News with Nuance: April 12, 2024
Your Friday dose of News with Nuance: the week's biggest stories, unpacked + more ..
Hi Readers,
Happy April! Happy Spring! Happy Eclipse! Happy Easter Season!
Did I get them all?
Are you catching that maybe there have been just a few changes and shifts happening lately in our (northern hemisphere) world?
Personally and professionally, I’m in a bit of state of change, too (more on that below and in posts to come later this month) - and so maybe that’s why it feels like the world is spinning extra-fast on its axis.
In times of change and anxiety, I always try to turn as much as I can to the earth and to our natural world. Earlier this week, on an unseasonably warm Minnesota spring evening, after an exceptionally busy day, I forced myself to take about 25 minutes and bike around the nearby lake before finishing up that evening’s tasks.
I can’t adequately explain how clarifying it was to put my face into the wind and stare at the open water of the lake, noting the quacking ducks and honking geese that had returned once again to the water. Having grown up in Minnesota and never being too far from a freshwater lake, I’ve long been spoiled by the sense of calm that comes from remembering you are but one of the world’s uncountable living creatures, reliant like them all on the miracle of fresh water and clean air.
I’m sad to admit I spent all of my growing-up years prior to college in Minnesota, and yet never learned until a few years ago the meaning of the Dakota word from which we derive our state’s name
Mni Sota Wakace
It’s a Dakota phrase that means: land where waters reflect the sky.
I never want to get so busy, so anxious, so self-absorbed - that I can’t breathe in and taste the miracle of those waters and this land. Maybe that’s why this week I’m kicking off our News with Nuance with a few articles about land, water, sky, beauty, and despoiling.
I’ll also - as always - have a large section for you on the current trends in Christian Nationalism, and the best things I’ve been reading on Substack.
Let’s get to the news … with nuance …
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Ensign Lake in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness
Photo by Zach Spindler-Krage, Minnesota Reformer
The Headline: Let’s not take clean water for granted
Chris Knopf, who has spent much of his adult life working to preserve the pristine waters and wildlife of the Boundary Waters, begins this article recalling his childhood in Cleveland, where a river became so polluted it actually caught on fire.
I had never before heard that story about Cleveland’s water, or about the pollution of Lake Erie. Rather, I’d assumed that all of the Great Lakes were like the Lake Superior I’d gazed at in awe from the shores of Duluth. I wrongly assumed that all kids grew up staring down at their toes in murky (but healthy!) lake water, filled with healthy algae and fish.
The truth is instead that our most precious resource is growing more and more scarce and threatened as the world grows warmer. We all need water to live, but we take it for granted. Most of us don’t have any idea how the water that flows so freely from our taps (and down our toilet bowls) made it into our homes. But just turn off the tap for a few hours at your house to realize just how much we rely on our water.
I can only imagine that this laissez-faire attitude toward fresh water will become more and more untenable as my kids get older. Already, water is expensive and scarce and polluted all over the world. Not so far from home, in this land of 10,000 supposedly clean lakes, communities have been subject to astronomically high cancer rates due to polluted water.
All this to say, I’m grateful to activists like Knopf for sounding the alarm. I will be watching my state and national legislators to see if they are willing to take tough stands to protect our water. I will bring my kids to our lakes, so that they might experience the peace I always do at the lakeshore, and so that hopefully the next generation will band together to protect our water, better than mine has.
Even our cities, from Minneapolis to Ely, are built and designed around water.
Opinion piece by Chris Knopf, Minnesota Reformer
Here’s a bonus piece about land and history, and the myths (and truths) that shape it:
Paul Bunyan and the weight of myth
The Headline: They came for Florida's sun and sand. They got soaring costs and a culture war.
While I’ve spent most of my life in Minnesota, I did begin my career as a journalist working as a hockey beat reporter on Southwest Florida’s Gulf Coast. Since then, like many Minnesotans frozen out by our frigid winter air, I’ve found myself desperately flocking to Florida, especially for Spring Break. In fact, we spent a few days on the Panhandle last week, and what was funny is that the beach sand there was so white, my whole family said they almost mistook it for snow!
Florida is one of America’s treasures, from Key West to Mickey Mouse to the Space Coast to Miami, as international a city as America has to offer. And also Florida, especially in recent years, sometimes seems to platform the worst of what America represents to the world, a state that tends to make headlines for stupidity, hatred, extreme politics, infighting, drugs, crime, the list goes on. Florida Man, anyone? Maybe we can blame the heat - or the bugs.
The truth is that Florida has shaped my life in really positive ways, overall, and I have a soft spot in my heart for the state, despite its issues. I met a couple of women in Florida who have remained lifelong friends. One of them was my pastor, who had a not-small impact on my decision and commitment to attend seminary back in Minnesota in 2009. Florida is also such a cradle of early journalism careers that it was said back in journalism school that almost everyone’s newspaper career has to pass through the state at one point or another.
But maybe Florida today is a cautionary tale of what can happen when extreme-right-wing politicians are able to gain a deep foothold in your state. Today in Florida abortion rights are severely limited. School curriculums are being rewritten by racist politicians and activists, denying kids access to the facts of history, and books are being banned left and right, a crusade led by a couple who allegedly engaged in extramarital affairs, in which the husband has been accused of rape. Ironically, they thought they were the ones who should “protect the children” from (innocent) LGBTQ folks … (who are also under major attack in the state of Florida, despite the rich gay history of towns like Miami and Key West).
