Taking a look at a (truly boring!) fundamentalist polemic

I just listened to a Christian fundamentalist podcast hosted by Alisa Childers speaking to a Dr. JR Miller on the topic of Does a Belief in a Historical Adam and Eve Matter to Christianity? 08/08/2021.

I'm linking to it but not embedding it. It's useful if you can endure an hour or so of boredom to hear some contemporary Christian nationalist thought. It's theological and Biblical hermeneutical value is, well, very low.

That entire podcast elaborates simplistic fundamentalist anti-evolution and anti-abortion arguments.

But they do try to sound like they read books. Miller says that "what it means to be human thousands or millions of years ago in that framework [evolution] or what it means to be human a thousand years from now is something completely different." (9:20ff in the video)

This is one of many places in this podcast where it would be good for your nonsense detector to start beeping.

The species Homo sapiens, of which modern humans are the only surviving branch, emerged around 315,000 years ago according to current findings. That would be 685,000 years later than one million years ago, and the 315,000 number is the old end of the time range, the more recent one being a piddly 30,000 years ago. (Russell Howard Tuttle, The emergence of Homo sapiens Britannica Online 07/22/2021)

Of course, all this is based on paleontology and biology and carbon dating and other science-y stuff like that, so Dr. Miller may not recognized all that as valid.

He also uses a common fundamentalist trope claiming that Darwinian evolutionary theory is responsible for racism, because only assuming the Adam and Eve story as literally true allows us to say that all humans are somehow equal. Not that Christian nationalists actually believe or behave like they think everyone is equal. But that's because they disapprove of the "bad choices" in life that they perceived non-white people to be making all the time on a large scale.

In fact, the main theme of the podcast actually focuses on that an other elaboration on the narrative that white racism wasn't really all that bad, but anyway it was all the fault of Mean Libruls and them thar scientists they love so much. Because they have to believe in "Darwinism" and that means they have to advocate eugenics - at least as JR Miller argues it.

As a description of the historical development of racism, any relation of their presentation to the actual history is largely incidental.

In case there is something that might be gained by the rhetoric, I'll note the following.

• Both Miller and Childers refer to the concept of imago dei, presumably to sound deep and mysterious because it's Latin. (Wait, isn't it a bit "Catholic" for them to be using Latin? But Miller is cool enough to use the Hebrew term, betselem elohim.) Imago dei is a common theological term referring the notion that humans were created in the image of God.
• Miller talks about the "Darwinian world view," whatever that may be. It's typical for fundamentalists to use that kind of framing to imply that Darwin's scientific theory of biological evolution by natural selection is something comparable to a religion or a sweeping ideology or philosophy.
• It tends to get more hardcore as it goes on. After 26:00, Miller argues/implies that Mean Libruls and "modern," progressive Christians - "progressive" is a dirty word in their world - want to use eugenics to get rid of poor people. (This is nonsense, but it's a stock Christian Right talking point.)
• Miller tosses in miracles in just before that. Because, why not?
• Of course, they get into abortion, which is part of their key ideology, which is deeply opposed to women's rights
• Hitler got his Nazi ideas from Darwin, or something like that. Somehow.
• Miller is broad-minded: He thinks both "Young Earth Creationists" and "Old Earth Creationists" have valuable things to say. He wouldn't want to hurt either of their feelings, I guess.

We see in this video one of the ironies of the fundamentalist approach. The idea is that the Bible should be read literally as science and history. But this long, boring conversation theoretically about the story of Adam and Eve says almost nothing at all about the story of Adam and Eve that appears in the Book of Genesis. The podcast is devoted to a polemic against the theory of evolution and against abortion. It reminds me that Mark Twain did a charming story called Eve's Diary, which is far more worthwhile to read than listening to that podcast.

To close: Don't take any factual or historical claims in that podcast as accurate without verifying it from a good source. But as fundamentalist theology goes, this

A grim example of using Christian fundamentalism to justify gruesome cruelty

In my recent sampling of conservative Christian podcasts, one I found is notably disturbing. It's on the podcast of one-time Christian contemporary music star Alisa Childers, an interview with a religious sort-of-scholar and entrepreneur Clay Jones on the topic, Why Did God Command the Canaanite Conquest? 03/14/2021. I'm linking to it because I'm posting about it but not embedding it. Because it's creepy. The teaser for it on Childers' YouTube channel uses this image:

For the "heathens" and "unchurched" out there, the conquest of Canaan refers to the Israelite (Hebrew) tribes taking control of the area that would become the Davidic kingdom of Israel. "As told by the [Biblical] Deuteronomist, the conquest of Canaan by Joshua and the Israelite tribes was swift and decisive." (Biblical literature: The conquest of Canaan Britannica Online)

Because of the very influential "Christian Zionist" trend among American Christian fundamentalists that more-or-less unconditionally supports and admires the hardcore rightwing in Israeli politics, how the fundis approach the concept of God's granting the Promised Land to the Hebrews in the Old Testament has a more specific contemporary political meaning.

For the most part, even the most devout believers don't have a lot of trouble understanding that traditional stories handed down from the dawn of the Iron Age, which occurred in the Mediterranean region roughly circa 1200-550 BCE, bear some strange and unpleasant signs of the times in which they lived.

So while most Christians and Jews would find some of the actions taken or ordered by God as reported in the Scriptures to be appalling by modern religious and humanitarian standards, many of them either don't dwell on it much or read the stories as symbols and analogies of some kind. Walter Benjamin in his famous Critique of Violence essay, for instance, took the dramatic story of Korah, who rebelled against the leadership of Moses during the long trek to Canaan described in the Scriptures, as a representation of an important aspect of the nature of law. Gustave Doré created a dramatic picture of how Korah ended up:

And, hey, who doesn't occasionally think it would be convenient if the earth would just swallow up people who annoy you?

But Christian fundamentalists face the particular problem of claiming that the Christian Bible is not only divinely inspired but literally the direct words of God infallibly preserved in the version of the Bible they are using. (The Prophet Mohammed had to settle for direct transmission of the Qur'an from the Archangel Gabriel [Jibril].)

