News with Nuance: June 14, 2024

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

Hi Readers (and welcome to all new subscribers joining from last week’s Christians Against Christian Nationalism event in Minneapolis),

I was re-reading our last News with Nuance, at the end of May, and thinking about how I must have written it when I got back from the conference on Christian Nationalism at Rice University.

But nope - that was the end of April. To be honest, these past two months have been an absolute blur. At the beginning of April, I started my new pastoral call, my kids went on Spring Break, and then I traveled to Rice. I also started serving at Bethlehem Lutheran Church in an associate pastor role, covering for the three-month sabbatical of (

I'm Listening

reader!) Pastor Kris Tostengard-Michel. Since then, I’ve preached at all three of Bethlehem’s worship sites, including the Minneapolis and Minnetonka campuses, as well as Spirit Garage. I preached my first sermon in my new call as Pastor of Visitation and Public Theology at Lake Nokomis Lutheran (Bonus: I got to cite the work of fellow Substacker,

Diana Butler Bass

and Prof. Libbie Schrader, in a sermon on Mary Magdalene).

Meanwhile, as I mentioned in our last edition of News with Nuance - just a few weeks ago - the world has continued to spin wildly on its axis. Christian Nationalism has dominated headlines, from messianic depictions of Donald Trump in light of his recent 34 felony convictions in a New York State courtroom, to a Supreme Court Justice who flew Christian Nationalist flags while litigating cases involving the attempted insurrection on Jan. 6, to just this past week: two prominent Evangelical denominations (Southern Baptist Convention and Presbyterian Church in America) spending their national gathering time focused mostly on punishing women in ministry and making sure to bar them from any leadership role in the Church (unless you happen to be a social media provocateur who enjoys spouting off against women and for conservative politicians and pastors, then, you can get paid top dollar to speak at their conference) … but I digress …

INTERRUPTION

In the midst of writing the previous two paragraphs to you, I was sidetracked for TWO HOURS by an interview request from a local newspaper reporter, delving into the Christian Nationalism of a congressional candidate. That sent me on a deep dive into the “biblical citizenship” courses this candidate said he has been teaching the past three years, through Patriot Academy. The website is full of inaccurate American history and white nationalist dog whistles. Come to find out - these courses are often held at local churches but sometimes they’re even held at public libraries, like the one I linked to above in Detroit Lakes, Minn. I don’t think that’s an acceptable use of public library space. If you’re nearby - I’d encourage a phone call to those library systems to express your dismay! And clergy leaders, feel free to reach out for support and resources if you find that one of these courses is being held near your church. I’d be glad to help. More to come on this from the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

AS YOU CAN SEE …

Christian Nationalism is inundating our news cycle moment-to-moment. It can be hard to catch my breath, to take breathers and to make space and time to live in the beautiful moments of everyday life, like celebrating my boys’ school graduations this year, caring for sick loved ones, and just enjoying the fact that deck weather has come to Minnesota.

In pursuit of those important ends, I’ve moved the rest of this newsletter to my deck (editor’s note: she finished it indoors in complete darkness while her family slept) - and I promise to bring you the content we always have here at News with Nuance: a mix of gorgeous writing, important global stories, finding the humanity behind the statistics, and keeping our finger on the pernicious and violent spread of Christian Nationalism in our midst - as well as lifting up the resistance against it!

Speaking of that resistance …

I had a great time joining many of you (more than 100 attendees) on a beautiful Minneapolis Saturday afternoon for the MN Chapter meeting of Christians Against Christian Nationalism. What made it even better was finally meeting

Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons

of the Baptist Joint Committee on Religious Liberty in person, after years of communicating online over journalism and Christianity and social issues. It was so encouraging to be together, with all of you.

Now - let’s get to the news - with nuance …

Photos by Margaret Albaugh for POLITICO

The Headline: North Idaho Has Drifted to the Extreme Right. One Republican Thinks It’s Hit Its Limit

While writing this newsletter I realized that this is the second month in a row that I’ve led with a story from POLITICO in News with Nuance, which is a little bit surprising, as it’s not a publication to which I regularly subscribe. That being said - for the second month in a row - I’m appreciating the way that POLITICO is getting beyond the sensational headlines and outrageous actors to go deep into the challenges facing America today, especially when it comes to deception, hypocrisy, politicians who are willing to lie and cheat in order to gain access to power, and how that impacts ordinary people across the country.

