This month, Texas Senate Republicans passed three bills allowing religion into public schools. From Vox:
“The first, SB 1515, would require public schools to display the Ten Commandments in a “conspicuous place” in classrooms. The other bill, SB 1396, would permit public schools to set aside time for students and staff members to pray or read the Bible and other religious texts. The third, SB 1556, would give employees the right to pray or “engage in religious speech” while on the job.”
Some of this sounds unconstitutional. You can be certain that plenty of Texans will be happy to comply as maliciously as possible next fall.
The three bills now go to the Texas House for approval. They follow Texas’s SB 797, which took effect in 2021 and requires schools to display “In God We Trust” signs.
When the Texas Right say they want to bring religion back into public schools, they mean they want to make public schools more Christian. This flies in the face of America becoming noticeably less religious over the past 20 years: Weekly service attendance and religious self-identification are both down 20% overall, which translates to about 50 million fewer Americans than two decades ago.
This is ironic: If religious identification is to increase, it will have to come from “importing” traditional believers from the global south. But few of them are white. So that’s a problem for Trumpism and the reactionary Right. On to cartoons.
State-sponsored religion is hard to swallow:
Biden announces he’s running:
How do young voters fit in the race between these geriatrics?
“Put on the full armor of God. Stand firm against the left’s schemes. You will face flaming arrows, but if you have the shield of faith, you will overcome them, and in Florida we walk the line here. And I can tell you this, I have only begun to fight.”
The Tampa Bay Times takes issue with their governor: (emphasis by Wrongo)
“The biblical reference DeSantis is using is from Ephesians 6, and calls on Christians to spiritually arm themselves against the “devil’s schemes.” In DeSantis’ speeches, he has replaced the ”devil” with “the left” as he tries to mobilize supporters ahead of his reelection in November and possibly a run for the White House in 2024.”
It’s dangerous that Republicans on the ballot in November are openly saying that the only true Americans are Christians. They’re portraying the battle against their political opponents as between good and evil.
The Tampa Bay Times (TBT) says that it has some religious leaders worrying that such rhetoric could mobilize fringe groups who may be prone to violence. From the TBT: (emphasis by Wrongo)
“Christian nationalism for many Conservatives has become a political identity, and unlike Conservative politicians in the past who used their faith to inform their arguments, DeSantis is more aggressive, using war imagery to describe the political debates as a battle over who will be the better American.”
The TBT quotes Philip Gorski, a comparative-history sociologist at Yale University who co-wrote the book “The Flag and the Cross: White Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy”:
“The full armor of God passage is a favorite amongst certain types of Pentecostals who really do see the world in terms of spiritual warfare,”
“I think DeSantis has really stood out as someone who has effectively used this type of God talk and used these types of Christian nationalist talking points to curry favor…”
For Republicans, talking about the importance of faith is nothing new, and debates about how visible Christianity should be in our society — whether it be prayer in schools or religious symbols outside American courthouses — have been ongoing for decades.
But there is something different emerging: A strain of Conservative thought that sees the country’s politics as an open battle between good and evil. TBT quotes Marilyn Mayo, senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism:
“There’s always been candidates who espouse Christian values, but what I think is very different is you have many people on the right and the far right seeing the current situation in the US as a battle, an absolute battle, between good and evil….And the good are the mostly white, Christian conservatives. And on the other side are the liberals, progressives, left-wingers, and certainly the LGBTQ community…. They really see this as a battle and paint the other side as…an evil force that needs to be defeated.”
Shortle says that Christian nationalism is the belief that a “true” American should be Christian. Some Christian national extremists say that the US is no longer a Christian nation, that it’s been taken over by secular forces.
Over the summer, Florida social studies teachers were alarmed that a civics training session led by DeSantis’ administration had a “Christian nationalism philosophy that was baked into everything” that was taught.
The initiative emphasized that the Founding Fathers did not desire a strict separation of state and church. State trainers also told teachers that the 1962 US Supreme Court case that found school-sponsored prayer violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment was unjustly decided.
In July, DeSantis was endorsed by Moms for Liberty, a group that focuses on adding Christian nationals to school boards across America. It has more than 200 chapters and 95,000 members in 38 states. At the group’s first national summit, DeSantis said that he intended to “leave Florida to God and to our children better than I found it.”
And what is “better” is in the eye of the beholder.