Which gets to why Jones' account more-or-less endorsed by Childers in this video is so disturbing. They focus on whether it was just for God to command the Hebrews, as recounted in the Bible, to "not let a soul remain alive" (!) among specified Canaanite tribes. (Deuteronomy 20: 16-18) Jones describes at some length the sins, particularly sexual sins, of which the Canaanites were guilty. And is pretty emphatic in justifying the slaughter of children. It's just gross. He even uses the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, which is in Genesis and describes events long before the post-Exodus conquest of Canaan, in order to share his opinion of what disgusting sluts Lot's daughters were. And the heavy ethnonationalist element he wraps into that explanation along with crude psychological assumptions is hard to overlook.

For anyone taking this discussion seriously as anything but fringe fundamentalism, their commentary on what counts as genocide today is strikingly uniformed, at best. (Rafael Lemkin is credited with coining the term "genocide" in 1944.)

I'm discussing that podcast because it's a good example of how some of the uglier characters in the conservative Christian orbit work with some grim, seriously inhumane sentiments and model grotesque attitudes in the form of religious interpretation.

I would argue that this is an inherent problem for a literalist, fundamentalist version of Christianity. Which is a big part of why authoritarians are so often attracted to fundamentalism. This kind of story is a favorite talking point for village atheists as well as the more highbrow New Atheist variety. But even very conservative versions of Christianity can avoid or mitigate this kinds of conclusion. Very importantly, the Bible is heavily filtered in almost all churches through ministers and teachers, who would generally rather not try to talk through theological/philosophical questions of "theodicy," the origin of evil.

For another, the Christian religion generally embraces the notion that Jesus inaugurated a New Covenant with humanity, to replace (or at least hugely supplement) the original divine covenant with Israel as the Chosen People. So even in the broadest concept, Christians already accept that God officially made a reset of how he would relate to humanity. So, unpleasant Old Testament models of conduct can be fairly easily dismissed by arguing that they were officially updated with the New Testament.

In reality, mainstream Catholic and Protestant Biblical scholars have little problem with incorporating the findings of historians, archaeologists, and textual critics who recognize that in terms of actual history, there is limited material evidence for the conquest of Canaan as described in the Old Testament. Or for the Exodus out of Egypt, for that matter.

None of that makes it any less sickening how Clay Jones uses a crude fundamentalist to justify deliberate killing of civilians, very specifically including children. He even makes the argument that the Hebrews were doing the Canaanite children a favor to put them to death because it meant they (probably) all went to Heaven. And at least some in his audience will have no problem in applying that alibi to contemporary situations. This is sick stuff. With sadistic smiles included during the telling.

Checking in with Allie Beth Stuckey and other denizens of The Blaze

Following up on some of the rightwing nonsense around the latest conservative moral panic over "critical race theory," I've listened to some podcasts by Allie Beth Stuckey, a Southern Baptist who is able to attract people who count as rock stars in the SBC (Southern Baptist Convention), like Brother Al Mohler, who has a reputation as the leading Southern Baptist theologian. Although as the SBC continues to lurch rightward in its theology and politics, even Brother Al is starting to be regarded as dangerously moderate by many SBC conservatives. Other guests featured on her podcast recently include more secular figures like Georgia's pro-voter-suppression Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and longtime rightwing Republican ideologue Ken Blackwell.

Political chameleon Joe Rogan is also a recurring guest on Stuckey's program. Both Stuckey and Rogan are part of Glen Beck's politically conservative Blaze group. There a 06/16/2021 video of her with Rubin as a guest in which they exchange current Republican talking points with each other while warning that Joe Biden intends to Communize the US.

Her podcasts are pretty boring. Because a major theme is to provide reassurance and comfort to fundamentalist Christians who are constantly plagued by having to interact with people from what they disparagingly call "the world." But they do recall for me some of the long-standing, typical features of fundamentalist theology and church teaching.

In this episode of Stuckey's, How to Talk to Progressive Christians 05/04/2021, her guest is Alisa Childers.

This episode is sponsored by something called the Freedom Project Academy, which sounds pretty dodgy to me. To be fair, not everyone thinks so. The John Birch Society touts it on their website.

Stuckey's broadcast seems particularly targeted to women. This is consistent with the SBC principle of "complementarianism," a church doctrine/policy/ideology that holds not only that women cannot be SBC ministers - a policy the SBC shares with the "papist" Catholic Church - that they shouldn't even teach men in a religious context. (See: Yonat Shimron and Bob Smietana, Beth Moore apologizes for her role in elevating ‘complementarian’ theology that limits women leaders Religion News Service 04/07/2021)

The conversation with Alisa Childers doesn't really offer much new in conceptual terms. That's kind of the whole point of Christian fundamentalism, as the stereotypical but unfortunately realistic example of "God said it, I believe it, and that's all there is to it." Or some variation thereof:

Of course, there is always more to "it."

One thing that strikes me is that Stuckey takes a pleasant, intelligent tone. Don't look for Marjorie Taylor Greene types of provocations from her. And the fundamentalist framework she uses is effectively in staying in that tone, because she normally engages with like-minded believers and continually frames the discussion in the terms of fundamentalist thought. This approach doesn't work so well in a context where critical analysis is called for, or with guests who would respectfully decline to accept the really narrow fundamentalist framing she uses.

But I do have to give her credit for one of the more eye-catching podcast titles I've come across, Was Jesus a Palestinian Communist?

In Stuckey's corner of Christianity, the kind of doctrinal references she provides can sound like serious intellectual engagement when takes on their face. For instance, Stuckey and Childers discuss the Trinity, one of the more inscrutable Christian doctrines, that holds God to be a single deity but three divine Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This is a concept that took a long time to emerge in its current form and is very much a later interpretation, not a formula spelled out in that way in the New Testament Scriptures fundamentalists hold to be "inerrant." The Britannica Online article on the life of Jesus by Jaroslav Pelikan, E.P. Sanders et al, has a section called The dogma of Christ in the ancient councils of Jesus that gives an overview of the longstanding theological controversies over the definition of what mainstream Christianity came to call the Trinity.