What I loved most about this story is that it doesn’t pull punches about the difficulty of working together across partisan lines under present-day circumstances. It tells the truth about the cost of compromise, and it honestly lays out the ways in which most traditional/moderate Republicans fall short when it comes to really comprehending the threat of legislation that limits abortion and access to reproductive healthcare. At the same time, in the murkiness of today’s politics, what we see in this story are imperfect, ordinary people who are trying to talk to each other honestly and get closer to truth and justice. We see a willingness (finally?) of GOP candidates and officeholders to push back against the extreme rhetoric that has pushed their party to the brink of authoritarianism and hatred and even white nationalism.

And too - this story pulls back the curtain on a uniformly deep red Idaho (or any state far from the coasts that’s often depicted on political maps as “backwards” and consistently red, conservative, and Republican). As I mention many times in my work addressing groups on Christian Nationalism, especially in the rural Midwest, even if Trump wins counties 66-33 percent, that means 1 out of every 3 people you meet did not vote for him or support him. Too often those who push back against Trumpism and Christian Nationalism in the red states and counties are rendered invisible or meaningless by national media. In fact, that was one of my main purposes in telling the stories I did in Red State Christians, to help people see the multilayered canvas that is America, especially middle America and red-state America, and to realize that national narratives - and people - are more complex than they’re often depicted to be. People don’t like having their stories told for them; they don’t like being reduced to soundbites or having conservative pastors and politicians speak for them.

We will have more stories in that vein below, in the section on Christian Nationalism. But this story, told with meaning and space and purpose and deep reporting, gave me hope for American journalism and its ability to report accurately and inform Americans appropriately ahead of the 2024 Election and beyond.

The Quote:

So it was surprising that, two years later, on a snowy north Idaho night this January, (Jim) Woodward was at the seat of his pickup, navigating around roads closed due to the fierce weather on his way to attend a viewing of “On the Brink,” the “Nightline” episode on the impact of states’ restrictive abortion laws on women’s health and lives. In Idaho, the documentary showed, the laws he voted for have put women’s lives at risk, sent physicians fleeing the state for fear of jail time and losing their medical licenses and contributed to Sandpoint’s Bonner General Hospital closing its labor and delivery ward to leave 50,000 people in the region without obstetrical care.

He was headed there thanks to an unusual invitation from Jennifer Quintano, north Idaho’s lone abortion rights organizer as director of the Pro-Voice Project, which uses storytelling campaigns to advocate for abortion access and reproductive rights. When he arrived, he found himself the only male attendee. He was likely also the only Republican, which made the crowd uncommon in a county where Republicans outnumber Democrats five to one.

But Woodward didn’t see it as a step into “enemy territory,” even though none of these attendees, as Democrats, could vote for him in Idaho’s closed primary. He saw it as an opportunity to listen to some of the many voters galvanized by the fallout of the state’s ensuing extreme abortion laws after Roe v. Wade was overturned — laws that the state legislature is only trying to make even more restrictive.

…

After years of Idaho, and north Idaho in particular, creeping ever more rightward, Woodward and Quintano are both willing to publicly work to find common ground to advance moderate positions—a bold move in a region where extremists mount increasingly bold displays of armed intimidation and routinely out those who don’t fall in with far-right views.

Story by Cassidy Randall, POLITICO

The Headline: Trump’s not wrong. The system is broken. Everyday Americans saved us.

I know with the way the news cycle goes today, and how we are constantly inundated with major breaking news stories from across the globe, it might seem like ancient history that a former U.S. president was convicted of 34 felony counts less than two weeks ago.

Nonetheless, I think it’s critical that we don’t let Trump’s convictions get lost in the ether, and also that we have helpful ways to process this watershed moment in American history.

When the verdict was first announced, I was perched in front of our TV screen, turning on the cable news channels we rarely watch anymore. I’d seen it first on X (Twitter), that the verdict was coming, and so while preparing to pick up my son from the bus, I went in and turned it on.

Do you remember seeing footage from America’s first moon landing: either live or, like I did, on TV shows remembering it? What stuck out to me about that moment was how everyone in America watched it together: and we had trusted journalists to help us understand what it meant.

I guess my generation’s most similar moment would be the O.J. Simpson verdict, which we listened to on the radio while in outdoor recess in elementary school - but maybe it was some foreshadowing that our moment would be understood very differently across social lines in America, and would also be viewed as a sort of spectacle, in line with the infamous white Ford Bronco chase through L.A.

Sadly, while we also watched 9/11 together, that moment of national tragedy has also become weaponized, whether as an instrument of hatred or violence against non-white or non-Christian people, or as an opportunity to incite conspiracy theories.

And now we have the Trump verdict. As some clergy sexual abuse survivors pointed out on X, for those of us who have existed in systems where the powerful rarely face accountability - there was a moment of (ah), maybe there’s going to be a tiny measure of justice for someone who never seems to have to face it.

