion of Religion and Politics: A 19th-Century Southern Republican Leader Rings Warning Bell

Some days lately, I have to pinch myself to remember that I'm living in the 21st century--as a vocal minority of American citizens demands theocratic control of the majority who do not wish to see church joined to state, and do not share the peculiar religious beliefs of the minority clamoring for control. As I look at what happened recently in Kansas and Arizona, at the similar anti-gay bills sitting before a number of other state legislatures, at the push of powerful groups including the Catholic bishops of the U.S. to extend the "right" of veto power over federal health regulations to private businesses on grounds or "religious liberty," I can't help thinking of the insightful predictions of the 19th-century Arkansas Republican leader whose work I published last year in my book Fiat Flux.

Brief Takes from Week's News: "Religious Liberty" Debate and Laws Targeting Gays

Some short takes from this week's news--these are about the "religious liberty" debate and laws targeting gay citizens: 

Frank Cocozzelli's Critique of the Neo-Confederate Views of Thomas E. Woods: A New Installment in the Series

As a footnote to what I just posted about the seeming rise, in many places of the world, of overtly racist and homophobic movements that seem to hark back to political experiments many of us hoped the human community had put behind itself:

Frank Cocozzelli's Critique of Catholic Neo-Confederate Fantasies: The Pertinence of the Discussion

More indicators come out that libertarian darling and possible presidential contender Rand Paul is more than a little taken with neo-Confederate fantasies. A contestant on "Jeopardy" casually substitutes the Southern-coded term for the phrase which describes  what that war actually was, and gets away with the substitution. The Supreme Court guts the Voting Rights Act. And a verdict in Florida, one of the former slave states of the old Confederacy, raises nationwide questions all over again about the never-resolved, usually-elided question of racial disparity in American society.

Quote for Day: David Brooks's "Neurologically Miraculous" Cognitive Dissonance re: the GOP

At Huffington Post, Marty Kaplan observes that David Brooks appears, well, a tad bit irony-challenged, if he's capable of writing the following stinging denunciation of the Muslim Brotherhood without ever entertaining the notion that he might well be writing about the leaders of his own beloved GOP:

Christian Leaders to Supreme Court about Marriage: Not on Our Watch!

Just as the Catholic bishops began another round of summer solstice freedom songs and freedom dances that will end on Independence Day, a group of Christian leaders calling themselves the Freedom Federation released a public statement (watch for the cute logo of an American flag with a cross superimposed on it) proclaiming their intent to defy the Supreme Court if the court strikes down DOMA:

Recent Commentary on Nation-Dividing Tactics of GOP: Charles Blow, Robert Reich, Frank Cocozzelli

In his op-ed piece for the New York Times today, Charles Blow provides some strong reminders about why the self-defeating game of ideological purism that progressives play to sort "real" progressives from inauthentic ones is so dangerous at this moment in American history: the nation is coming apart at the seams. Literally so. It's not a moment in which we have the luxury of sorting ourselves into more- and less-pure ideological factions, if we expect to survive as a nation. 

Book Notes: Ronan Bennett's Havoc, in Its Third Year

Ronan Bennett, Havoc, in Its Third Year (NY: Simon & Schuster, 2004):

A Personal Reflection on Neo-Confederate Clownery

A brief personal footnote about the neo-Confederate nonsense of the folks Frank Cocozzelli is studying (and I'm very glad Frank is keeping the spotlight on these folks): I was, of course, raised with much of that very same nonsense. With the exception of my one Irish great-grandmother, all of my great-grandparents were descendants of colonial Southern families that owned slaves at various points in their history, though some branches of these families also courageously pulled against slavery at some points in their history, due to religious reasons.

Frank Cocozzelli on Neo-Confederate Catholic Ideologues and the Fantasy of Nullification: Memorial Day Reflection

Early in May, I recommended an article by Frank Cocozzelli on the rising strand of neo-Confederate ideology in some sectors of the American Catholic right. Frank's article focuses on Catholic libertarian historian Thomas E. Woods.

Frank Cocozzelli on the Neo-Confederate Agenda of Catholic Thinker Thomas E. Woods

I've been meaning to recommend Frank Cocozzelli's recent fascinating introduction to the thinking of an up and coming theorist of the Catholic fringe right, Thomas E. Woods. Visit the Wikipedia page devoted to Woods, and you'll see that he's described there as a "New York Times-bestelling author" who's a political analyst and American historian. Read what Rachel Tabachnik wrote about Woods early in April at Talk to Action, and you'll find another reason he ought to be on our radar screens: he's front and center in a new Ron Paul curriculum project for home-schooled young people.

Catholic Hospitals in Germany Refuse Rape Victim: Theocracy as Taking the Queen's Shilling While Flouting the Queen's Rules

I find it interesting to read Betty Clermont's essay on the Vatican and Africa, about which I've just posted, alongside the article on church and state by Frank Hornig, Barbara Schmid, Fidelius Schmid, and Peter Wensierski published yesterday in Der Spiegel. The article reports on a national controversy that has developed in Germany after St. Vincent Hospital in Cologne, run by the Cellitine Sisters, refused to treat a rape victim in mid-December.

Pussy Riot Found Guilty of "Hooliganism Driven by Religious Hatred and Offending Religious Believers"

Earlier in the week, I linked to the closing statement of Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, a member of the singing group Pussy Riot, which has been on trial in Moscow.  The group of women singers who are frequently described as a "feminist punk band" were thrown in jail after they went into the cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow and, in a dramatic impromptu performance, prayed to the Virgin Mary to save Russia from Putin.  For their actions, they've been in jail for six months, and a verdict has just been handed down finding them guilty of "hooliganism."