Stuckey and Childers use the concept of the Trinity is the most narrow sectarian way, to argue that the God worshipped by the Jews (including Jesus of Nazareth, btw) and Muslims is not at all the same God Christians worship because Jews and Muslims don't acknowledge the Trinity. And to argue that other groups who emerged from the Christian tradition and consider themselves Christian, like the Mormons, are not really true Christians at all because they depart in some way from their fundamentalist formula of the Trinity.

In that podcast after 29:00, they discuss the observation that women fundamentalists seem to be more likely than men to be attracted to what the call "progressive" Christianity, "progressive" being like a cuss word in their environment. That would be an interesting topic on which to elaborate, though any thoughtful discussion of it would quickly start trampling on the SBC's "complementarian" understanding of proper gender roles.

But that episode is also striking in how we can see to whom the discussion is addressed: to men and particularly women who are in fundamentalist church communities who feel that they should only be personally close to people in that sphere, but are confronted with the reality that there are people they care about who do not share the fundamentalist worldview. Childers even starts off by acknowledging that it is not unusual for people to become alienated from the fundamentalist environment because of some real harm or serious disappointment they encountered within it.

Still, the context is not about how good conservative Christians can find a way to appreciate that their parents, siblings, close friends, and even husbands may experience their religious views, or reject religious views altogether, and still maintain those relationships. The framework in which they discuss it is proselytizing, which is a central impulse for fundamentalist Christians. And even imperative, because their view holds that people who are not "saved" (in a right relationship to God) will spend eternity in Hell, a place of eternal torment. For some people, that can become a painful dilemma.

But the Stuckey-Childers conversation doesn't suggest any helpful coping strategies for people in that situation other than trying to convert the others. The discussion is largely about talking points to use in proselytizing pitches to people who have succummed to "progressive" Christianity.

Stuckey's most recent YouTube video of the moment (06/18/2021) about the dangers of demons with a former "faith editor" at The Blaze, Billy Hallowell. Stuckey seems to think the anti-demon guy might be a touch too liberal for her liking.

American Christianity and white racism

Robert P. Jones makes an important observation about how the internal, individualistic emphasis of Protestant fundamentalism can be exploited by political demagogues to mobilize their support for social policies that in some cases are the opposite of what any remotely honest Christian attitude toward others would be. On the other hand, that particular aspect of Protestant fundamentalism doesn't necessarily in itself make its adherents more receptive to white racist attitudes.

In an interview for the liberal Catholic magazine Commonweal with Regina Munch, Baptizing White Supremacy, Jones observes:

One of the consequences of the emphasis on a personal relationship with Jesus is that it is so hyper-individualistic - an internal, psychological, and emotional kind of connection to God. When the beginning and the end of religion is seen in that kind of relationship, what gets screened out are social injustices and systemic injustices, particularly around race. It becomes a way for white Evangelicals in particular to feel very comfortable with their own personal religion in a way that’s very disconnected from any claims about inequality or injustice by their African-American brothers and sisters. It falls on deaf ears because it’s considered outside the realm of what’s most central to being Christian. [my emphasis]

He continues with this point:

This idea of purity and innocence I think is the biggest stumbling block. It’s personal, right? If some of the best parts about ourselves have been formed by the church, how can it also be true that some of these awful things in our history are true? I just think those two things can be true at the same time. If we white Christians want to hold on to and pass down the good to our children and grandchildren, I think there’s no way to do that without seriously wrestling with the bad and doing everything we can to put a sharp and bright light on it so that we can excise it, so that we’re handing less of a muddled mess down to the next generation. [my emphasis]

Jones certainly isn't the first person with a Southern Baptist background to make such an observation. The singer-songwriter Kate Campbell, who is the daughter a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, dramatized the point in a song inspired by an actual case of a snake-hanling Pentecostal minister who attempted to murder his wife by rattlesnake bite. Signs Following (Snake Song) 08/05/2014:

The closing lines of the last verse:

And somewhere on Sand Mountain
A woman needs no proof
That evil can lie so close to truth

Such sects have someetimes been called Snakebite Baptists, but Pentecostals are not Baptist. Although Pentecostal religion can often promote extreme individualism of the kind Jones desribes, too.

But as Jones also explains in the interview, Christian white supremacy is not exclusive to Protestant fundamentalism. He cities a study in which white American Catholics and white non-fundam,entalist Protestant shows similar levels of anti-black prejudice. Mainstream Protestantism and the Catholic Church generally place less reliance on subjective, mystical experience of the kind Protestant fundamentalism stresses. It has always been a major different between Protestant and Catholic theology that Catholicism postulates a number of mediations between God and humanity: priests, bishops, cardinals, saints, angels. But that study suggests that the degree of mystical thinking involved doesn't necessarily directly affect how susceptible American Christians are to white racist ideas.

Jones notes that "the people who aren’t shocked about these numbers are African-American Christians."

Obviously, American Christians, including whites, have also drawn more left-leaning social-activist and antiwar lessons. William Jennings Bryan is a fmous example: a radical social reformer, antiwar - but also (sadly) notorious for his fundamentalist anti-evolution stance.

Still, since respect for empirical facts in the world is also a personal and social skill that has political relevance. So the degree of otherworldly thinking a person indulges can have a significant effect on their views of political issues. So when a Christian fundamentalist religious position leads someone to an ideologically anti-science outlook - a position common to fundamentalists but not to mainstream Protestants or Catholics - that also undermines the kind of critical thinking skills that make people less easily susceptible to political demagoguery.

And since demagoguery depends heavily on exploiting fear and on polarizing good in-groups against threatening out-groups - or, more specifically, narrative constructions of such groups - presumably Christians who are committed to versions of the faith that stress a punishing God and the exclusive virtue of their denomination or sect would be more vulnerable to rightwing political demagoguery.

The Christian Right and the radical Republicans (a perennial topic)

Adele Stan (When Money Meets Jesus Democracy Journal Spring 2020) reviews a new book by Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism (2020). Stan's review includes a nice brief sketch of the Christian Right that has such a prominent role in the Republican Party.