On to our Saturday Soother. We had our first sub 50° night on Thursday. Soon the indoor plants will return to the sunroom.
Take a few moments of your Saturday and listen and watch “Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5” by Heitor Villa-Lobos. He wrote a series of nine suites between 1930 and 1945. Here the 5th is played by Hauser on cello and Petrit Çeku on guitar in 2017 at the Lisinski Concert Hall in Zagreb:
Asheville morning, June 28, 2022 – iPhone photo by Wrongo. The log house we’re renting this week is at 4,000’ above sea level.
Wake up calls by the Wrongologist rarely happen on Wednesdays, but since the Roberts Court dismantled the line between church and state in public education with Justice Gorsuch’s decision in Kennedy v Bremerton School District, on Monday, it seems right.
Voting 6-3, the Court declared that an Oregon public high school football coach’s post-game prayer sessions with students were Constitutional, whether the students wanted them or not. That made Monday part of a pretty good run for American theocracy:
“The decision came less than a week after the court ruled, by the same vote, that Maine could not exclude religious schools from a state tuition program.”
The line between church and state is being erased before our eyes. Gorsuch, cherry-picking the facts of the case, wrote that football coach Kennedy had sought only to offer a brief, silent and solitary prayer:
“Respect for religious expressions is indispensable to life in a free and diverse republic — whether those expressions take place in a sanctuary or on a field, and whether they manifest through the spoken word or a bowed head…”
Justice Sotomayor responded that the public nature of his prayers and his stature as a leader and role model meant that students felt forced to participate, whatever their religion and whether they wanted to or not. She gave a different account of the facts, taking account of a longer time period:
“Kennedy consistently invited others to join his prayers and for years led student-athletes in prayer…”
In an unusual move, Sotomayor’s dissent included photographs showing Mr. Kennedy kneeling with players, which debunked Gorsuch’s selective use of facts.
Do you really think that this decision would have been the same if those prayers had been offered by a Muslim?
In the process of ruling for Mr. Kennedy, the majority overturned a major precedent on the First Amendment’s establishment clause, Lemon v. Kurtzman. That ruling was decided by an 8-0 vote under Republican Chief Justice Warren Burger. As an aside, John Dean (of Watergate fame) has said that during the Nixon administration, Burger threatened to resign from the Court if Nixon nominated a woman to it.
It came to be known as the Lemon test, which required courts to consider whether the challenged government practice had a secular purpose, whether its primary effect is to advance or inhibit religion, and whether it fosters excessive government entanglement with religion.
Sotomayor acknowledged that while the Lemon test had been frequently criticized by various members of the court:
“The court now goes much further…overruling Lemon entirely and in all contexts.”
So, by tossing out Lemon and saying that Coach Kennedy was not speaking for the school because it was an extra-curricular activity, the barrier between prayer and secular school has been permanently breached.
In today’s America, outside money will fund your culture wars grievance in the courts. The longer you can keep your case moving up through the courts, the better chance you have of running into a conservative Christian judge who will find a precedent for the White people’s Jesus in the Bill of Rights.
Teachers will now feel empowered to “invite” a group to pray with them. A few kids will jump in right away, while others will look around uncomfortably and gradually agree to join in, because the social opprobrium that comes with refusing is huge for kids. And since the person inviting you to pray is an authority figure: a teacher, coach, or principal, you really risk a lot by having them decide you aren’t: A.Good.Christian.
When given the choice between upholding traditional case law or creating de novo judicial principles, the Roberts Court is almost always going to favor the latter.
Wrongo isn’t a lawyer, but many lawyers are now pointing to the extraordinarily shoddy nature of the Court’s majority opinions, including all three of the precedent-shattering ones the Court has issued over the last week.
It’s time to wake up America! Why is it so hard for Christians in the United States to just practice their religion without involving the rest of us?
We’re getting very close to the establishment of a default Christian American religion. We know that there are many public school teachers who have been silent despite their sincere religious beliefs while at school. Now they will be actively pressured by their pastors to begin proselytizing while on the clock.
To help you wake up, let’s travel to the 2022 Glastonbury music festival, which always creates great live music. On June 25, Olivia Rodrigo and Lily Allen dedicated the latter’s song “Fuck You” repurposed to express anger at five of the six Conservative members of the court.
