News with Nuance: Jan. 6, 2023

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

Welcome back to News with Nuance. This is our first post of 2023 after taking a little break Dec. 23 and 30, 2022. I ended up getting a sinus infection last week while presiding over a funeral, and my kids were home for e-learning this week due to a winter storm in Minneapolis, so it wasn’t really much of a break - but I digress …

My plan for this post is, every Friday, I will break down some of the week’s top news stories and put them into context, with special attention to the impact of these stories where I live: Middle America; and also an analysis of these stories with historical, political, and spiritual context. This is the kind of work that breaking news journalists often simply don’t have time to do — and I’m hoping it supplies the needed nuance and context that’s often missing from our news cycle, humanizing the people and places behind the headlines.

I also want to welcome any new subscribers to I’m Listening! I know many of you may have signed up after reading my most recent book excerpt. I want to thank you for your encouragement after reading that piece. So many of you sent me heartfelt emails and social media messages, and your words buoyed me as I finished off 2023 with a funeral for a beloved parishioner. It took a big chunk of my heart to write the updated version of Red State Christians, and I’m so glad you saw a piece of yourself/your world in there, too. Thanks also to the Minnesota Reformer for first publishing it. They’re doing some great work over there … more from me for the Reformer coming soon.

Now, here’s the News — with nuance …

The Headline: As parents of young kids struggle in a ‘tripledemic,’ it seems the world has moved on

Maybe it’s the fact that I’m writing this newsletter in the tiny little window I’ve carved out for myself this evening between eating dinner and collapsing into my bed, tissues, throat coat tea, and saline nasal spray next to me on the nightstand - while trying not to be distracted by the sounds of my two boys “playing together” downstairs (one incontrovertible fact about being a mom of boys is that you’re constantly asking yourself if that’s laughter or sobbing noises), but I couldn’t help but start our 2023 news post without acknowledging the ongoing crisis unfolding for American families and parents of young children.

As this article acknowledges, nearly 3 years into a global pandemic, many parents and kids have spent the first half of the 2022-23 school year alternately home sick and/or dodging contagious respiratory illnesses. As my kids are elementary-aged, we’re admittedly out of the scariest window for the respiratory illnesses ravaging America right now, and yet I still see the impact rippling through my kids, their friends, teachers, and parents. Out in rural America and in my church congregation, I’ve had to watch multiple large families go through seemingly unending bouts of illness, with constant disruption to school and extracurricular schedules. Parents are sniffling through it all, too, and somehow we’re still supposed to get all of our own work done, cook meals, do the laundry, and keep up with ever-expanding cost of living increases, which have hurt the poorest Americans hardest. At this point, I wouldn’t really be surprised to get an email home from my child’s school asking me to stand on my head while administering online school and sending additional checks to cover funding shortages. (On that topic, if you haven’t yet read this piece, it’s hilarious and absolutely on point.)

Parents and families got just a tiny bit of extra breathing room with some additional government assistance from the expanded Child Tax Credit in 2021, but 2022 roared right back with record inflation and a simultaneous end to many of the pandemic-era grants and programs that helped parents keep their jobs and pay the bills. And lest you think I’m only concerned with my own age group, the truth is that the foremost victims of COVID-19 have been America’s elderly. It’s those grandparents and family and community elders who truly hold everything together, and American politicians and business leaders alike have been all-too-quick to cast aside our seniors in favor of profit motives and capital gains.

I’m not suggesting I have any answers here: not for the weary health-care workers, teachers, and frontline workers who have been called upon far too many times to do the impossible on shrinking wages and constant staff shortages. Not for the parents and caregivers who are right now worrying about the lungs of their little ones suffering with flu, COVID, RSV, or any other number of respiratory viruses circulating through our country and our world. And not either for the youngest among us, who hold such a special place in my heart. Maybe some of you reading this are in positions at work or in the world to begin to suggest policy changes.

In the mean time, I think it’s important to acknowledge that this crisis is not going away. And our most vulnerable citizens: our youngest kids and our most elderly - we protect them and value them because they matter, and those who commit to caregiving for them in myriad ways should be valued, supported, and - at the very least - acknowledged for the valuable work they continue to do.

And yeah. How about we prioritize public education as a huge part of what truly has made America great? We are defunding it and neglecting it at our own peril.

The Quote: “The continued chaos for young families is isolating, especially when other Americans’ lives are back to normal, said Lauren Hipp, early learning chief at MomsRising, an advocacy organization.

