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The Columbus Dispatch
Christopher Blattman
July 6, 2022·6 min read

In 2016, democracy rating organizations began downgrading the United States, some scoring American institutions below that of El Salvador, then Nigeria, then Iraq.

Then, following the Jan. 6 insurrection last year, articles and books began predicting something scarier: another civil war.

The most sensational accounts foretold a national breakup, neighbor killing neighbor. The more level-headed ones warned of something still dire: a far-right insurgency waging a long campaign of bombings and attacks. The disturbing evidence emerging from the Jan. 6 congressional hearings merely underscores such concerns.

These worries are understandable but flawed.

After a career studying civil wars small and large, organized violence in the United States strikes me as extraordinarily unlikely. Worse, focusing on civil war dangerously distracts Americans from the real risks.

Now, those prophesizing war have a point. If you take civil conflict from recent history, you find a chillingly familiar list of initial conditions: politics hardening along identity lines; a surge of armed groups; an erosion of institutions. Ethnic polarization and democratic backsliding are especially persistent predictors of state collapse.

American democracy healthier than forecasts predict

But apply this to the United States with care. The data driving these results comes from predicting massive acts of violence – genocide or revolutionary wars – almost all from low- and middle-income countries. It’s dubious to use these models to predict a different phenomenon – low-scale insurgency – in America or other rich, advanced democracies.

America’s democracy numbers also don’t add up. In 2015, raters like the Polity Project gave the United States a perfect score of 10 – one it had enjoyed for decades. Then Donald Trump was elected president, and America’s score fell to 8.

In 2019, after the failed impeachment of Trump, Polity’s score fell further to 7. Finally, on Jan. 7, 2021, immediately following the insurrection, Polity announced a drop to a 5, meaning “no longer a democracy.”

Political scientists woke up, as rapid plunges to this level are persistently correlated with outbreaks of civil war.

But this slide is suspicious. It would mean that American democracy today is several points below that of 1859, on the eve of the Civil War, and when a majority of adults were barred from voting. It would put present-day U.S. institutions on par with other 5's, like Haiti and Somalia. Meanwhile, countries like Hungary – the poster nation for democratic backsliding – maintain a perfect 10.

This defies credibility. One suspects that it’s the democracy raters who have become politicized, not American institutions.

The backslide is surely exaggerated. So, then, are predictions of civil war.

The fact is, even societies with hardened identities rarely erupt in conflict. One study looked at every ethnic pairing in Africa and Eastern Europe in the late 20th century and found no more than 1 in 1,000 turned violent in a given year.

So, yes, if you trace back from a civil war you find polarized politics, or a surge of protest and arms. But trace back from periods without war and you will find a lot of the same conditions. These are not automatic forerunners of violence.

Immense pain of civil war is a deterrence

Here's why: As a general rule, enemies prefer to loathe one another in peace. That’s because war – especially civil war – is disastrous. It kills people, destroys economies and weakens the country to outside enemies. This gives all sides huge incentives to avoid violence.

For anyone who doubted these horrific consequences, the events of Jan. 6, 2021, offered a painful reminder. This may be why far-right movements and violent political acts have declined since the insurrection.

Because of these costs, most political factions don’t fight. An extremist militia in the United States would be no exception. Few things are harder than launching an insurgency against a powerful state. Intelligence services will hunt you down. Justice systems will jail you. You will live clandestinely, full of hardships. This is why even the most disaffected groups are often dissuaded from violence. Better to use politics by normal means.

Those who do see violence ahead for America often point to the Troubles in Northern Ireland – a rare example of insurgency in a
wealthy democracy. I draw comfort from this comparison. Northern Ireland was far more polarized and factionalized than America today. It also had a decades-long history of a well-organized, clandestine armed movement with broad public sympathy.

Naturally there are parallels to America today, but the differences in scale and seriousness are vast.

Another key difference is the state response. British forces had limited intelligence and were indiscriminately violent. When a Catholic boy in Derry threw a flaming bottle of fuel, the British military would sweep in and arrest half the neighborhood, beating (even killing) a few. Insurgent leaders joked that the British state was their best recruiter.

U.S. security services are less partisan, more targeted and restrained. The FBI disrupts most militias before they lay their first bomb. And if a far-right fundamentalist does demolish a building, federal agents don’t round up all the Proud Boys for 20 miles and beat them up. They mount an investigation and see the perpetrator prosecuted.

I would be worried if U.S. military and federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies showed more polarization. But they’ve been strikingly resilient. So, in many ways, has America’s electoral system. In 2020, the vast majority of Republican election administrators upheld Joe Biden’s victory.

But there are still real risks here in the United States. Do you know who else noticed the resilience of the electoral system? Trump’s most ardent supporters. That’s why the worrying activity now is not restive militias – it is a shortsighted but determined slice of the Republican Party who are filling election administration offices with partisans willing to trade democracy for short-term political gain.

Even then, however, don’t anticipate a civil war. There would surely be protests and angry confrontations. This could instigate sporadic violence in the streets. But a Northern Ireland-style insurgency? That’s unlikely. We shouldn’t ignore the risk. But nor should we exaggerate it.

Instead of focusing on a lone riot, I would prefer that the congressional committee broaden its investigation, heading off furtive efforts to co-opt elections and ensuring that federal agencies continue to be led and staffed by professionals who put country ahead of party.

Frightening but rare events should not distract us from the real present danger.