Rodrigo named the Justices one by one, while Allen raised alternating middle fingers to them:
These artists aren’t afraid of controversy. Millions of us now feel exactly the same.
View of Mt. Rainer from Reflection Lake WA – 2018 photo by NathanielMerz
Here is the 7-day look at the national numbers for COVID-19:
The rate of growth in deaths as a percentage of cases continues to rise, while the rate of increase in cases picked up slightly on 4/6, although overall, it is slowing vs. 7 days ago. Testing is still growing, although the rate of growth in tests is now about equal to the growth in cases.
A little-noticed part of the $2 trillion stimulus package allows the federal government to provide money directly to US churches to help them pay pastor salaries and utility bills. From NPR: (emphasis by Wrongo)
“…the $2 trillion economic relief legislation…includes about $350 billion for the Small Business Administration (SBA) to extend loans to small businesses facing financial difficulties as a result of the coronavirus shutdown orders. Churches and other faith-based organizations are among the businesses that qualify for aid under the program, even if they have an exclusively religious orientation.
So, we’re not simply speaking of not-for-profit subsidiaries of churches such as charities. The Trump administration is saying churches themselves will qualify for direct loans. Apparently, the program is based on the average monthly payroll of a church school or the parish, which is extrapolated to eight weeks. The cost of maintaining staff for that period becomes the loan amount.
“Faith-based organizations are eligible to receive SBA loans regardless of whether they provide secular social services….No otherwise eligible organization will be disqualified from receiving a loan because of the religious nature, religious identity, or religious speech of the organization.”…
The SBA’s regulations currently exclude some religious entities. Because those regulations bar the participation of a class of potential recipients based solely on their religious status, SBA said it will decline to enforce those subsections and will propose amendments to conform those regulations to the Constitution.
The SBA is quoting a 2017 Supreme Court decision, Trinity Lutheran v. Comer, which was the first time the Court said the government is required to provide public funding directly to a religious organization. Chief Justice Roberts wrote for the majority in the 7-2 decision. The key argument was that Trinity Lutheran faced discrimination solely because of its identity as a church. That, the Court decided, was discrimination. From the opinion:
“There is no question that Trinity Lutheran was denied a grant simply because of what it is….A church.”
The grant was for refurbishing the church’s playground.
But in this case, the SBA is offering direct funding of religious entities with money provided by tax dollars from the rest of us. We’re likely to see this in the courts soon.
This isn’t the first time that the Trump administration provided funds directly to churches, synagogues, mosques and other religious organizations. In 2018, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) changed its rules to make houses of worship eligible for disaster aid.
First Amendment watchers have reacted. Alison Gill, legal and policy vice president of American Atheists said:
“The government cannot directly fund inherently religious activities….It can’t spend government tax dollars on prayer, on promoting religion [or] proselytization. That directly contradicts the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.”
If they want Federal funds, shouldn’t they pay Federal taxes?
Sunrise, Moraine Lake, Alberta Canada – 2018 photo by theoxernius. This is the third picture of Moraine Lake that Wrongo has published, including one of his own. This spot is about a 5-minute climb from the parking lot, so everyone who goes near the place takes a similar photo. The distinctive water color is from the sunlight reflecting off of dissolved particles of finely ground rock called “glacial flour”. It’s one of the most beautiful places in North America.
Will Mueller breach the castle’s walls? Certainly not just by winning the Manafort trial. Trump has supposedly given Jeff Sessions a “couple of weeks” to end the Mueller probe. If not, Trump will move to fire Ron Rosenstein. As Wrongo has said, Trump has everything in place now to fire Rosenstein from a technical aspect: When the previous number three official as Justice, Rachel Brand resigned, the Senate confirmed Brian Benczkowski, a buddy of Jeff Sessions. He can fire Rosenstein. That brings us to now.
Will Trump move on Rosenstein? The negative political fallout could bury Trump. Interesting times.
Let’s be frank. A dangerous movement undetected by many is challenging and eroding our great tradition of religious freedom….We’ve gotten to the point where courts have held that morality cannot be a basis for law, where ministers are fearful to affirm holy writ from the pulpit, and where one group can actively target religious groups by labeling them hate groups. This President and Department of Justice are determined to protect and advance our heritage of freedom of religion.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions announces “Religious Liberty Task Force.” Sessions says the task force will “help the Department fully implement our religious liberty guidance,” including “making sure our employees know their duties to accommodate people of faith.”