And she reminds us that the relationship between the Christian Right and the Trumpified Republican Party, which seems unlikely on its face to people who aren't particularly familiar with the kind of white Christian nationalism involved, is not especially hard to understand:

From the outset, Christian nationalism has always been a con, sold to its followers on the false claim that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. David Barton, Stewart shows us, is the foremost purveyor of this myth; she notes that the publisher of Barton’s 2012 book, The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You’ve Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson, felt compelled to withdraw it after National Public Radio checked Barton’s biblical citations only to find that “not one of them checked out.” ... But that hasn’t put a damper on Barton’s career as the right’s favorite “historian,” or in his career with the GOP. For nine years, Stewart notes, Barton served as vicechair of the Texas Republican Party, and in the 2016 presidential campaign, he ran a super-PAC that supported Ted Cruz’s candidacy.

The con is in Christian nationalist and religious-right rhetoric that falsely describes common methods of birth control as abortifacients, routinely and falsely links Muslim Democrats to terrorist groups, claims that “homosexuals” seek to “recruit” your children to their “lifestyle,” and posits that the Earth is a mere 4,000 years old. There’s the rhetorical con that is effectively rewriting the First Amendment to advantage its own religion over all others and compares the social safety net to “slavery.” To a constituency already so distanced from any objective notion of truth, the greatest liar of all the U.S. presidents is a Moses to his people. [my emphasis]

Fundamentalist Christianity has a strong authoritarian component. The desire for safety and order can quickly overwhelm nominal moral and religious scruples.

Al Gore wrote a book called The Assault on Reason (2007) about the danger represented by the continually radicalizing Republican Party, then grimly embodied in the Cheney-Bush Administration, and the dangerously accomodating Democratic Party. That is the ugly and still ongoing situation of asymmetric polarization in Americana party politics.

It is simply no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse. I know I am not alone in feeling that something has gone fundamentally wrong. ...

The single most surprising new element in America's national conversation is the prominence and intensity of constant fear. Moreover, there is an uncharacteristic and persistent confusion about the sources of that fear; we seem to be having unusual difficulty in distinguishing between illusory threats and legitimate ones. [my emphasis]

Gore was highly critical of the way the Cheney and Bush fear-mongered with fabricated "evidence" to invade Iraq:

Terrorism relies on the stimulation of fear for political ends. Indeed, its specific goal is to distort the political reality of a nation by creating fear in the general population that is hugely disproportionate to the actual danger that the terrorists are capable of posing. Ironically, President Bush's response to the terrorist attack of September 11 was, in effect, to further distort America's political reality by creating a new fear of Iraq that was hugely disproportionate to the actual danger Iraq was capable of posing. That is one of the reasons it was so troubling to so many when in 2004 the widely respected arms expert David Kay concluded a lengthy, extensive investigation into the administration's claim that Iraq posed an enormous threat because it had weapons of mass destruction with the words We were all wrong. [my emphasis in bold]

The tone of Christian fundamentalism in its various manifestations in the Christian Right relies heavily on a context of fear. Fear of Hell, fear of temptation, fear to punishment, fear ofd sex, fear of rejection. And they are particularly inclined to look for a Strong Leader and a political discourse of order and control to ease the fear.

And the sense that Trump is on Their Side is simply more important for the Christian Right than the actual religious adherence and personal conduct of the President. That fact stands out in the results of a recent Pew Research Center report, White Evangelicals See Trump as Fighting for Their Beliefs, Though Many Have Mixed Feelings About His Personal Conduct 03/12/2020:

On the whole, Americans care more about having a president who stands up for their religious beliefs than having one who personally shares those beliefs. Roughly seven-in-ten say it is either very (38%) or somewhat (31%) important to have a president who stands up for people with their religious beliefs.

White evangelical Protestants are particularly likely to hold this view. Two-thirds of white evangelicals say it is very important to have a president who stands up for their religious beliefs, about double the share who say it is very important for a president to have strong religious beliefs. And white evangelicals say Trump fits the bill: Fully eight-in-ten white evangelical Protestants say that the phrase “fights for what I believe in” describes Trump “very well” or “fairly well,” including roughly half who say this describes him “very well.” [my emphasis]

Yes, the political culture of Christian nationalism is white Christian nationalism.

And the "white" part of this sentiment is not restricted to fundamentalists:

White evangelical Protestants are not alone in their admiration of Trump. Among other groups of white Christians, smaller but still substantial majorities also express agreement with Trump’s policies and associate him with a number of positive traits, such as intelligence.

For example, roughly two-thirds of white Catholics say the phrase “fights for what I believe in” describes Donald Trump very well or fairly well, and 68% of white Catholics say “intelligent” is a fairly or very good descriptor of Trump. Similar shares of white Protestants who are not born-again or evangelical Christians say the same. And more than half of people in both groups say they agree with Trump on many, nearly all or all of the important issues facing the country.

The survey shows, furthermore, that growing numbers in all three of the largest white Christian groups (white evangelical Protestants, white Protestants who are not evangelical and white Catholics) think that their side has been winning recently on the political issues that matter to them. [my emphasis]

I take this as an encouraging sign, though, "Overall, just 5% of U.S. adults believe God chose Trump to become president because God approves of Trump’s policies."

There is a theological side to this, which is the idea that God in all-powerful (omnipotent) but that human beings have free will. But the entire concept of democracy and government by popular consent assume that individuals are capable of making free choices based on an understanding of their interests and desires. As Al Gore put it:

Our Founders rejected direct democracy because of concerns that fear might overwhelm reflective thought. But they counted heavily on the ability of a "well-informed citizenry" to reason together in ways that would minimize the destructive impact of illusory, exaggerated, or excessive fears. "When a man seriously reflects on the precariousness of human affairs, he will become convinced that it is infinitely wiser and safer to form a constitution of our own in a cool deliberate manner, while we have it in our power," wrote Thomas Paine in his legendary pamphlet Common Sense, specifically warning that the Founders should not take the risk of waiting until some fear seized the public imagination, in which event their reasoning processes would be hampered.

So that is an interesting chink in the authoritarian psychological armor of the Christian Right. Most of them consciously realize that they are making conscious political decisions for which they have some responsibility. But the most striking finding of the Pew survey to me is how indifferent even Trump's Christian Right supporters are to his actual religious beliefs and personal conduct.