Christopher Blattman, a professor in the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, is the author of "Why We Fight: The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace." This piece appeared first on USATODAY.com

https://www.yahoo.com/news/events-scarier-jan-6-predicted-095904686.html

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By Anugrah Kumar, Christian Post Contributor

Idol worship is not only in the form of carved images; modern-day idols can be benign-looking desires. And U.S. Protestant pastors have identified at least eight such idols that are negatively influencing church members, according to a new study by Lifeway Research.

On the top of the list of those idols is “comfort,” which about 67% of pastors said is significantly influencing congregations.

“It’s easy to think that those in Christian churches have chosen their God and are faithful to Him,” said Lifeway Research Executive Director

Scott McConnell. “However, pastors quickly acknowledge how divided their congregations’ allegiances can be. These gods don’t have a physical shine, but they compete for the hearts of Christians.”

The next on the list is “control or security,” which 56% of pastors believe is an idol.

The others include “money,” according to 55% of pastors; “approval,” as per 51% of pastors; “success,” as believed by 49% of pastors; “social influence,” as identified by 46% of pastors; “political power” said 39% of pastors; and “sex or romantic love,” as per 32% of pastors.

The study found that younger pastors are more likely than older pastors to identify several of these modern-day idols in their
churches, particularly political power, money and control or security.

“Pastors ages 18-44 are the most likely to say political power (55%) and control or security (72%) are idols they see in their congregations. The younger pastors are, the more likely they are to see money as a rival object of worship. Pastors ages 18-44 (63%) and 45-54 (58%) are more likely to say money is an idol in their churches than pastors 65 and older (46%).”

Older pastors are less likely to identify any of these potential idols among their congregants, Lifeway said. “Pastors ages 55-64 (18%) and over 64 (19%) are more likely to say none of these are idols in their churches than pastors 18-44 (9%) or 45-54 (10%).” McConnell said the study could not definitively explain the large differences between younger and older pastors. “There are signs that younger pastors are of the mindset that idols are rampant today, whereas older pastors may be slower to classify one of these as having significant influence on their people, or they may define idols more narrowly.”

The study further found that ethnicity also plays a role. For example, white pastors (41%) are more likely than African American pastors (29%) to identify political power as an idol in their churches. Similarly, in identifying “approval” as an idol, it was 53% versus 40%.

Furthermore, African American pastors (25%) are more likely than white pastors (13%) to say none of these are idols in their churches.

Pastors’ education also has a bearing on their perception, the study said, noting that those with master’s degrees (64%) or a Ph.D. (57%) are more likely than those with no college degree (43%) to say money is an idol in their churches.

“In many ways, the top three idols pastors recognize in their churches are related,” McConnell said. “Comfort and security draw the hearts of the most congregations, but they are often enabled by the pursuit of more money. Pastors of higher socioeconomic levels are quicker to recognize the influence of security and control while pastors of lower socioeconomic levels more readily see the draw of comforts.”

https://www.christianpost.com/news/pastors-identify-eight-idols-negatively-influencing-church-members.html

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CP CHURCH & MINISTRIES | TUESDAY, JULY 05, 2022
By Leah MarieAnn Klett, Assistant Editor

Tony Evans, the senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Church, said that because the Church instigated the problem of racism in the United States, it’s up to the Body of Christ to serve as the solution.

During a segment titled “Jesus the Center of Racial Reconciliation: Adopting a Kingdom Race Mindset” during the morning session of the second day of the 2022 Southern Baptist Convention's Annual Meeting in June, Evans cited 2 Chronicles 15:2 to explain the unrest seen across the nation.

“When it comes to our racial divide, it was the failure of the pulpit and the failure of the Church which has put us in this ignominious situation today,” Evans said. “And we are told in 2 Chronicles that only when they came together in unity did God bring them rest, verse 15 says, to the distress that was in the land.

“The political, the social, the racial, the class distress that we are facing, that has helped to be caused by the Church, can only be properly dissolved by the Church,” Evans said. “If God can’t get the Church right, the culture can never become right.”

Evans stressed that Satan has “been successful in illegitimately dividing the Church so that the power of God is absent.”

“So now is the time for us to come to the forefront with a plan to let the nation sees something different,” he emphasized.

In recent years, the SBC has faced criticism for how some leaders in the denomination have responded to racism, the debate over critical race theory and instances of sexual abuse in churches. During last year’s Annual Meeting,
then-SBC President Ed Litton promised shortly after his election that he would “build bridges, not walls” during his tenure.

This year, Litton, along with former SBC President Fred Luter, announced an initiative called The Unify Project to build racial unity nationwide in tandem with local churches. The project will be conducted alongside The Urban Alternative, a Christian Bible teaching and resource ministry founded 41 years ago by Evans and his late wife, Lois.

“Southern Baptist Convention, what we hope to do is to start a grassroots movement, a local church initiative in your communities to cross barriers of race, different denominations and groups, to begin to meet with people who are like-minded in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, to offer a Kingdom solution for the divisions that exist in our land,” Litton said.

“The Church should be on the front line of bringing hope and healing to our communities for the glory of God,” he added.

Evans said that The Unify Project will be based on the acronym AAA: One day a year, the community of biblically minded, Kingdom-minded churches will assemble for an annual, one-day fast and prayer session to invite God into the well-being of the community; pastors and church leaders will address the issues facing their communities and present God’s perspective on identity, race, life, marriage and other issues, and finally, perform acts of kindness in their communities.

“A good work in Scripture is something that God is always visibly attached to … a good work is something done for the benefit of the people to which God gets the credit,” Evans said.