That led to a tweet storm, of which this was the very best:
Has there been an instance where Christians have been persecuted in this country? Except by other Christians who thought the persecuted ones weren’t the right sort of Christian? We can find plenty of instances where Christians have persecuted others, but neither the Gay Cake decision, nor Hobby Lobby were about religious persecution. How can Christians be persecuted, when roughly three of four Americans self-identify as Christian?
There is a tendency by some Christians to think that Americans need to accept the Christian version of religion. Those Christians ignore the separation of Church and State, despite the fact that the 1st Amendment’s Establishment Clause clearly outlines the concept:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….
Sessions is trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. American Christians have the freedom to exercise their religion as they deem appropriate (within reasonable limits, which applies to all faiths). What the GOP and conservative Christians don’t have is the right to use the government to help establish their flavor of conservative Christianity as America’s official religion.
If Church and State become one, religious faith becomes a weapon, to punish or persecute those who believe differently. That’s not our America, unless you want your America to look like a Christian version of Saudi Arabia.
When the power of government puts its thumb on the scales, it surely will create religious tyranny.
Another week of big issues for us to try and thread our way through. It looks like a hot weekend across the country. Good luck to the firefighters in California, it seems that their work never ends. For the rest of us, we can take an hour or so and try to forget about the world’s troubles (and Trump’s) for a while. If you can do that, you will almost certainly be soothed.
Let’s get started by brewing up a large cup of Hawaiian Kona ‘Volcanic Estate’ Coffee ($59.95/ lb.) It comes from the Big Island. There, the volcano Mauna Loa creates excellent growing conditions for coffee trees. Volcanic Estate coffee is grown at between 800 and 2,500 feet. It has a light acidity that is complemented by slight chocolate and fruit undertones.
Now, settle back in your favorite air-conditioned spot, and listen to an exemplary classical guitar performance by John Feeley. He is performing Bach’s Cello Suite no. 1 in D. Obviously, it has been transcribed for guitar:
Feeley performs for nearly 20 minutes without a break, and without a score to follow. Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
Abandoned schoolhouse, Colombia Hills, WA – 2018 photo by Sean Peterson
Trump and Kim dominated the news this week. So many hot takes on the one-page agreement: Who won, who lost, it will take some time to digest. Today, it seems that there is less risk of another war on the Korean peninsula than we thought last fall, but let’s not celebrate just yet. We have a long way to go before there is peace in Korea. Kim still has his nukes, and his cannons are still pointed toward Seoul. Trump seems to have cancelled the joint military exercises, but that could change on his whim. Kim or Trump could decide to blow up their agreement, like Trump did with Iran.
Wrongo has followed with complete disapproval, the administration’s moves to separate children from their parents at the border, and to deny asylum to victims of domestic abuse and gang violence. As we cruise into this weekend, we should remember the curious bible talk by Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions to a group of law enforcement officials in Indiana on Thursday:
I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the government for his purposes.
Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.
This is from a senior person in the GOP, the party that SAYS their prime directive is to get the government out of people’s lives.
Splinter reports that Messiah College professor John Fea told WaPo that Session’s quoted verse has been used before in American history. The first time was by British colonists opposed to the War of Independence. The second time, per Fea:
…is in the 1840s and 1850s, when Romans 13 is invoked by defenders of the South or defenders of slavery to ward off abolitionists who believed that slavery is wrong. I mean, this is the same argument that Southern slaveholders and the advocates of a Southern way of life made.
It was also used by white religious leaders in South Africa to justify apartheid.
And, recently, Trump’s booster, Pastor Robert Jeffress cited the verse to support Trump’s threat to murder millions of North Koreans with “fire and fury” last year.
Sessions either didn’t know the verse’s racist and authoritarian history when he used it to justify tearing families apart, or he simply didn’t care. And what about Obamacare? Isn’t that also the law of the land? Shouldn’t Sessions agree that we respect, and obey it? But here is the GOP, once again cherry-picking the bible, this time to justify treating immigrants from south of the border as subhuman.
Let’s agree that Jeff Sessions is wrong. Separating families is wrong. Using the Bible to justify it is wrong.