Unfortunately, as I watched TV news coverage of the verdict across all the cable networks - I didn’t really see anyone speaking to that moment, or speaking to the gravity of what had happened from a historical perspective. Instead, we had immediate partisan mudslinging, election horse race coverage, cynicism, despair.

That’s why I’m so grateful here to share this article from inimitable Philly Inquirer columnist Will Bunch, one of the best in the business. Rather than succumbing to the desire to be the cool journalist cynic, Bunch instead acknowledges the truth of the corruption of the system (notably, of those in power) - and instead spends most of his time talking about the ordinary Americans who courageously did what so many powerful politicians have proven unwilling and unable to do. Bunch is always a must-read, and this one especially.

The Quote:

“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK? It’s, like, incredible.” — Donald Trump, Sioux City, Iowa, Jan. 23, 2016

…

In a year dominated by cowards, the courage of the Trump jury is remarkable. With their anonymity preserved (so far, anyway), these seven men and five women were able to look at Trump’s behavior and judge him without fear of getting primaried or losing their six-figure salary or all the other craven reasons that prevent our elite watchdogs from doing their job. They were serious about their civic duty and deliberated for 10 hours before declaring what we all have seen with our own eyes.

Donald Trump is a felon.

We deserve a government as good as the American people — and we don’t have that. We have to save ourselves. Much as it took a physical therapist and a salesman and a teacher and all the rest to finally bring Trump to justice, it’s going to take about 80 million of us to save the United States from a completely unglued and retributive dictator in the Oval Office, before we start the long process of rebuilding this wreckage from the ground up. Our institutions may be broken but the regular folks of this country just gave me so much hope. It’s, like, incredible.

Column by Will Bunch, Philadelphia Inquirer

A Few More Must-Read Stories from the past two weeks …

They kept this Minnesota slaughterhouse running.Then it went bust, abandoning guest workers.

Hundreds of children live on Skid Row. Can L.A. do more for them?

Anatomy of a Murder: How a shocking crime divided a small Minnesota town

A mystery illness stole their kids’ personalities. These moms fought for answers.

UN chief says world is on ‘highway to climate hell’ as planet endures 12 straight months of unprecedented heat

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: (or really the past few weeks)

As I mentioned above, this newsletter was delayed a few hours while I spoke with a reporter for a local newspaper about a Christian Nationalist congressional candidate, and while I took a research deep dive into the Patriot Academy and their 8-week course on “biblical citizenship,” which is every bit as chock full of Christian Nationalism as you might imagine. I was horrified to learn that one of these courses is being held at a public library right here in Minnesota (Detroit Lakes, to be exact).

Much more to come on this story soon, including commentary from

Caleb E. Campbell

and

Brad Onishi

. In the mean time, I urge everyone reading this newsletter to take a look at the above link and see where these courses are being held in your state. If it’s at publicly-owned government buildings or libraries, I think a protest and public outcry is definitely in order on First Amendment grounds.

And here's an undercover report from the Patriot Academy from The New Republic.

WaPo’s Jerry Brewer is one of my favorite sportswriters (my former vocation) - and I thought this was a really important piece examining how grievance culture has bled into sports, and what it says about our current moment. You can see the parallels with CN as Brewer writes about the role of racism, white grievance, and dueling narratives about what it means to be an American (with athletes standing on both sides as well as caught in the middle).

Brewer’s piece also brought to mind my 2017 guest column for WaPo, on the relationship of the NFL kneeling protests to historical American Christianity - and again - the role of racism.

Breaking CN news this week with undercover reporting and revealing recorded comments on Christian Nationalism and the culture wars from Supreme Court Justice Alito (and his wife)

And this from expert researcher (and fellow Broadleaf author) Matthew D. Taylor on the history and meaning of that Appeal to Heaven flag the Alitos flew

I’ve talked about this dynamic before, but one of the most troubling and frustrating things about our current politics is the way that movements grounded in hatred and exclusion (like Christian Nationalism) attempt to platform folks from the very groups they’re attempting to disempower and exclude (like women, people of color, LGBTQ people), in order to prove somehow that they’re not discriminating against those groups. It’s a dynamic that’s kind of hard to parse, and requires nuance in talking about - which is why I appreciated this story about a Black pastor who’s marshaling support for Trump.

We’ve been tracking religious nationalism in this newsletter around the world, particularly Hindu nationalism under Modi in India, and this story is an important contribution to that narrative. And a reminder that Christian Nationalism is not partisan nor limited to American politics but part of a larger trend of fundamentalism that idolizes power at all costs.