“I feel pretty angry about it,” said Hipp, whose own 2-, 6- and 8-year-old children have been wracked with illnesses, including RSV. “To feel like society has passed you by is a really difficult and lonely feeling.”

Story by Heather Hollingsworth and Claire Savage, Associated Press

The Headline: The House speaker election is so embarrassing (for you)

We’ve all had that moment, in this age of online communication, where someone misses your sarcasm or cynicism online and takes what you’re saying seriously. Maybe for that reason, satirical commentary seems to be fewer and farther between these days. That’s maybe why I treasure Washington Post columnist Alexandra Petri so dearly. Everything she writes is a must-read, written smartly and with biting political satire. This piece is no exception, skewering all those who (over and over again) seem stunned that people who campaign as blustering fools who have no idea about government truly have no idea how to govern. Have we forgotten what it was like to live in a country with a President who had no interest in the work of his office? Do you remember the summer and fall of 2020 and the feeling of terror when you realized our President would destroy our country rather than admit weakness, failure, or defeat? Should I mention Jan. 6, 2021?

There’s plenty to laugh about in the ongoing saga of the House speaker election and the failure of Republican nominee Kevin McCarthy to win a majority, due to the intransigence of his party’s most extreme representatives, most of whom seem to base their public statements on the likelihood they’ll be quoted by Tucker Carlson on FOX News. Seriously. I think that’s the sum of their governing philosophy.

Photo by Evelyn Hockstein, Reuters

This obviously has a negative impact on important, everyday items like funding the federal government, supplying and supporting our military, administrating poverty assistance, education, roads, transportation, foreign affairs, and a million other things that Congress is responsible for doing. There is a major war going on in Europe, by the way!

Supporting politicians who spend most of their time denigrating the government is seductive, because look at the dysfunction right here! But the answer is not to elect people who have no idea how to govern. Like it or not, we need a government - unless you like the idea of everyone driving through town without stoplights or headlights on our vehicles, and everyday American commerce being run like Twitter wars. So can Republicans please? Someday? Elevate leaders who actually want to administer a government.

Maybe by press time we’ll actually have a House speaker (I’m writing this Thursday night) … but I sure hope if Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), wins he won’t continue to capitulate to those in his party who are least prepared to do the job they were elected to do. I’m not holding my breath.

The Quote: Honestly, we are a little confused you are taking this so poorly. This is like electing a bunch of clowns to office and being disappointed when they put on a magnificent clown show for you. Here is precisely the clown show you ordered! You shouldn’t be ashamed. You should be applauding. It is like ordering a decorative salad made entirely from Legos and being mad that you can’t eat it. It is like voting for Lauren Boebert and then becoming upset that a legislature that contains her is not productively working for the American people.

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: I’m writing this newsletter on the evening of Jan. 5, but I’m realizing that you’ll be reading these words on Jan. 6, also known as the 2-year anniversary of the day that armed protesters stormed the nation’s capitol in an attempt to overthrow the government and prevent the peaceful transition of power from President Donald Trump to newly elected President Joe Biden.

I know most of us probably don’t want to remember Jan. 6, 2021. I know I don’t. My stomach twists itself in knots remembering watching scenes from the Capitol that day, then later hearing the heartbreaking testimony of Capitol police officers who risked their lives to save America that day.

The thing is, though, we have to remember it. I think American Christians have particular responsibility to remember the violence that day and what role Christian Nationalism played in inciting that violence, and connecting how a religion rooted in peace, love, and sacrifice became linked in the U.S. to power, white supremacy, hatred, and guns.

On this day, I want to share a couple of pieces I wrote in the aftermath of Jan. 6, 2021.

The first was written literally as I watched the violence unfold on Jan. 6.

The next was written a week later, and it explicitly confronts the Christian Nationalism inherent in the Jan. 6 insurrection.

For me, as a Christian leader and a person who has been writing about politicized Christianity and political divisions in America for many years now, there is a clear delineation before and after Jan. 6. It was a defining moment: a call for American Christians to defend the true Gospel and repent and seek reparations for the ways we’ve been complicit in allowing our faith to become a means of power and control and ever-increasing wealth, particularly for white Americans. In that vein, I also recommend to you Brian Kaylor and Beau Underwood’s recent piece for Religion and Politics on mainline American Christians’ role in the rise of Christian Nationalism. Remember none of this moves forward until we all examine our own role in the rise of Christian Nationalism and look to make our own amends first.

Thanks for reading! This was a special New Year’s free edition of News with Nuance. To read it weekly, sign up for a paid subscription below!

Angela

A Few Notes:

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