News with Nuance: April 26, 2024

Your Friday dose of News with Nuance: the week's biggest stories, unpacked + more ..

Hi Readers,

I’m putting this newsletter together a day early this week, because as you’re reading this, I’m in Houston at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, participating in a phenomenal gathering of researchers, authors, historians, sociologists, and journalists to to discuss Christian Nationalism and Public Policy in the U.S.

I’m writing this on Wednesday evening, the night before I head out to Texas, and I’m feeling so honored and also a little bit nervous to be a part of this group. Some of the folks I’m presenting with are people I’ve only really known through interactions on Twitter, or here on Substack, or in the many Zoom gatherings we’ve all been a part of since COVID. I’m especially excited to finally meet

Andrew Whitehead

, whose research was foundational to my initial work and understanding of Christian Nationalism in Red State Christians. Andrew has always been such a gracious, kind and powerful presence in this work. Similarly, I’ll get to compare notes with his writing partner in Taking Back America for God, Samuel Perry, and with fellow journalist, now author of some of the most well-known books on Trumpism, Tim Alberta.

My panel is focused on Christian Nationalism and theology, and I’ll be sharing a table with Yale Divinity School’s Willie Jennings, author of The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race, and Baylor’s Jonathan Tran, author of Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism.

Other panels in the day include so many other researchers and writers whose work has been a part of my own personal canon on American Christianity: Baylor’s Jerry Park,

Ruth Braunstein

, who recently started the Meanings of Democracy Lab at the University of Connecticut, and Georgetown’s Paul D. Miller, a one-time military intelligence officer who previously worked at the National Security Council and the CIA - among several other writers and thinkers who have dedicated themselves to defining and combating the spread of Christian Nationalism.

Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to list all of these names; I might be feeling a bit intimidated! The truth is that as I’ve been thinking about this event, I’ve been remembering way back to 16-year-old Angela (then-Busch), whose dream was to study public policy at a prestigious private university. Things went a different way for me; I ended up following my passion for writing and sports to a magazine journalism degree at the University of Missouri, then to covering sports, then to seminary, then to pastoring and now … being a panelist at a prestigious private university’s event on public policy!?

Life (and God) has a funny way of leading you down surprising roads, which often end up in places where you’d always wanted to go, but never quite expected that they’d lead. I’m grateful for the unique experiences and opportunities life has granted me, such that I’m able to speak with some sense of expertise, authority, and passion on religion, public policy, and theology at a conference like this one. I’m bringing all the many places I’ve been with me to these events, and I think I’m bringing so many of you, too. Thanks for the support, encouragement, and openness to being a part of

I'm Listening

.

And I always carry with me too this verse, which brings me comfort:

“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.” - Romans 8:26.

Want to live-stream the event? Click here. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

And now - we’d better get to some news … with nuance.

Image by Bryan Birks, NBC News

The Headline: In Superman's 'hometown,' a pastor vows to fight Satan's influence at the local library

I won’t say that this story by NBC News’ Mike Hixenbaugh totally restored my faith in the national media’s capacity to cover Christian Nationalism and right-wing religious extremism with nuance and depth, rather than making it a spectacle. But wow does this story do an excellent job of covering the topic, of fleshing out all the different characters, and of helping people recognize ourselves and our communities in the broader national political and social trends.

Rather than the typical conceit of parachuting into a Midwestern diner and getting a few zany comments from the locals about Trump, Hixenbaugh breaks down the complexity and various subplots behind this main story, about a local nondenominational pastor who’s attempting to ignite book bans and spark political tensions, warning of “the devil” coming through library events in small-town Metropolis, Ill., located far from Chicago in the southeast corner of the state, near the Kentucky border.

Where I think a lot of stories would stop just at the buffoonery of the Evangelical pastor, Hixenbaugh takes time to make sure readers get to know all the different personalities involved in the library fight. You meet the new library director, a woman who’s bent on removing books and making the library an ideological place that doesn’t accept government funding “from Satan.” You’ll meet too the head of the library board of directors, a Baptist woman who fought back against book bans.

And you’ll also meet a practicing Lutheran who moved to Metropolis from California with his husband, who says he loves the town and serves as its only openly gay library board member.

You’ll learn about the town’s mayor, who attends the Evangelical church whose pastor has been railing against the library, and how that mayor tried to weaponize his political position against the library board.

It’s all pretty fascinating and important stuff, and as Hixenbaugh writes, he dispels all sorts of stereotypes or preconceived notions that readers might have about religious Americans and about rural Americans, and about who the obvious villains and “good guys” are. Such an important piece to read today.

The Quote:

In the end, (Rhonda) James (the library board president) and (Fred) Loverin (the aforementioned Lutheran board member) joined four other members in voting 6-2 to adopt the updated Library Bill of Rights.

As she headed to her car afterward, James held tight to her library binder. Inside, she carried a resignation letter that she’d planned to present to the board that night.

The owner of a local day spa, James had been feeling run down after spending much of her free time that year caring for her elderly mother, who’d entered the final stages of multiple sclerosis. She had decided she no longer had the time or energy to continue serving on the board.