The Unify Project is an extension of The Pledge Group, which Litton helped found alongside church leaders in Mobile, Alabama, after the death of George Floyd.

As part of the initiative, which will launch in the fall, churchgoers will be given “kindness cards” encouraging them to do at least one act of kindness weekly toward a stranger. Along with the act of kindness, prayer and evangelism are also encouraged.

“When you do the act of kindness, then you pray for them because most people will accept prayer when you've been kind to them,” the pastor said.

“After you've prayed for them, then you seek an opportunity to share the Gospel with them.”

Evans stressed that once the Body of Christ carries out good works, they will no longer “be ignored,” adding: “Right now we are being ignored because we're not taken seriously and God is not helping us because of our disunity.

“If Christ doesn't come soon, we better get going in a hurry because this is falling apart fast," he concluded. "God is not waiting on the culture.
He's waiting on the Church. It's time for those who helped mess it up to lead the way in fixing it up.”

In a recent interview with The Christian Post, Evans encouraged Christians to act as “bridge builders” and foster relationships with those across the racial and cultural lines “without compromising the essentials of the faith.”

“From God's throne comes righteousness and justice. Righteousness is the standard of right and wrong that is established by God. Justice is the equitable application of God's moral law applied in society. So one is vertical obedience, and the other is a horizontal relationship. And whenever you have the vertical and horizontal you can have the cross.” Evans contended.

“The way you know you're being serious about the conflicts in the culture is that you are visibly and verbally involved in reconciling things that have been historically divided. If all we're doing is discussion, discussing our division and not creating the windshield of reconciliation, because we're living in the rearview mirror of our past history, we will not be moving where God is moving. And if we're not moving where God is moving, we're moving by ourselves.”

Leah M. Klett is a reporter for The Christian Post.

https://www.christianpost.com/news/tony-evans-says-racial-division-stems-from-failure-of-the-pulpit.html

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Jane Yoder-Short
August 5, 2022·3 min read

Last month, U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert declared: “I'm tired of this separation of church and state junk that’s not in the Constitution. It was in a stinking letter, and it means nothing like what they say it does.”

She further declared: “The church is supposed to direct the government. The government is not supposed to direct the church.”

Where in the Constitution does it say the church is supposed to direct the government?

The phrase "separation of church and state" does not appear in the Constitution, but is implied in the First Amendment.

The stinking letter Boebert referred to was likely the 1802 communication between Thomas Jefferson and the Danbury Baptist Association, where he quotes from the First Amendment.

He wrote: “I contemplate with sovereign reverence that acts of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise' thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”

When does a law move toward establishing a religion? When does a law limit the free exercise of religion?

A day after Boebert's rant, the Supreme Court ruled that a Washington state school board discriminated when it disciplined a football coach for praying publicly after games. The decision allows public-school coaches to have postgame prayers on school grounds. Is this a protection of religious freedom or a subtle government endorsement of religion?

As my Amish neighbor passes by in his buggy, I'm reminded of their strict separation from the world. They stay out of the political fray. They aren't about to pray in public or lobby to impose their beliefs on others.

The Amish remind us that in many ways we can't be a Christian nation. As a country, are we ready to turn the other cheek, to non-violently return good for evil, as Jesus proposed?

For those of us not detached like the Amish, separating church and state can be messy. We want to bring our faith into public life.

Boebert views overturning Roe v. Wade as a Christian victory. At Cornerstone Christian Center, she told the audience: "This is the fruit of your labor, of your votes, and of your prayers — this is your harvest."

Is this a case of the church telling the state what to do, or is it a minority using pseudo-religion to further a political agenda?

We have different ideas on how to improve our nation. That doesn't mean religious values can't inform the state in healthy ways.

The religious concern for nature care can spill over into environmental activism. This can benefit our nation. 

The religious concern of feeding the hungry can bring compassion to the state.

When pushing a religious agenda, we need to recognize that we are a diverse society. No one faith should direct the government.

Christians would do well to not get sucked into dirty politics. The church can easily lose its vision when it becomes entangled with the state's agenda.

We recall the inhumane treatment of Indigenous kids at church-run state schools. We avoid remembering how Christian rhetoric was used to justify slavery.

Christianity is presently being courted and used as a political tool in our divided society. Christianity combined with nationalism is a dangerous and stinking mix.

Unlike Boebert, who thinks the church should boss the state, Martin Luther King Jr. had a more nuanced vision. He said: "The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool.”

This vision smells of hope.

Jane Yoder-Short lives in Kalona.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/opinion-wary-those-trying-bring-161841268.html

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Herald-Tribune
Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Mon, August 8, 2022 at 3:00 PM·4 min read

Christian nationalists are taking over the US

It is now obvious that radical Christian nationalists are working to eliminate the rights of anyone who is not Christian, white or straight.

The Supreme Court’s extremist conservatives have imposed on us their Catholic beliefs – not shared by many religions – that life begins at conception. And on-field Christian prayers are now allowed at taxpayer-supported public-school sports events.

This is not the freedom of religion or the separation of church and state envisioned by our founders.

Steve Bannon is orchestrating a national precinct strategy to put extremist Christian nationalists in local governments, mainly to control elections. Locally, Mike Flynn has quietly recruited candidates for the Sarasota Memorial Hospital Board.

Gov. Ron DeSantis has taken away our freedom of speech, enshrined in the First Amendment, by banning school textbooks and library books that he doesn’t like, and prohibiting schools and businesses from discussing subjects he doesn’t like.