To conclude, I want to draw attention to the role the Christian Right has played in promoting a key authoritarian goal to weaken democracy, the attempt to replace actual judicial independence with pro-authoritarian idolgoical partisanship. Jimmy Carter wrote in his book Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis (2005):

Perhaps one of the strangest and most disturbing examples of this political effort by right-wing Christians has been to attack the federal court system itself, after Senate Democrats failed to approve a handful of the -most conservative nominees for federal judgeships. They ignored the fact that this was the same number as Republicans had successfully opposed among Bill Clinton's nominees. Senator Bill Frist, the highest-ranking member of the United States Senate, aligned himself in a public telecast with a fundamentalist religious group to promote false claims that Democratic senators who opposed a few judges were conducting "an assault against people of faith." The group's leader announced that the "activist" judiciary poses "a greater threat to representative government" than "terrorist groups." Dr. James Dobson, another sponsor of the event, called the Supreme Court "unaccountable," "out of control," and "a despotic oligarchy," and accused the justices of a forty-year "campaign to limit religious liberty." (At a subsequent press conference, President George W. Bush [ludicrously] disavowed the connection between religious faith and opposition to the appointment of federal judges.) [my emphasis]

More thoughts on the Christianity Today editorials

I suppose it's possible that the Christianity Today editorial endorsing Trump's removal from office is freeing up some white evangelicals to voice their criticisms of Trump a bit more openly than they felt comfortable doing before.

But I'm very skeptical of the proposition.

Nicole Lafond describes a more optimistic take in The Evangelical War Over Impeachment Has Been A Long Time Coming 12/27/2019:

... according to several prominent evangelicals who have long been critical of Trump, Christianity Today’s editorial, and the subsequent fallout, was the moment at which a conflict within the evangelical community that had been bubbling up for at least three years - and, according to some, for decades - burst into the open.

“This is ultimately about a community deciding, and really wrestling with whether it’s more committed to these cultural values that have been associated with the faith or the fundamental values of the faith itself,” evangelical author and pastor Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove told TPM Friday.

The anti-Trump faction of the evangelical community has been active since the early days of the Republican primaries, evangelical leaders said. But impeachment was the catalyst that encouraged this section of the population to speak out before 2020.

The controversy of the last week “certainly reveals the turbulent waters of white evangelicalism in the U.S.” Shane Claiborne, an evangelical author who founded the activist group Red Letter Christians, told TPM. [my emphasis]

The only thing that will really convince me that a shift away from Trumpism is happening among white evangelicals will be national election results that show a distinct change in voting and/or voting participation that shows white evangelicals shifting away from the Republican Party. As Digby Parton continually reminds us, in the minds of its Republican adherents, conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed. And after Trump leaves office, conservative ideologues will criticism Trump for not having been the Perfect Conservative.

But Trumpism is very much a result of the Republican Party's brand of True Conservatism. If in a post-Trump political world, a shift of white evangelical sentiment in public opinion polls toward Trump himself won't mean anything other than the Republican Party is doing its usual post-Republican-disaster rebranding. The Republican Party will not shift away from Trumpism unless the parties core base voters stop voting for them. Otherwise, there's no reason at this point to expect anything but a continued radicalization of the party. And the Republican base at this point is almost synonomous with white evangelicals.

If we define cultural conservatism as not liking any church music written after 1950 and thinking that smoking pot is tacky, then it's possible that we could see signifiant numbers of culturally conservative white evangelicals be jolted by the Trump experience into recognizing what the Republican Party has been for the last 40 years.

But this is why I keep coming back to the context of authoritarianism is understanding Trumpism. For authoritarians, the conservative "these cultural values that have been associated with the faith" are not distinct from "the fundamental values of the faith itself.” For them, there is no playing off one against the other.

And Republican conservative "cultural values" are deeply embedded in a broader white-identity narrative of: abortion-as-murder; sex as sin; black people as lazy, inferior, dangerous, and bad parents; Latino immigrants as dirty and degenerate; and, last but definitely not least, wimmin as inferior but threatening. As Lafond writes:

Part of the Republican Party’s Nixon-era Southern strategy - which also weaponized racial dogwhistles to recruit white Southerners in the wake of the Voting Rights Acts and the Immigration and Nationalization Act - the Republican Party’s effort to court southern white Christians has been a point of tension within the evangelical community for years.

The effort, coordinated by preachers, political operatives and conservative donors, sought to mobilize voters around “pro-family” values, most notably evangelicals’ opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage.

In a recent book, Wilson-Hartgrove credited that movement with fomenting an all-out culture war in the last decade by painting America as a country in moral decline that needed a fighter willing to step up and take America back.

“Trump became a champion of that agenda as a fighter, somebody who was willing to be more extreme than your average Republican in defending that,” he said. [my emphasis]

The antiabortion cause has taken on such fanatical dimensions that it can serve as an all-purpose excuse for going alone with pretty much any kind of brutality and cruely against living, breathing, human beings. The metaphor as abortion-as-Holocaust has long been common as dirt among antiabortionists. Here's Pat Robertson saying something I remember hearing him saying in the early 1990s:

Wendy, we have fifty-five million babies that have been aborted in this country since Roe v. Wade, fifty-five million, that is a holocaust. You figure, Hitler at the height of his monstrous evil killed six million people, six million; we have in this land of the free and home of the brave, we have killed fifty-five million. (Brian Tashman, Robertson: US Abortion ‘Holocaust’ Worse than Nazi Germany, Will Lead to ‘Wrath of the Lord’ Right Wing Watch 06/25/2013)

As always with far-right ideologues and especially with the antiabortion theme, we have to remember that they lie like breathing. So don't take any statistics from Pat Robertson as having any validity without verifying them from some decent source. (Also, six million is the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust; the number of deaths for which Hitler was responsible is much larger.)

Now, what Robertson is saying there very plainly means that he thinks Hitler Germany was more moral, much more moral, than democratic America today. People like him will comma-dance forever over what such a sentence really means. But there's no point. It's obvious and clear what he means.