Billions in taxpayer dollars now go to religious schools via vouchers

I was glad to be quoted in this piece from the Houston Chronicle, on the political influence of Texas pastor Jack Graham, of Prestonwood Baptist in Plano

And a series of articles outlining what happened this past week at the national gathering of the Southern Baptist Convention:

Southern Baptists Pursue a Mission of Misogyny (from Christa Brown, a personal hero of mine)

From Religion News Service’s Bob Smietana

When Christa Brown mentioned that then-SBC President Bart Barber received a standing ovation for his handling of sexual abuse crises within the church (in truth he assisted in making sure survivors’ stories were often discounted) - it reminded me of this story I wrote for Sojourners a few years ago, after a sexual predator youth pastor received a standing ovation at his Evangelical church.

More recent news and analysis:

Researcher David Brockman (who I met at Rice) on the threat of the New Apostolic Reformation

And this on NAR, from HuffPost: Alarming Report Warns Of ‘Greatest Threat To American Democracy You’ve Never Heard Of’

From Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, on a biblical example of the destructive male rage and violence rampant in Christian Nationalism

And from the rage to the grift: on frat boy-esque Texas pastor Josh Howerton and how he charges exorbitant rates for pastors to “hang out” with him at his mansion, purchased with church donations and fees from his “retreats,” and likely with funds claimed as tax-free housing allowance. That kind of thing, by the way, enrages us “ordinary” pastors, who rely on some of these tax benefits to get by on wages and salaries that are often very low.

Grift and violence come together, unfortunately, in the military-industrial complex in America - which relies on Christian Nationalist rhetoric to garner support for its violence and outrageous assumption of wealth among weapons manufacturers and salesmen

And tragically, Christian Nationalist rhetoric that claimed America must privilege a white, European Christian faith, led to abuses and violence and hate-filled treatment of Indigenous children at Native American boarding schools, whose horrors are still being fully uncovered.

I highly recommend following far-right researcher Ruth Ben-Ghiat on X, where she breaks down how authoritarian talking points are used and dispersed in the wake of news stories and political crises.

And

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reader Robert Franek had a great thread on the crisis of trust in national media, and what needs to change.

The Insidious Trap of the “Tradwife Movement” with

Jess Calarco

and

Sarah Stankorb

From one of the best in covering Christian Nationalism, Rob Downen: At Texas GOP convention, Republicans call for spiritual warfare

And from

Sarah McCammon

: Republicans try to soften stance on abortion as 'abolitionists' go farther

A New Section here at News with Nuance: The Resistance

As I’ve been chronicling stories in Christian Nationalism, the danger and threat can feel really overwhelming. That’s why I’ve added this section: stories and examples where I see people pushing back against the tide, all the time! Feel free to share with me your own examples in the comments and by hitting REPLY:

My husband and I celebrated 13 years of marriage this past week. It was a bittersweet moment, because on that same night, thousands of American Christians were fighting tooth and nail to limit women’s ministry in their churches and circumscribe women’s roles in the Church. I’m so grateful to be married to a man who supports my calling and isn’t threatened by my strength, but boy did saying that trigger the hardcore Christian misogynists and those whose faith rests on male superiority.

It’s proofing time for my new book!

And I’m so excited to address the Baptist Women in Ministry at their luncheon during the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship gathering in Greensboro, N.C., next week. Their courage in the face of resistance to Baptist women in ministry brought me to tears on a few occasions this past week:

Read here the powerful response of BWIM to the actions of the SBC

Remembering the witness and example of Civil Rights leaders always inspires me and gives me courage. This week we remember the Rev. James Lawson, towering Civil Rights activist and pioneer in nonviolent protest, who died at 95

Sometimes - the dog catches the car: Right-wing media company Salem apologizes, stops distributing 2020 election conspiracy film ‘2000 Mules’ after lawsuit

'A total unicorn': How Pine City, Minn., became a pioneer in rural Pride

Statement on the Passing of Mrs. Marian Robinson from Barack and Michelle Obama, Craig and Kelly Robinson, and their children

This Idaho high school student dropped a banned copy of “The Handmaid’s Tale” (the graphic novel adaptation) at her superintendent’s feet during graduation.