With DeSantis’ increasing accumulation of power, private militia, divisive rhetoric and petulant retribution against a major business that dared to disagree with him, as well as increasing incidents of antisemitic vandalism, Florida is starting to resemble an authoritarian state.

If you are not Christian, white or straight, your vote is critical to deny GOP radical Christian nationalists all political offices.

– Virginia deHaven Hitchcock, Sarasota

No harm discussing education alternatives

It’s sad when editorial boards substitute snark, and a petty airing of grievances at that, for substance when discussing the future of education.

But such was the case when the Herald-Tribune dismissed the mere mention of using military service as a qualification to teach in Florida (“Degree-less veterans in classrooms is a bad idea,” July 31).

Private employers and law enforcement often use military service in lieu of college experience, as the discipline, leadership and maturity that veterans acquire are excellent predictors of future success in the workforce.

This doesn’t mean that all jobs qualify for this kind of exemption, but it opens critical alternatives for employers and employees.

The Texas Legislature recently held hearings about this very dilemma: The individuals who could best teach skills in industrial arts can’t teach in the public school system because they aren’t “certified.” Who better to teach future electricians than those in the field?

Anyone watching the hearings saw legislators pledging to address the problem, not sweeping it aside.

Espousing the failed dogma of faceless educrats and teachers’ unions can only continue the pain inflicted upon future generations of schoolchildren. It’s no feat of strength to discuss alternatives.

– Alexander W. Stephens, Lakewood Ranch

Dems: Focus on abortion, guns and term limits

While the initial predictions indicated a sweeping national and state GOP wave in November, it now appears the Democrats may have a “puncher’s chance” of turning the tide. Perhaps they should adopt a simplified laser-like focus on three issues where they can clearly differentiate their positions from Republicans.

• Implementing reasonable abortion restrictions that are consistent with positions held by the majority of voters.

• Supporting bans on assault weapons and multi-capacity ammunition devices.

• Embracing a national term-limit solution based on a single six-year presidential term, with a 12-year cap on congressional office holders and an 18-year limit on Supreme Court judges.

This approach would align Democrats with the majority of American voters, address unacceptable levels of “only in America" gun violence and replace professional politicians with citizen servants.

– Bob Robinson, Venice

Government should butt out of women’s lives

It is beyond comprehension how abortion opponents feel they can take it upon themselves to interfere with the private lives and health of girls and women – and, by extension, men – everywhere.

They usually are not physicians, ministers or priests, nor do they seem educated in the ramifications of pregnancy and its possible dangers both to female and fetus – fetal encephalitis, ectopic pregnancies, miscarriages. Not to mention the pregnancies caused by rape and incest, and the horrors of resulting trauma.

The overturning of Roe v. Wade opens the door to unimaginable future wrongs against the rights of U.S. citizens. “Outrage” is too pacific a word to describe what is happening in our country with our justice system and our political democracy due to far-right extremist/believers.

I would suggest that opponents of abortion either acquire or review the Constitution and Bill of Rights – and also study American history.

Sydney R. Palmer, Bradenton

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Keep nationalists out of office, give Democrats a ‘puncher’s chance’

https://www.yahoo.com/news/monday-letters-fight-christian-nationalists-100020825.html

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Samuel Perry, Associate Professor, Baylor University
August 5, 2022·5 min read

In the run-up to the U.S. midterm elections, some politicians continue to ride the wave of what’s known as “Christian nationalism” in ways that are increasingly vocal and direct.

GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right Donald Trump loyalist from Georgia, told an interviewer on July 23, 2022, that the Republican Party “need[s] to be the party of nationalism. And I’m a Christian, and I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists.”

Similarly, Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Republican from Colorado, recently said, “The church is supposed to direct the government. The government is not supposed to direct the church.” Boebert called the separation of church and state “junk.”

Many Christian nationalists repeat conservative activist David Barton’s argument that the Founding Fathers did not intend to keep religion out of government.

As a scholar of racism and communication who has written about white nationalism during the Trump presidency, I find the amplification of Christian nationalism unsurprising. Christian nationalism is prevalent among Trump supporters, as religion scholars Andrew Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry argue in their book “Taking Back America for God.”

Perry and Whitehead describe the Christian nationalist movement as being “as ethnic and political as it is religious,” noting that it relies on the assumption of white supremacy. Christian nationalism combines belief in a particular form of Christianity with nativist and populist political platforms. American Christian nationalism is a worldview based on the belief that America is superior to other countries, and that that superiority is divinely established. In this mindset, only Christians are true Americans.

Parts of the movement fit into a broader right-wing extremist history of violence, which has been on the rise over the past few decades and was particularly on display during the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021.

The vast majority of Christian nationalists never engage in violence. Nonetheless, Christian nationalist thinking suggests that unless Christians control the state, the state will suppress Christianity.

From siege to militia buildup

Violence perpetrated by Christian nationalists has manifested in two primary ways in recent decades. The first is through their involvement in militia groups; the second is seen in attacks on abortion providers.

The catalyst for the growth of militia activity among contemporary Christian nationalists stems from two events: the 1992 Ruby Ridge standoff and the 1993 siege at Waco.

At Ruby Ridge, former Army Green Beret Randy Weaver engaged federal law enforcement in an 11-day standoff at his rural Idaho cabin over charges relating to the sale of sawed-off shotguns to an ATF informant investigating Aryan Nation white supremacist militia meetings.