And that formulation is a free pass to support any atrocity done by the antiabortion party. Kidnap thousands of migrant children? Nothing in comparison to our Sacred Cause? Expel all 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the US even if it means massive suffering and tens of thousands of deaths, maybe more? We have to think about the Precious Unborn Babies, and, hey, Those Peolple are not part of Our Culture anyway.

I've come to the point that I find it difficult to even entertain the possibility that antibortionists who would associate themselves with a nazi-friendly formulation like Robertson's actually believe their own talk about Unborn Babies. Because I've been around long enough to remember the Vietnam War as a contemporary event. And I've never once my life ever heard a single Republican say we should oppose a war because it would kill Precious Unborn Babies. And all of our wars do that. If Republicans actually have the level of emphathy it would take to imagine a month-old fetus as being a human life that has to be protected, they would never have taken the positions on wars that they do. Not ever. I just don't believe them when they claim their devotion to the Unborn.

The 2020 election will not be decided by Republican base voters defecting to Democrats. It will be decided by Democratic turnout. What the polls are currently showing is that the gender gap is growing significantly. (See Digby's Watch your step Trumpie. That gender gap is a chasm. Hullabaloo 12/27/2019) So there could be significant numbers of women who did vote for Republicans in 2016 and 2018 who will shift their votes to Democrats. And some of the evangelicals among them may be significantly influenced in their choice by things like the Christianity Today articles.

More on (a few) white evangelical conservatives trying to distance themselves from the embarrassment known as Donald Trump

The Christianity Today editorial supporting the Senate to convict Trump on impeachment charges got predictable pushback from the Christian Right. CT has followed up with a supportive piece by their president, Timothy Dalrymple (The Flag in the Whirlwind: An Update from CT’s President 12/22/2019)

It doesn't distance itself from the position of the earlier editorial, on which I commented here a few days ago.

But it does contain this somewhat puzzling qualification, noting that the impeachment editorial was signed by editor-in-chief Mark Galli:

CT does not have an editorial board. Editors publish under their own names. Yet Galli has stood in the trenches for men and women of faith for over three decades. He has been an outstanding editor in chief. While he does not speak for everyone in the ministry — our board and our staff hold a range of opinions - he carries the editorial voice of the magazine. We support CT’s editorial independence and believe it’s vital to our mission for the editor in chief to speak out on the issues of the day.

For whatever reason, CT does not formally call "the editorial voice of the magazine" an editorial board.

Aside from a Mad King Trump outburst on Twitter, some of the usual suspects did an open letter to CT, the signatories including noted Christian scholars Michele Bachmann, Gary Bauer, James "beat-the-kids" Dobson, Mike "the Huck" Huckabee, Cindy Jacobs, Robert "let's-have-a-civil-war" Jeffress, Eric Metaxas, and Ralph Reed. (Melissa Barnhart, Nearly 200 evangelical leaders slam Christianity Today for questioning their Christian witness Christian Post 12/22/2019)

Neither of the two CT pieces use the word "white" anywhere. But the problem they are addressing is overwhelmingly a phenomenon of white evangelical Christians. As Nathalie Baptiste notes (A Christian Magazine Called for Trump’s Removal. Top Evangelicals Say It’s A Liberal Plot. Mother Jones 12/20/2019):

White evangelicals have always been Trump’s most unwavering allies and voting base, but the impeachment question may have begun to splinter even that group. An October Public Religion Research Institute found that 99 percent of white evangelicals opposed impeachment. (In contrast to the 86 percent of Black Protestants who disapprove of the president.)

You can find stories written by reporters of major media outlets who venture out into the wilds outside the Beltway Village bubble and quote mysterious self-identified evangelicals out in the "heartland" explaining why they support Trump. It's only a mystery to people who somehow haven't managed to catch one of the basic facts about American politics, which is that there is a massive overlap between "self-identified white evangelicals" and "white people who really don't like black people (or Latinos, or gays, or immigrants, or wimmin) very much".

The Christian Post article linked above does mention someone criticizing Mark Galli for supposedly dissing those pore, picked-on white evangelicals that the Mean Libruls criticize just because they're so prejudiced against some many people. Why cain't them Libruls show some respect for POPs (people of prejudice), huh, answer me that!

Here's how Dalrymple dances around that particular (white) elephant in the room:

Out of love for Jesus and his church, not for political partisanship or intellectual elitism, this is why we feel compelled to say that the alliance of American evangelicalism with this presidency has wrought enormous damage to Christian witness. It has alienated many of our children and grandchildren. It has harmed African American, Hispanic American, and Asian American brothers and sisters. And it has undercut the efforts of countless missionaries who labor in the far fields of the Lord. While the Trump administration may be well regarded in some countries, in many more the perception of wholesale evangelical support for the administration has made toxic the reputation of the Bride of Christ.

Galli’s editorial focused on the impeachment, but it was clear the issues are deeper and broader. Reasonable people can differ when it comes to the flagrantly partisan impeachment process. But this is not merely about impeachment, or even merely about President Trump. He is not the sickness. He is a symptom of a sickness that began before him, which is the hyper-politicization of the American church. This is a danger for all of us, wherever we fall on the political spectrum. Jesus said we should give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. With profound love and respect, we ask our brothers and sisters in Christ to consider whether they have given to Caesar what belongs only to God: their unconditional loyalty. [my emphasis]

But Dalrymple makes sure to not identify the Christian Right's political goals with the President they criticize because his a serious embarrassing, sleazy criminal:

The problem is not that we as evangelicals are associated with the Trump administration’s judicial appointments or its advocacy of life, family, and religious liberty. We are happy to celebrate the positive things the administration has accomplished. ...

Similarly, this is neither a criticism of the evangelical Trump voter nor an endorsement of the Democrats. The 2016 election confronted evangelical voters with an impossible dilemma: Vote for a pro-choice candidate whose policies would advance so much of what we oppose, or vote for an extravagantly immoral candidate who could well damage the standing of the republic and the witness of the church. Countless men and women we hold in the highest regard voted for President Trump, some wholeheartedly and some reluctantly. Friends we love and respect have also counseled and worked within the Trump administration. We believe they are doing their best to serve wisely in a fallen world.