Leave the final comment to long-time Sunday school teacher, Steven Colbert, who nailed Sessions:
But if he just read a little bit further into Romans 13:10, it says ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.’ I’m not surprised Sessions didn’t read the whole thing. After all, Jesus said ‘Suffer the children to come unto me,’ but I’m pretty sure all Sessions saw was the words ‘children’ and ‘suffer’ and said ‘I’m on it!’”
Enough! Time to downshift, to disengage from the political world for a few hours. To help you get started, head to the kitchen and brew up a vente cup of Koffee Kult’s Dark Roast Coffee ($15.99/lb.), roasted by Koffee Kult Roasters of Hollywood, FL. Enjoy its heavy body, cinnamon notes, and bright, long finish.
Now sit outside. And listen to Yo-Yo Ma and Kathryn Stott play “Romance for Cello and Piano” by English composer Frederick Delius, who died in 1934. This is from Ma’s 2015 album with Stott, “Songs from the Arc of Life”:
Ma and Stott met in the summer of 1978, when Kathryn Stott, then a student of classical piano, returned to her apartment after a holiday. She found a young Asian man practicing the cello inside the place she shared with violinist Nigel Kennedy. Stott recalls: “It seemed Nigel had sublet the apartment”.
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
Rua Nova do Carvalho, Lisbon Portugal – 2016 photo by Brotherside. Formerly a part of the red light district, but when the street was painted pink in 2011, it quickly became the epicenter of a vibrant party scene.
In a week with a Hawaiian volcano’s eruption, Bibi’s nuclear song-and-dance, and Rudy’s confessions on Fox that Trump had indirectly paid hush money to Stormy, you may have missed the report that the fired House Chaplain is back at work. The WaPoreported:
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-WI) reversed course Thursday and agreed to keep the Rev. Patrick J. Conroy on as House chaplain after an extraordinary showdown that included the priest alleging anti-Catholic bias among Ryan’s staff.
Ryan defended his original decision and continued to question whether Conroy was delivering sufficient “pastoral services” to the entire House. “I intend to sit down with Father Conroy early next week so that we can move forward for the good of the whole House,” Ryan said.
That is how it ended. His return started when Rev. Pat Conroy rescinded his resignation in a letter to Ryan. Conroy wrote:
While you never spoke with me in person, nor did you send me any correspondence, on Friday, April 13, 2018 your Chief of Staff, Jonathon Burks, came to me and informed me that you were asking for my letter of resignation. I inquired as to whether or not it was ‘for cause,’ and Mr. Burks mentioned dismissively something like, ‘maybe it’s time that we had a Chaplain that wasn’t a Catholic.’
Great job, Mr. Burks! Did you know that there have been exactly two Catholics as House Chaplain?
Fr. Conroy continued:
At that point, I thought that I had little choice but to resign, as my assumption was that you had the absolute prerogative and authority to end my term as House chaplain.
This was mostly about the tin ear that some Republicans have when it comes to social issues. One House member, Rep. Mark Walker (R-NC), who is also a Baptist pastor, apparently said that the next House chaplain needed to have a family.
That would rule out anyone who, like Fr. Conroy, had taken a vow of celibacy. Why do some people continually use their religion to bludgeon others?
Democrats and a few Republicans have said they believed that Speaker Ryan was facing pressure from evangelicals within the GOP conference to find a chaplain whose politics more closely aligned with theirs, but for now, this little “holy war” in the House is over. Maybe the next House Chaplain should be a Zen warrior priest who roams the halls, hitting Congress critters with his sword, you know, in a pastoral manner.
Spring has sprung with a vengeance in the Northeast. Today, Wrongo has battled a love sick bird that is trying to build a nest above the kitchen door at the Mansion of Wrong. The determined bird tried three times before finally bowing to Wrongo’s will.
It’s Saturday, and we need to downshift, to turn our focus from all that is wrong with the world, to all that’s right. To help you make the change, start by brewing a cup of Taiwan roaster Kakalove Café’s Mandheling Onan Ganjang sourced from the northern part of the Indonesian island of Sumatra ($18.50/16 oz.). The roaster says it is deeply sweet with vibrant acidity, and a syrupy mouthfeel.