Weaver ascribed to the Christian Identity movement, which emphasizes adherence to Old Testament laws and white supremacy. Christian Identity members believe in the application of the death penalty for adultery and LBGTQ relationships in accordance with their reading of some biblical passages.

During the standoff, Weaver’s wife and teenage son were shot and killed before he surrendered to federal authorities.

In the Waco siege a year later, cult leader David Koresh and his followers entered a standoff with federal law enforcement at the group’s Texas compound, once again concerning weapons charges. After a 51-day standoff, federal law enforcement laid siege to the compound. A fire took hold at the compound in disputed circumstances, leading to the deaths of 76 people, including Koresh.

The two events spurred a nationwide militia buildup. As sociologist Erin Kania argues: “Ruby Ridge and Waco confrontations drove some citizens to strengthen their belief that the government was overstepping the parameters of its authority. … Because this view is one of the founding ideologies of the American Militia Movement, it makes sense that interest and membership in the movement would sharply increase following these standoffs between government and nonconformists.”

Distrust of the government blended with strains of Christian fundamentalism have brought together two groups with formerly disparate goals.

Christian nationalism and violence

Christian fundamentalists and white supremacist militia groups both figured themselves as targeted by the government in the aftermath of the standoffs at Ruby Ridge and Waco. As scholar
of religion Ann Burlein argues, “Both the Christian right and right-wing white supremacist groups aspire to overcome a culture they perceive as hostile to the white middle class, families, and heterosexuality.”

Significantly, in 1995, Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and accomplice Terry Nichols cited revenge for the Waco siege as a motive for the bombing of the Alfred Murrah federal building. The terrorist act killed 168 people and injured hundreds more.

Since 1993, at least 11 people have been murdered in attacks on abortion clinics in cities across the U.S., and there have been numerous other plots.

They have involved people like the Rev. Michael Bray, who attacked multiple abortion clinics. Bray was the spokesman for Paul Hill, a Christian Identity adherent who murdered physician John Britton and his bodyguard James Barrett in 1994 outside of a Florida abortion clinic.

In yet another case, Eric Rudolph bombed the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. In his confession, he cited his opposition to abortion and anti-LGBTQ views as motivation to bomb Olympic Square.

These men cited their involvement with the Christian Identity movement in their trials as motivation for engaging in violence.

Mainstreaming Christian nationalist ideas

The presence of Christian nationalist ideas in recent political campaigns is concerning, given its ties to violence and white supremacy.

Trump and his advisers helped to mainstream such rhetoric with events like his photo op with a Bible in Lafayette Square in Washington following the violent dispersal of protesters, and making a show of pastors laying hands on him. But that legacy continues beyond his administration.

Candidates like Doug Mastriano, the Republican gubernatorial candidate in Pennsylvania who attended the Jan. 6 Trump rally, are now using the same messages.

In some states, such as Texas and Montana, hefty funding for far-right Christian candidates has helped put Christian nationalist ideas in the mainstream.

Blending politics and religion is not necessarily a recipe for Christian nationalism, nor is Christian nationalism a recipe for political violence. At times, however, Christian nationalist ideas can serve as a prelude.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on Jan. 15, 2021.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Samuel Perry, Baylor University.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-christian-nationalist-ideas-going-121259012.html

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Paul Blumenthal
August 5, 2022·11 min read

With its decision overturning Roe v. Wade and ending national protections for abortion rights, the Supreme Court gave the religious right its greatest policy victory since the mass movement of white evangelical Protestants joined hands with the Republican Party more than 40 years ago.

The problem? The religious right’s unpopular policy of banning abortion is now reality, at least in certain states. Republicans can no longer hide behind Roe and express support for unpopular policies that will never become law. They will have to defend abortion bans, and other unpopular restrictions pushed by an emboldened religious conservative movement.

Republicans are already seeing how unpopular banning abortion can be. In the first vote on abortion since the court’s June decision, voters in Kansas ― a state that decisively voted to reelect Donald Trump ― rejected a referendum that would have overturned a state Supreme Court decision protecting abortion rights, and did so by a double-digit margin that exceeded Trump’s win there.

“It’s no longer a theoretical possibility,” Melissa Deckman, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, which tracks public opinion on politics and religion, said about the prospect of abortion bans. “It’s actual reality, and we’re seeing a backlash.”

This should come as no surprise to Republicans. The religious right’s policy agenda has always played second fiddle to other priorities of the conservative coalition that powered Ronald Reagan to victory in 1980 and secured dominance for decades to come.

But it’s not in second place anymore. Trump promised the religious right that “Christianity will have power.” He also promised to only appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe. It “would happen automatically,” he said. And it did.

Now the Republican Party must deal with the consequences of putting such an unpopular policy agenda into motion, and learn whether it will crack their coalition.

“It’s like when the dog catches its tail, it’s kind of like, ’What’s next?” said Bradley Onishi, an associate professor of religious studies at Skidmore College and co-host of the “Straight White American Jesus” podcast.

The public broadly disapproves of the court’s decision to overturn Roe, and opposes policies that ban abortion. Nearly two-thirds of Americans opposed the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a CNN poll found. Sixty-two percent believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to a Pew Research poll. Sixty-five percent said the same thing in a PRRI poll.

“The Christian right currently has very disproportionate influence based on public opinion,” Deckman said. “Their views on those issues are not held by other Americans.”

This is perhaps why past Republican presidents did not prioritize the religious right’s issue set.

Ronald Reagan

Reagan’s 1980 election win reordered American politics around the issue set offered by the coalition that came together to create the conservative movement.