Boys Get Everything, Except the Thing That’s Most Worth Having, from

Ruth Whippman

Male birth control gel is safe and effective, new trial findings show

I interviewed Emily Reimer-Barry for U.S. Catholic magazine a few years ago, and I found her to be inspiring and deeply grounded in Catholic theology. Looking forward to her new book: Reproductive Justice and the Catholic Church: Advancing Pragmatic Solidarity with Pregnant Women

Remembering Bill Walton, the basketball coach and trailblazing radical

Former President Jimmy Carter’s Georgia Baptist church is welcoming its first female pastor

Must-Reads on Substack

From

Beth Allison Barr

"This isn't over"...The defeat of the Law Amendment isn't a victory

I'm back and (maybe?) ready for SBC24......

From

Daniel Cox

: (which ties in to Trump voters’ pessimistic and cynical embrace of CN over the Gospel of Jesus)

How Trump Benefits from America’s Growing Pessimism

From

Jemar Tisby, PhD

The War on Reparations

Three Reactions to the PCA Canceling David French

On Pessimism and Politics

Stop Flying the Pan African Flag on Juneteenth

George Floyd and the Routinization of Black Death

From

Heather Cox Richardson

June 12, 2024

June 10, 2024

June 9, 2024

June 7, 2024

May 28, 2024

From

lyz

(I sent this first one to all my friends)

On cheese and freedom

Stop yelling at me about the economy

From

Joyce Vance

Still Digging: Justice Alito

From

Clint Schnekloth

Jürgen Moltmann and Douglas John Hall: A Theological Friendship

A Christian FAQ On Queer Affirmation

From

Sarah Stankorb

How Media Shapes Faith and How We Learn to Walk Away

From

Kristin Du Mez

The Christian Right in Europe

Preparing for a long defeat

^^ that’s the Theology of the Cross, right there ^^

From

Robert P. Jones

Trump the Totem

From

Chrissy Stroop

Why Don't Americans Love Biden's Economy?

Go Ahead, Celebrate Trump's Conviction!

From

Ruth Whippman

BOYMOM- OUT TOMORROW

(I think BOYMOM and Disciples of White Jesus are going to be excellent books to read side-by-side and put into conversation with one another)

From

Tia Levings

Bill Maher Called Out Gender Apartheid. Here's What He Got Wrong

From

Amelia Mavis Christnot

PSA: How to Report Hate Speech & Threats on Substack

My Early Lesson In Racism And Hypocrisy

From

Popular Information

EXCLUSIVE: Florida educators trained to teach students Christian nationalism

From

Jared Yates Sexton

When The End Isn't The End: Trump's Conviction and the Fallout

From

Jared Stacy

We Must Be Free

From

Foreign Exchanges

What’s the Matter with Germany?

From

Lyle Enright

James Cone and "Religion for Losers"

More Theology of the Cross ^^

This was a special FREE edition of News with Nuance because we have so many new subscribers. Typically this newsletter is available only to paid subscribers of

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. If you like what you’re reading and find it helpful, please share and consider a paid subscription in support of the (many!) hours that go into writing and researching this newsletter.

Thanks for reading,

Angela

A Few Notes:

First, a huge THANK YOU to all subscribers. I get a little email notification every time someone signs up, and every time I get one, I feel joyful and honored that you want to spend part of your day with this community. I mean it when I say: “I’m listening,” to you as well, and please don’t hesitate to share with me your thoughts + ideas for what you’d like to read in this space.

To PAID SUBSCRIBERS: I am humbled and honored that you’ve chosen to spend part of your limited budget on this newsletter. To borrow words from another newsletter I love, you are directly funding freelance journalism with your subscription, and I have to thank you more than ever for your continued support. Our world’s media and journalism is in a state of crisis, with fewer and fewer billionaires in control of global news outlets, and journalists being either laid off or threatened with violence for their work every single day; with fewer and fewer newsroom positions paying a living wage. I pledge to you to steward your paid subscription faithfully + use it to support honest, hard-working, and LOCAL journalism. One of my goals in this first year is to open this newsletter to other journalists, and pay them a fair wage for their work.

THANK YOU for your support. If you’re not a paid subscriber, please consider becoming one.

On free vs. paid-subscriber posts only: My plan right now is that the Friday + Sunday posts, focusing on news + spirituality, in that order, are available for subscribers only (I am going to continue sharing a sample, with a line where the paywall cuts off for our paid subscriber community). My plan is that the Tuesday blog-style posts will always be free, to enable as much access as possible, while creating a smaller and more intimate experience for paid subscribers, who are also able to comment and share in community in fuller ways.

Free Trial: Substack always offers a free week-long trial subscription to this newsletter, so you can get a taste of the Friday + Sunday posts and see if you’d like to subscribe!

If a paid subscription is a hardship for you, but you’d like access to the Friday + Sunday posts: PLEASE do not hesitate to reach out. I will be happy to provide a complimentary subscription for you.