Now, sit outside, take in the nature surrounding you, and listen to Sierra Boggess singing “The Lusty Month of May” from Camelot. It is performed live in 2012 at the BBC Proms:
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
(There will not be a Monday Wake Up Call this week. Blogging will resume on Tuesday 12/12)
Jerusalem, Roy Moore, Franken, Bears Ears. Quite the week, but let’s start with this: Walmart pulls controversial t-shirt that encourages violence toward journalists:
The t-shirt’s message is: “Rope. Tree. Journalist. SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED”. Walmart has now pulled it from its website. The shirt was also sold in the online store of a company called Teespring, who was the third-party seller for Walmart. The shirt was circulating well before that, though, as Jezebel found a tweet referencing the shirt from April of 2009.
Teespring allows users to design their own t-shirts and other merchandise. They sold a shirt with the words “Black women are trash”, and one that said “Eat Sleep Rape Repeat”. Wrongo fears that there will be no recovery from our slide to the lower reaches of hell.
Trump gave the Middle East a sign. Now he wrongly expects peace will break out:
Trump has success getting the world to change the subject:
Franken’s out. In with the new (giant) asshole:
The logical outcome of the religious freedom argument:
Waiting for the trickle down is like waiting for Godot:
The Atlantic’s Peter Beinart has an article called “Breaking Faith” that references polling conducted in February by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). Beinart makes a few interesting points about religion and politics that are at odds with conventional thinking about its role.
He points out that over the past decade, there has been a dramatic shift in religious affiliation in the US:
Americans—long known for their piety—were fleeing organized religion in increasing numbers. The vast majority still believed in God. But the share that rejected any religious affiliation was growing fast, rising from 6% in 1992 to 22% in 2014. Among Millennials, the figure was 35%.
Beinart shows that the conventional thinking − that this new secularism would end the culture wars and bring about a more tolerant politics – was wrong. More from Beinart:
Secularism is indeed correlated with greater tolerance of gay marriage and pot legalization. But it’s also making America’s partisan clashes more brutal…As Americans have left organized religion, they haven’t stopped viewing politics as a struggle between “us” and “them.” Many have come to define us and them in even more primal and irreconcilable ways.
This had huge ramifications in the 2016 presidential election. PRRI reports that the percentage of white Republicans with no religious affiliation has nearly tripled since 1990, and that this shift helped Trump win the GOP nomination. Even though commentators had a hard time reconciling Trump’s apparent ignorance of Christianity and his history of pro-choice and pro-gay-rights statements with his support from evangelicals, the polls showed it had little effect:
A Pew Research Center poll last March found that Trump trailed Ted Cruz by 15 points among Republicans who attended religious services every week. But he led Cruz by a whopping 27 points among those who did not.
Beinart reports that culturally conservative white Americans who are disengaged from church experience less economic success and more family breakdown than those who remain connected, and they grow more pessimistic and resentful. Since the early 1970s, rates of religious attendance have fallen more than twice as much among whites without a college degree as among those who graduated college. And that was a big part of Trump’s support. According to PRRI:
White Republicans who seldom or never attend religious services are 19 points less likely than white Republicans who attend at least once a week to say that the American dream “still holds true.”
And secularization created political differences on the left too:
In 1990, according to PRRI, slightly more than half of white liberals seldom or never attended religious services. Today the proportion is 73%. And if conservative non-attenders fueled Trump’s revolt inside the GOP, liberal non-attenders fueled Bernie Sanders’s insurgency against Hillary Clinton: While white Democrats who went to religious services at least once a week backed Clinton by 26 points, according to an April 2016 PRRI survey, white Democrats who rarely attended services backed Sanders by 13 points.
Beinart point out that the trend is also true among Blacks, where the Black Lives Matter movement exists outside of the influence of Black churches:
African Americans under the age of 30 are three times as likely to eschew a religious affiliation as African Americans over 50. This shift is crucial to understanding Black Lives Matter, a Millennial-led protest movement whose activists often take a jaundiced view of established African American religious leaders.
Beinart speaks about Chris Hayes’s book Twilight of the Elites, in which Hayes divides American politics between “institutionalists,” who believe in preserving and adapting the political and economic system, and “insurrectionists,” who believe it’s rotten to the core:
The 2016 election represents an extraordinary shift in power from the former to the latter. The loss of manufacturing jobs has made Americans more insurrectionist. So have the Iraq War, the financial crisis, and a black president’s inability to stop the police from killing unarmed African Americans. And so has disengagement from organized religion.