The religious right, animated in particular by the precedent set by Roe in 1973, played a major role in forming that coalition. But their abortion priorities were shelved behind the Reagan administration’s agenda of countering the Soviet Union and cutting taxes, spending and regulations.

“Ronald Reagan ... knows you’re not going to shove that stuff though Congress no matter how much he wants it, certainly not with the makeup of Congress today,” Lyn Nofziger, Reagan’s first White House political director, said in 1986. “Other things, like taxes, the budget and summits, have superseded the social agenda, and they always will.”

It’s not as though the religious right failed to secure any policy victories. Reagan’s Mexico City policy banned federal funding for international NGOs that provided any abortion-related services, including counseling. His Justice Department, headed by abortion rights opponent Ed Meese, pushed in court to overturn Roe. And his administration helped create the strategy of appointing conservative ideologues to the judicial branch with the goal of eventually delivering on social policy.

But Reagan still kept a distance from the anti-abortion movement’s big events. He never personally attended the March for Life, the rally against abortion rights held every year on the anniversary of Roe, instead sending a video message each time.

Two of Reagan’s four Supreme Court nominations ultimately proved a disappointment. Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy voted to affirm Roe while also upholding some abortion restrictions in the 1992 decision in Casey v. Planned Parenthood, which many thought would be the case that overturned Roe.

George H.W. Bush

Casey came down in the final year of President George H.W. Bush’s administration. A blue-blood New England Republican whose family helped found Planned Parenthood, Bush was a foreigner in the world of movement conservatism. He praised the Casey decision for upholding some restrictions on abortion, but did not comment on its affirmation of Roe.

Afterward, he distanced himself from the GOP platform opposing abortion rights, while first lady Barbara Bush reminded voters that she personally supported a woman’s right to choose. All of this was clearly intended to appeal to the 1992 general electorate that did not support banning abortion.

George W. Bush

Surrounded by male Republican lawmakers, President George W. Bush signs legislation banning so-called "partial-birth" abortions. (Photo: Brooks Kraft via Getty Images)

Bush’s son George W. Bush, himself a born-again evangelical Christian, proved a more reliable supporter of the anti-abortion religious right, which by the time of his 2000 election had become dominant within the party.

Bush II proudly spoke about his Christian faith, repeatedly declared his support for a “culture of life,” and campaigned strongly in opposition to same-sex marriage, another religious right priority, in 2004. The press credited “values voters” with helping his reelection campaign, and the moniker was taken up by the powerful evangelical pastor James Dobson for his annual political summit.

Congress, of which Republicans had won full control in 1994, passed legislation banning procedures that the anti-abortion movement called “partial-birth abortion,” and allowing prosecutors to charge people with a number of felony crimes for harming or killing an unborn fetus. Bush signed the legislation.

And yet, he kept the issue of overturning Roe at arm’s length.

“What he did not do was call for the reversal of Roe,” political scientists Thomas Keck and Kevin McMahon wrote in their 2016 article “Why Roe Still Stands: Abortion Law, the Supreme Court, and the Republican Regime.”

In fact, Keck and McMahon note, “Bush never publicly uttered the word ‘Roe’ during his eight years in office.”

The religious right faded from the political headlines after a series of scandals from Terri Schiavo to Ted Haggard in the later Bush years.

Barack Obama

After Obama won election in 2008, attention shifted to the populist Tea Party and its libertarian economic rhetoric backed by billionaire industrialists like the Koch brothers. The rank-and-file of the Tea Party did include libertarians studied in Austrian economics, but also the same white evangelical Protestants who make up the religious right.

“Next to being a Republican, the strongest predictor of being a Tea Party supporter today was a desire, back in 2006, to see religion play a prominent role in politics,” sociologist Robert Putnam and political scientist David Campbell wrote in 2011.

The overlap of the Tea Party with the religious right voting base became clear as states passed a record number of abortion restrictions following the Republican wave election in 2010. But when Republican candidates voiced the extreme positions of the religious right on abortion during this period, like Senate candidates Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock did, they paid the price and lost.

Donald Trump

Then came Trump, whose 2016 presidential run, and focus on immigration and trade, drew attention to Rust Belt communities, the swing voters who helped him win Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and the far-right nativists and racists he attracted from the fringes.

It was white evangelical Protestants, however, who have been his strongest supporters since he won the GOP presidential nomination in 2016. Today, they are the biggest supporters of his lies about the 2020 election after religious right iconography proliferated at the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Although Trump is a thrice-married philanderer accused of more than a dozen acts of sexual assault including rape, his apocalyptic rhetoric and blood-red symbolism of “American carnage” spoke to a long history of religious nationalism in the country. And, partially out of political necessity due to his irreligious lifestyle, he promised to give the religious right everything they wanted, from symbolic recognition to policy.

“He said things out loud that previous presidents had been more measured in talking about,” said Ruth Braunstein, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut and an expert on the religious right. “And he was not in any way as concerned about presenting a pluralist America. That was incredibly satisfying to white evangelicals, to feel seen in that way.”

In 2020, Trump became the first sitting president to attend the March for Life in person.

Donald Trump was the first sitting president to attend and speak at the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C., which he did on Jan. 24, 2020. (Photo: OLIVIER DOULIERY via Getty Images)

Trump also gave the religious right three Supreme Court nominees, who he promised would overturn Roe. And they did.

“One more reason that Trump remains the de facto leader of the Republican Party is he gave them everything they wanted in ways his more Christian predecessors didn’t,” Onishi said.