That paragraph does little justice to the depth of pain emanating out of the Sunshine State, and the ways in which the rights of minorities are being trampled on in the state of Florida. Did I mention it’s also the state that’s home to Mar a Lago, also known as Trump’s (former) winter “White House?”
Anyway, as remote working and homeschooling exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of Americans flocked to move to Florida, and wealthy white retirees continue to make up a large proportion of its population (sadly, a large majority of those voters seem to vote mostly with their pursestrings in mind, and little concern for the needs of voters in other demographic groups) - Florida continues to move further and further to the right, meaning more exclusionary laws, and little environmental protection of one of America’s most sought-after states.
This article documents the disillusionment experienced by many of those who did move to Florida in recent years, hoping for sunnier skies (literally and figuratively). I think it’s important to read stories like this, and understand the real-life consequences of legislation that may seem distant from your life.
Story by Shannon Pettypiece, NBC News
This Week in Christian Nationalism and Religious Extremism
While this newsletter won’t focus overall on Christian Nationalism, each Friday I will include a brief update from that week, as it’s both a continuing focus of my work and also, I think, a critical threat to both American democracy and the faithful witness of Jesus’ Gospel, which exists independently of the United States!
In one sentence: Christian Nationalism is a version of the idolatrous Theology of Glory, which replaces the genuine worship of God with worship of a particular vision of America, often rooted in a revisionist history of white people in the 1950s, before the Civil Rights movement or the women’s movement. Christian Nationalism supports a violent takeover of government and the imposition of fundamentalist Christian beliefs on all people. Christian nationalism relies on a theological argument that equates American military sacrifice with Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross. It suggests that Christians are entitled to wealth and power, in contrast to Jesus’ theology of the cross, which reminds Christians that they too have to carry their cross, just as our crucified savior did.
This Week: As usual, it has been a busy week on this front, as Christian Nationalist ideology and policies continue to dominate American headlines. But even as it can feel overwhelming at times, when even during Holy Week the way most Americans hear about Easter is by linking it to Trump’s God Bless America Bible - and I spent at least part of the days leading up to Easter attempting to refute a video where a pastor tells young women to “do whatever he tells you to do” on their wedding nights … I was reminded last night just how important it is for all of us, especially people who say we want to follow Jesus - to continue to speak loudly and clearly about the blasphemy of Christian Nationalism.
Last night in a Minneapolis suburb, the Minneapolis-Area Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (the denomination in which I serve) held a forum where nominees for synodical bishop would answer questions, sort of a town hall type forum.
In her response to a question about “young people” and the Church, the Rev. Natalia Terfa said this, (my paraphrase):
“We are ceding the online space to the worst theologians. Our theology has something to say at this time in our country, and we need to be out there!”
As you might imagine, I couldn’t help but shout: AMEN!
So to all of you, like Natalia, who continue to speak up even when it’s hard: AMEN! And you are not alone.
***
Speaking of not ceding the online space, I was so glad to be invited back onto NPR’s 1A show this week to talk Trump, white Evangelicals, and the 2024 election, with Exvangelicals author and NPR correspondent
, political reporter Todd Zwillich, and host Jenn White. You can listen here!I also started this week covering a pastoral sabbatical for (
reader!) Pastor Kris Tostengard-Michel at Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Minneapolis. I’ll be preaching there this Sunday at 9 and 10:30 a.m., and you can catch the livestream here. Stay tuned to the newsletter for a couple of events I’ll be leading at Bethlehem next month focusing on Christian Nationalism (Save the date: May 1 and 8 at 6:30 p.m.)Late last month, I had the chance to interview longtime progressive Christian activist
alongside about their two new books on Christian Nationalism. You can read the entire interview here, and a big congratulations to Jim on making the New York Times bestseller list this week!When I get discouraged in this work, I often turn to the writing of German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was executed by the Nazis in a concentration camp for his opposition to their version of Christian Nationalism (as seen in the so-called German Christian Church). I found this excerpt of a letter from a German Lutheran parish pastor to Bonhoeffer during Nazi rule to be incredibly moving. Something about the banality of evil … and the banality of courageous resistance in its midst.
Speaking of German Lutheran theologians, here’s a piece from Paul Tillich’s grandson that reminded me why I’ve always found Tillich’s theological work to be far ahead of his time, and resonant for our own.
Of course, the best way for authoritarianism to reign is to make sure people never read works like these, which is the kind of work that the state education superintendent is doing in Oklahoma.
And Christian Nationalism often hides behind a veil of blonde feminine “niceness,” as it does in this article full of dog whistles on Christian romance author Karen Kingsbury.
But sometimes Minnesota Nice is also a cover for feminine fury and power, as shown masterfully in this most-recent season of the TV show FARGO, which
’ Brad Onishi and I broke down on a recent episode of the Straight White American Jesus podcast.Great Substack Reads, most of which have some connection to Christian Nationalism
That’s it for this edition of News with Nuance! Don’t forget to subscribe to receive it in your inbox every 2nd and 4th Friday of the month.
Thanks for reading,
Angela
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