But after seeing the backlash brewing, James decided to keep the resignation letter tucked away. Later, when she told her father about her decision to stay and fight, James said he laughed.

“You’re like Jonah,” he said, referring to the Old Testament Bible story. “You tried to jump ship, and you got swallowed by a whale.”

Story by Mike Hixenbaugh, NBC News

Bonus: one of the reasons I appreciate Hixenbaugh’s work so much is exemplified by this post about the wall-to-wall coverage of whacky and destructive U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, (R-Ga.)

The Headline: The Trump Revival

Earlier this week I attended a conference with local clergy and church leaders about the importance of the Bible. One of our speakers gave a talk on Revelation, and as I started to ask a question about the (mis)use of Revelation on the political right to scare people that the apocalypse is coming and thus they’d better arm themselves and gain political power(?), I found myself tripping over in my head all the various groups and entities involved in this kind of propagation of rhetoric, central to casting Trump as some kind of messianic figure.

There’s a lot to keep track of here, which is why I wanted to center this piece from the Nation. It does a great job of laying out the various people and groups involved in the charismatic embrace of Trump, and how they have joined forces with right-wing politicians and media figures in order to gain political power (and make money off of scared white Christians).

The center of this piece is Lance Wallnau and the so-called New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). If our previous piece did an admirable job of showcasing how these fear-based and conspiratorial ideas make their way into average American communities and ordinary people, this piece pulls back the curtain on the puppet masters behind it, who see much of the movement’s ideas as a fantastic opportunity to make money. It also centers Trump’s “pastor,” Paula White, who I interviewed in Red State Christians and remains an enigmatic and central figure in charismatic Christianity, prosperity gospel, and its intersection with American right-wing political power. Bonus: also quoted are scholars

Robert P. Jones

and

Jeff Sharlet

, from whom I’ve learned so much.

The Quote:

And Trump’s flock is more primed than ever for such appeals. “What has occurred since January 6,” Taylor says, “is a broader charismaticization of right-wing politics, where charismatic spirituality, charismatic spiritual warfare, charismatic experiential worship styles, have become the lingua franca not only of the religious right, but of just the broader right, the far right. If you’re going to a Republican rally, they’ll often start out with 45 minutes of charismatic worship, and it’s immersive. And then maybe afterwards somebody gets up and says, ‘I have a prophecy about Donald Trump.’ The epistemological barriers have intentionally been lowered because people want access to the miraculous, and they want to believe that the miraculous is going to break in. And then the miraculous breaks in, and it’s Trump.”

Under the dual influence of Trump and charismatic prophets in the NAR vein, right-wing evangelicals have shed past shows of diffidence about racist and authoritarian extremism and begun to broker full spiritual communion with these ugly forces. It’s now common for virulent antisemitic conspiracy theorists like Scott McKay and Charlie Ward to turn up at ReAwaken America events, while sub rosa marks of fascist affiliation, such as social-media citations of the “14 words” at the core of replacement-theory racist doctrine—“We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children”—now enjoy growing sanction on the MAGA right. Trump movement leaders are already rallying around the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 and its Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, an 887-page playbook for regaining power in Washington modeled on a series of policy and personnel manuals originally directed at the Reagan administration.

“If you put the NAR next to Project 2025, all these former Trump officials, Heritage, and the [evangelical legal advocacy group] Alliance for Defending Freedom—it’s a very unusual network in terms of the number of organizations,” Sharlet says. “And in the introduction to Project 2025, I was sort of surprised they are trying to smooth over a genealogy between Reaganism and Trumpism, and they have four fronts they say that the movement must rely on. And the first front, the manual says, is to ‘restore the family as a centerpiece of American life and protect our children.’ The other fronts are deregulation, basically. And when you look at it in terms of the NAR influence within this project and other things, you see that this rhetoric is Q-coded—it’s ‘protect the blood,’ it’s the 14 words, it’s all this stuff.”

Story by Chris Lehmann, The Nation

More Must-Reads

This, on O.J. Simpson and race, in the wake of Simpson’s death this month

For Earth Day, this story on flooding in the Louisiana Bayou and how climate change is already here

While I was sick with the flu/bronchitis last week, I watched the film Zone of Interest, set in a Nazi officer’s home just steps from Auschwitz, and this NPR piece captures perfectly why it’s such an important movie for this moment in America

Along with the above piece from Mike Hixenbaugh, this one from his NBC News colleague, intrepid and courageous chronicler of rising American right-wing nationalism Brandy Zadrozny, on the far-right-wing sheriffs’ movement is a must-read.

Speaking of Christian Nationalist sheriffs, don’t forget to check out my

The SWAJ Good News

podcast appearance breaking down the most recent season of FARGO with host Brad Onishi. Listen here.

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: Baptistland author and church abuse survivor Christa Brown shared this image about the “exhausting rules of the religious good girl.” I wasn’t raised in straight-up Evangelicalism (more like mainline suburban white Christianity), but nevertheless I could relate to every single one of these rules. I probably need to save this graphic and remind myself often that this isn’t any way to live.