But there was a reason those prior Republican presidents, Congresses and even Supreme Court majorities decided to hold off on fulfilling the religious right’s wildest dreams.

“If Roe v. Wade were overturned, the political agenda would shift,” Yale Law School Professor Jack Balkin wrote in 2003. “For Republican candidates, it would no longer be just a question of defending limited restrictions on abortion. They would have to explain whether they were willing to send women and their doctors off to jail.”

The court’s decision in Dobbs makes real the unpopular position of banning abortion, as well as the penalties that go along with it. It also makes possible a host of even more unpopular policies, like limits on interstate travel, policing the mail for abortion pills and censoring information on abortion from the internet, or even a national abortion ban.

Twenty states have laws on the books that would ban or almost entirely ban abortion. Some of those laws have been temporarily suspended by judges as they face court challenges. The realities of abortion bans ― 10-year-old rape victims fleeing their state to obtain the procedure; pregnant women with nonviable pregnancies being forced into dangerous and painful situations before being allowed to have an abortion ― are quickly coming into focus.

No one knew whether the predicted reaction to the overturning of Roe would come true until Tuesday’s vote in Kansas.

“What the Kansas vote showed us is that bans on abortion are really broadly unpopular,” Deckman, the PRRI chief executive, said. “And bans on abortion, or looking to limit access to abortion, is an issue that potentially motivates Democrats than maybe we initially thought.”

Polling by PRRI in the wake of the Dobbs decision showed a dramatic increase to 43% of Democrats saying they would only vote for a candidate who shares their position on abortion. A higher percentage of Democrats than Republicans named abortion as a litmus test issue.

“Historically, abortion has really motivated Republicans to go out to vote,” Deckman said. “Now we are seeing it motivate Democrats.”

How that will change elections in 2022 and beyond is still unknown. Already, Democrats are running ads attacking Republican candidates, like Arizona Senate hopeful Blake Masters, Michigan gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon and Pennsylvania gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano, for their support of abortion bans without exceptions for rape, incest or saving the life of the mother.

Voters in Kentucky will be the next to cast a vote directly on abortion, with a constitutional amendment to ban abortion in the state on the ballot in November. Michigan residents are also likely to have the opportunity to vote, as abortion rights activists submitted signatures for a constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights in July.

These amendment votes, like the vote in Kansas, are direct referendums on the abortion issue. But the end of Roe means that races up and down the ticket, from governor and state attorney general all the way down to district attorney and sheriff, are now colored by the politics of abortion.

The religious right finally got what it wanted. But at what cost?

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/religious-agenda-center-stage-again-160033800.html

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LA Times
Stephanie Coontz
Sun, August 14, 2022 at 6:00 AM·9 min read

As a historian in the age of the 1619 Project and the debates over “critical race theory,” I find many of the audiences I address fall into one of two camps. Some celebrate American exceptionalism and resist dwelling on horrors like slavery or settler colonialism. Others primarily see a centuries-long saga of white supremacism and oppression.

The shameful institution of slavery must loom large in any honest account of American history. But so should the struggle of both Black and white abolitionists to end that institution. Recognizing those who fought from the very beginning to extend the ideal of equality beyond white men is essential to understanding the American story. We shouldn’t be afraid of schoolchildren learning why our nation needed those heroic reformers.

And yet, since January, legislators in more than half the states have introduced bills forbidding schools from teaching that America’s founding documents had anything to do with defending slavery or from discussing any other “divisive concepts.” Typical is the wording of the Florida and South Dakota bills, which prohibit use of material that makes anyone “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress” on account of “actions committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, sex, or national origin.”

This is a new twist on old efforts by political demagogues to stoke white racial anxieties. Over the past 100 years we have heard that “they” are coming to rape “our” wives and daughters, take “our” jobs, waste “our” tax money, steal “our” wallets, and murder us at random. Now, it appears, they’re coming to hurt our feelings!

But although studying the history of slavery and settler colonialism ought to be disturbing, it doesn’t have to be demoralizing. We need to tell the full story of slavery because without doing so there is no way to understand the heroism of those who fought for equal rights. The only people who should feel “discomfort” in learning American history are individuals who refuse to build upon the efforts of those early visionaries. A case in point is the difference between today’s White evangelical leaders and their forbears, who actually did believe that Black Lives Matter.

In the era when our nation was founded, it truly was revolutionary to claim that all human beings had the right to be treated humanely and equally. For most of history the morality of slavery was never questioned. People resisted being enslaved, but they did not condemn the existence of slavery. And because people believed it was perfectly acceptable to kill or enslave those they conquered, they felt little need to claim their victims were inherently inferior. Subordination was the way of the world, with citizens subject to kings, wives to husbands and slaves to masters.

Profit, not racism, was the primary impetus for the expansion of the African slave trade and the establishment of an African labor force in the Americas. But racism gradually became the primary defense of slavery.

Slave owners responded to an emerging global market by combining the ruthlessly impersonal profit calculations of mass production with the cruel intimidation required to extract maximum effort on exhausting tasks while forestalling resistance by enslaved people, who vastly outnumbered overseers and owners.

But at the same time, the rise of capitalism and the overthrow of autocratic rulers challenged traditional justifications of social hierarchy. More and more people asserted that “the whole human race is born equal.” Some would go on, for the first time in history, to build a movement to abolish slavery, not merely to emancipate an individual or a specific group.