The grim conclusion is that secularization may be dividing us more than we realize. Beinart closes with:
Maybe it’s the values of hierarchy, authority, and tradition that churches instill. Maybe religion builds habits and networks that help people better weather national traumas, and thus retain their faith that the system works. For whatever reason, secularization isn’t easing political conflict. It’s making American politics even more convulsive and zero-sum.
The corollary seems to be that religious affiliation brings at the very least, some appreciation of community and civility to our culture.
But, the increasing distrust in institutions in America continues to grow. If it’s big and rules-based, people are less interested than ever in participating, and that includes churches.
Now, let’s hear a song for Zeus’ sake! Here is REM with: “Losing My Religion” from their 1991 album, “Out of Time”:
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
The book begins with the election of Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 and describes how, through succeeding administrations, Americans came to think that we are a Christian nation instead of a nation of Christians. What started in Eisenhower’s living room ended up in corporate boardrooms, and finds a place at the heart of campaigning in today’s politics.
In 1935, James W. Fifield, a Congregationalist pastor from Los Angeles founded an organization called Spiritual Mobilization. Channeling donations from businessmen like tire magnate Harvey Firestone, Hollywood producer Cecil B. De Mille, Sun Oil’s J. Howard Pew, and the National Association of Manufacturers, Fifield built a nation-wide publishing and propaganda campaign that called ministers to action, saying:
Every Christian should oppose the totalitarian trends of the New Deal…
And to oppose:
The anti-Christian and anti-American trends toward pagan stateism in America.
This was conflated with slogans promoting: “free pulpit, free speech, free enterprise, free press, and free assembly.”
The Spiritual Mobilization campaign’s thesis was that if religiosity could be widely and officially deployed, it would be the sword that defeated both collectivist liberals and Communists who, in their view, were both working to undermine America.
Some context: The percentage of Americans who claimed membership in a church was low in the 19th century. Kruse shows that it increased from 16% in 1850 to 36% in 1900. It rose to 49% by 1940. It peaked in 1959 at 69%. Along the way, we adopted “Under God” and “In God We Trust” with little opposition from organizations like the ACLU. Much of what Kruse tells us is about familiar events:
• The addition of “Under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954
• The official adoption of “In God We Trust” on all American currency in the late 1950s
• The Supreme Court decisions that struck down state-mandated prayer and Bible reading in public schools in the early 1960s, and the huge polarization it brought among individual Christians vs. their Church leaders, mostly abetted by politicians who saw a campaign issue
Overall, the book is an excellent analysis of how Christian fundamentalism and capitalism were conflated in the 1950s to erode the divide between church and state, re-casting progressive political philosophy as both “un-American”, and “anti-Christian” at the same time. Importantly, he describes the thinking that emerged from Fifield’s movement and its subsequent embrace by Billy Graham; that our way of life and our economic system were ordained not just by God, but by the Christian God.
Graham said during the 1952 presidential campaign:
The Christian people of America will not sit idly by…They are going to vote as a bloc for the man with the strongest moral and spiritual platform, regardless of his views on other matters.
Graham meant Eisenhower. Kruse details the incestuous relationship between clergymen and politicians, with particular focus on Rev. Billy Graham’s remarkable ability to get close to, and influence, presidents.
Some have criticized the book, saying it does not prove its case about the influence of corporate America in the promotion of “One Nation Under God”. Wrongo disagrees. Most of the funding for these efforts, which began in the 1930s and continued through the Nixon administration in the 1970s were contributed by corporations and corporate executives. In fact, the book’s main premise is that corporatists are as responsible as politicians and clergy for making America a more Christian nation.
We continue to see the impact of these corporate/clergy efforts today: It bolsters the idea of American Exceptionalism, it limits the range of acceptable political debate, it fosters class warfare, and suborns churches to the cause of politics.
Today’s religious fundamentalists want to blur the lines between church and state. They seek to control American culture, to use faith in the service of ideals that leave no room for social programs, no room for diversity, no room for science, no room for ideas that contradict or challenge the myth of America as a Christian-capitalist-ordained-by-God empire.
This movement that started in the 1930s explains why many Americans favor policies that are clearly against their best interests. Not coincidentally, many of those in that category are also “religious conservatives.” A recent interview with a rural Kentuckian who voted for Republican Governor Matt Bevin who plans to roll back Medicaid expansion, despite her need for insurance, said:
My religious beliefs outweigh whether or not I have insurance…
She voted for an anti-abortion, anti-gay rights candidate, despite her personal need for insurance.