Authoritarian atttudes toward women are bound up with the antiabortion position, and militarnt antiabortion groups in the United States have been a key element in spawning not only "mainstream" partisan fanaticism but also the hardcore, violent far-right brand. And the fundamentalist version of "faimily" (patriarchal, heteronormative, excessive sexual repression) and "religious liberty" (effectively treating conservative Christianity as a state religion) are very much part of the authoritarian, anti-democratic "sickness that began before" Trump. Pretending that Trump is somehow an anomaly for today's Republican Party is ducking the reality of the asyymmetric polarization with see in the radicalism of that party.

And, "Friends we love and respect have also counseled and worked within the Trump administration. We believe they are doing their best to serve wisely in a fallen world," applied to people who willingly serve in appointive positions in the Trump Administration is a mealy-mouthed version of "they were just following orders."

Republican doubletalk on Trump and on the Senate convicting him on the impeachment charges

I've never been much impressed with the NeverTrumper schtick. It basically is a way for some Republicans to distance themselves from Trump's vulgarity and sleaze while still advocating for Republican positions and constantly criticizing the Democrats for not being Republican enough.

I've always distinguished John Dean from the NeverTrumpers, because he has been make substantive criticisms of the Republican Party's authoritarianism for a long time. Like in this article co-authored with Bob Altemeyer, who has done extensive research and writing on authoritarianism, Why Do So Many Americans Continue to Support Donald Trump? In a Word: Authoritarianism Justia 03/20/2019:

There are a lot of Americans who do not care for democracy (Altemeyer, 2006 at www.theauthoritarians.org). They do not mind that he fails to follow the Constitution, or that he poses a danger to democracy. In fact, surveys of these people show they would prefer a demagogic autocrat who will “stomp out the rot,” which they believe infects society. Because most Americans see the world differently, this finding may be difficult to accept. It is, however, based on solid science.

The research to which we refer began during World War II and has, over the decades, produced a clear understanding about Americans who are highly submissive to authority, how they became that way, plus a great deal about how they think and maintain their beliefs. This body of science is well known in academic circles, and it is essential to understanding the Trump presidency and his supporters. Yet it is being largely ignored.

I would note that a major body of systematic study on this problem precedes the Second World War, Studies on Authority and Family (1936), carried out and published in 1936 as one in a series of special publication by the Institute for Social Research, aka, the Frankfurt School.

But Dean is aligning himself with NeverTrumper Max Boot on what strikes me as a really bad tactical idea:

This is playing out so far like I dreamed it could, and it can get better if the House Democrats continue to sit on the articles. This is Trump’s nightmare because more can and will come out on his guilt. Mitch’s nightmare too, notwithstanding his pretending otherwise. https://t.co/LEH5KDXGHU

— John Dean (@JohnWDean) December 20, 2019

Not sending the impeachment to the Senate would be taken by virtually everyone as a lack of seriousness on the part of the House Democrats. And it would be.

Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian discuss some other tactical considerations on the timing of formally sending the impeachment to the Senate. (Ana has been particularly sour about establishment Democrats the last week or so.) Nancy Pelosi's Impeachment Fakeout TYT 12/19/2019:

There was an interesting conservative endorsement this week of the need to remove Trump from office, from Christianity Today, a conservative evangelical journal (Trump Should Be Removed from Office 12/19/2019).

(Update 12/23/2019: The editorial was signed by CT's editor-in-chief Mark Galli but speaks in a collective voice of "we" and "our". In a follow-up piece supporting Galli's position, CT's president Timothy Dalrymple writes, "CT does not have an editorial board. Editors publish under their own names. Yet Galli has stood in the trenches for men and women of faith for over three decades. He has been an outstanding editor in chief. While he does not speak for everyone in the ministry — our board and our staff hold a range of opinions — he carries the editorial voice of the magazine. We support CT’s editorial independence and believe it’s vital to our mission for the editor in chief to speak out on the issues of the day." For whatever reason, CT does not formally call "the editorial voice of the magazine" an editorial board, but I've left the original references in this post. The Flag in the Whirlwind: An Update from CT’s President 12/22/2019)

I don't think their editorial board is made up of NeverTrumper types. But in a similar way, it's very tempting for Democrats to praise conservative pitches like this and distribute them on social media as a kind of "evidence against interest" argument.

But the facts in this instance are unambiguous: The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents. That is not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral.

The reason many are not shocked about this is that this president has dumbed down the idea of morality in his administration. He has hired and fired a number of people who are now convicted criminals. He himself has admitted to immoral actions in business and his relationship with women, about which he remains proud. His Twitter feed alone — with its habitual string of mischaracterizations, lies, and slanders—is a near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused. [my emphasis]

But my guess is that this kind of argument will mainly function to give evangelical pastors and members of their congregations who are so inclined something to say that sounds thoughtful and critical while they explain why they support Trump against being removed from office, by Senate conviction or by the 2020 election.

The CT editors also include their arguments from two decades ago for impeaching Bill Clinton on far more frivolous excuses than the very substantial high crimes and misdemeanors that are well documented for President Trump. Because Republicans who are trying to sound thoughtful or prayerful about Trump's conviction still need a whataboutism argument against the Democrats. And readers can make their own judgments about whether their criticism of Trump is as passionate as their criticism of Clinton they quote. It's notable that the very substantial evidence of multiple instances of felony obstruction of justice on Trump's part documented in the Mueller report don't merit an explicit mention in the editorial.

The full editorial on Clinton in 1998 The Prodigal Who Didn’t Come Home 10/05/1998) is notably longer than the current one about Trump. And it doesn't offer any sympathetic alibi language for evangelicals who might want to sound like they disapproved of his affair with Monica Lewinsky but didn't support impeaching him and removing him from office. On the contrary, the 1998 editorial sneers at Clinton's admission that his affair was "inappropriate".

The following excerpts present an notable contrast. From the 2019 editorial:

Let’s grant this to the president [Trump]: The Democrats have had it out for him from day one, and therefore nearly everything they do is under a cloud of partisan suspicion. This has led many to suspect not only motives but facts in these recent impeachment hearings. And, no, Mr. Trump did not have a serious opportunity to offer his side of the story in the House hearings on impeachment.