When American revolutionaries claimed an “inalienable” right to liberty without demanding an end to slavery, many people pointed out the contradiction. In 1774, an anonymous “Son of Africa” challenged the rebel colonists to “pull the beam out of thine own eyes.” Caesar Sarter, who was once enslaved, urged the revolutionaries to liberate all slaves as “the first step” toward freeing themselves.

Some white Americans rose to the challenge. Vermont abolished slavery in 1777, giving Black men the vote. In 1781, two Massachusetts slaves, Elizabeth Freeman and Quok Walker, sued their masters for freedom. Both managed to convince white jurists that slavery violated the state’s constitution, which stated that “all men are born free and equal.” Anti-slavery sentiment became widespread during and after the American Revolution.

But there was an ironic backlash. Once revolutionaries articulated mankind’s right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” those who supported — or just tolerated — the subjugation of other human beings were put on the defensive.

Very few people like to admit it when we put selfish interests ahead of moral convictions. Patrick Henry, the famous orator who supposedly once declared “Give me liberty, or give me death,” strikes me as an exception that reveals something important about the psychology that helped create American racism.

In 1773, a Quaker abolitionist sent Henry an antislavery pamphlet. When I first began reading Henry’s answer, I thought the pamphlet had done its trick. In line after line, he describes slavery as an “Abominable Practice … a Principle as repugnant to humanity as it is inconsistent with the Bible and destructive to Liberty.”

So I was shocked when Henry goes on to admit that he himself owns slaves and has no intention of freeing them, due to the “general inconvenience of living without them.” He labels his conduct “culpable,” saying “I will not, I cannot justify it.” At his death in 1799, he still owned 67 slaves, whom he bequeathed to his wife and sons.

Very few people can live with that level of cognitive dissonance. Racism offered one way to resolve it.

In the late 18th century, and especially in the first half of the 19th, a sustained campaign was launched to explain away the contradiction between the rhetoric of the Declaration of Independence and the reality of a Constitution that tolerated slavery. Black people, Indians and other non-European groups began to be described as less than fully human, incapable of exercising the responsibilities of liberty.

So even as abolitionism gained momentum, racist invective, which historian Van Gosse notes had been “episodic prior to the 1810s,” became far more common and considerably more vicious. In the South, free Black people faced increasing restrictions. Violent riots against them flared up in the North, reaching a high point in 1863, when demonstrators against the Civil War draft vented their fury on Black neighborhoods.

But to my mind these terrible trends make the resistance to such behavior by a courageous minority of Americans all the more inspiring. And resistance there was. Two recent books, “The Slave’s Cause” by Manisha Sinha and “Standard-Bearers of Equality” by Paul J. Polgar, describe how a “radical, interracial movement” consistently advocated for racial equality from the 18th century onward, gaining support even as racism hardened and slaveholders pushed their interests more aggressively.

Black social reformers like Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth and Sarah Parker Remond rallied huge followings of white and Black Americans in support of racial equality. By the 1840s, legislators in Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire were routinely defying racially-exclusionary federal regulations. In the free states, interracial crowds spontaneously formed to rescue men and women caught up by slave catchers. The 1840s and 1850s saw interracial rescues in nearly every free state, with dramatically large turnouts in Chicago, Syracuse, Detroit and Buffalo. When a fugitive captured in Boston in 1854 was returned to slavery, 50,000 protesters lined the streets shouting “Shame! Shame!”

Then the war itself turned many skeptical white Northerners into strong supporters of abolition and equality. Union soldiers’ diaries and letters show this transformation occurring as young Northern men saw slavery up close, while fighting alongside Black comrades.

Legislators who worry that schoolchildren who learn an unexpurgated version of history will “denigrate” our founders are probably right to fear that youths who discover Patrick Henry’s choice of convenience over conscience will be unimpressed by his “liberty or death” oratory. But there are plenty of other heroes — Black, brown and white — to take his place. In fact, many young white people will find some groups of their ancestors more worthy of admiration than their modern-day counterparts.

During the first half of the 19th century, for example, many white evangelicals were ardent abolitionists who would have been horrified by the recent migration of prominent white evangelicals into the camp of white Christian nationalism.

Jonathan Blanchard, founder of Wheaton College, the pre-eminent Christian evangelical college in America, spent a year in Pennsylvania working as a full-time “agitator” for the American Anti-Slavery Society. He called slave-holding “a social sin” that could be addressed only by immediate abolition.

And then, of course, there was John Brown, the devout Reformed Evangelical whose militia battled slavery proponents in the Kansas territory and who led an attack on a federal armory in Virginia in 1859 in an attempt to arm slaves for an uprising. He was tried for insurrection and hanged. Yet his stand against slavery inspired later Union troops to march into battle singing “John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave, but his soul goes marching on.”

Evangelical abolitionists opposed other injustices as well. In 1838 several white Baptist and Methodist preachers not only protested the forced relocation of the Cherokees but also marched with them along the Trail of Tears. Others joined the Liberty Party, which opposed the war with Mexico and condemned the exploitation of Native Americans and Chinese, Mexican and Irish laborers. Many evangelicals were early supporters of female equality.

If our histories refuse to acknowledge the extent and brutality of the injustices that accompanied our nation’s founding, how can we or our children honor the idealism and courage of those who struggled to implement and enlarge the revolutionary demands for equal rights? And if we don’t understand the way people’s belief systems can change, how can we hope to build on the best parts of our heritage and rise above the worst? That’s why an unflinching account of American history can actually give us hope for the future.

Stephanie Coontz, a professor emerita of history at Evergreen State College in Washington

https://www.yahoo.com/news/op-ed-american-history-parade-100055088.html