Did the 1998 editorial show similar understanding for Democrats' concerns about crass partisanship by Republicans? Um, not exactly:

On August 17, Bill Clinton acted like he was cornered. There was no mea in his mea culpa. He no sooner acknowledged an "inappropriate" sexual relationship with a female intern less than half his age, than he started blaming those who were doing their duty in pursuing the truth and upholding the law. Even his subsequent attempts at apology — to his cabinet, to party loyalists, to Democratic members of Congress — looked more like sandbagging operations to shore up crumbling support than like the fruit of personal reflection. For Bill Clinton, there was no openness to being found.

So, for Christianity Today, 1998: Clinton admits wrongdoing then criticizes rabid partisanship in the impeachment process - deserving of total contempt.

Trump and his supporters in Congress staunchly deny that Trump did anything wrong and dismiss the Democratic investigation, which were closer to reluctant and apologetic than rigidly partisan - Trump and his supporters obviously deserve generous Christian sympathy for their objections to Democratic partisanship.

I'm underwhelmed by this conservative kinda-sorta endorsement of a Senate conviction against President Trump.

The Both Sides Do It! alibi for white supremacist terrorism

This may be a case of giving a tiny amplification to a bad piece of political propaganda.

But Trump and the Republicans playing Both Sides Do It on two mass murders this past weekend, one by a white supremacist terrorist in El Paso complete with a racist-nationalist manifesto justifying it, the other by a young man who murdered his own sister and others outside w nightclub in Dayton OH for which there seems to be no evidence at all of political motivations in the shooting.

It always important to remember that that in the US legal system three is a presumption of innocence on criminal charges. The suspect in the Dayton killings was himself killed by police in the incident. The suspect in El Paso was arrested. In his case, the event was a very public one and the shooter was seen by many witnesses and caught on security cameras.

Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian analyse White House spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway's version of it in Kellyanne Conway's IDIOTIC Statement on Dayton Shooter The Young Turks 08/07/2019:

The FBI in an official statement made clear they were approaching the El Paso mass murder as a terrorist event, the Dayton one as a murder (FBI Statement Regarding Shootings in El Paso and Dayton 08/04/2019):

The attack in El Paso, Texas, underscores the continued threat posed by domestic violent extremists and perpetrators of hate crimes. The FBI is supporting its state and local partners in Texas through investigative, intelligence, and technical assistance. The El Paso investigation is also being supported by the FBI’s Domestic Terrorism-Hate Crimes Fusion Cell, which was established in spring 2019. Composed of subject matter experts from both the Criminal Investigative and Counterterrorism Divisions, the fusion cell offers program coordination from FBI Headquarters, helps ensure seamless information sharing across divisions, and augments investigative resources.

The FBI is also providing assistance to the Dayton (Ohio) Police Department’s investigation into the shooting in Dayton, through the Bureau’s Cincinnati Field Office, with support from FBI Headquarters personnel.

The Guardian reports the following on Wednesday (FBI says Dayton gunman who killed nine explored 'violent ideologies' – live 08/07/2019):

• The FBI said investigators have uncovered evidence that the Dayton shooter explored “violent ideologies”. The bureau has opened an investigation alongside the Dayton police department’s homicide investigation.
• White House aides have sought to elevate reports that the Dayton gunman supported leftwing ideas and endorsed 2020 candidates Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, but the FBI said the shooter did not appear to be linked to a “bias motive”.

Claudia Koerner reports in The Dayton Mass Shooter Had An "Obsession With Violent Ideations" And The FBI Is Investigating Buzzfeed News 08/06/2019, "In Dayton, investigators have yet to determine if Betts [the killer] was motivated by a particular ideology, but evidence has so far revealed that he was seeking out information that promoted violence, FBI Special Agent in Charge Todd Wickerham said."

Napp Nazworth at the Christian-fundamentalist-oriented Christian Post wasn't nearly as reserved, coming out with this report on Monday, El Paso, Dayton shootings appear motivated by opposite sides of political spectrum 08/05/2019. Both Sides Do It!

The Christian Post's homepage as of this writing on 08/07/2019 displays this:

The fact is we have a Republican President actively inciting hatred and violence against immigrants and racial minorities and some far-right militants are taking violent, murderous action in furtherence of those hatreds.

The Christian Post is obviously trying to keep itself comfortable for Republicans by tiptoing around the white supremacy and terrorism problems. Richard Land, who passes for a sort of moderate in those circles, writes in the CP (We need more dialogue about the many contributing factors of mass shootings 08/05/2019):

Several vexing problems rending the social fabric of our nation immediately come to mind to jumpstart the honest and frank discussion we must have: Fatherlessness; the failure of our inner cities; racism; identity politics that forever emphasize our differences rather than our common humanity; the mindless glorification of violence in our media and entertainment industry; our failed mental health system; and the systematic disrespect and mocking of police officers, and by implication, disrespect for the law they represent. That’s just the preliminary first draft of a long list of contributing causes.

Here the list with my translations out of RepublicanSpeak in italics:

Fatherlessness [black people! sluts!]; the failure of our inner cities [scary black people!]; racism [black peole! brown people!]; identity politics [feminists! gays! black people! lesbian professors!] that forever emphasize our differences rather than our common humanity [black people are racists!]; the mindless glorification of violence in our media and entertainment industry [the NRA is God!]; our failed mental health system [the NRA is God and Trump is his Prophet!]; and the systematic disrespect and mocking of police officers [scary black people! dope-smoking hippies!], and by implication, disrespect for the law they represent [we should celebrate when white cops murder unarmed black people!].

The Christian Post really isn't much into that leftie idea about the Good Samaritan and all.

They have run some pieces nominally condemning white supremacy as an ideology. (You can't call me a racist and if you do YOU'RE the real racist!)

What the Ilhan Omar flap says about establishment Democratic leadership and their brand of "identity politics"

The Ilhan Omar flap was a self-induced fumble on the part of the establishment Democrats that illustrated some unpleasant facets of the current Democratic Party. Such as, their unwillingness to challenge the rightwing Netanyahu government in Israel even when it works against the self-defined interests of the United States, and even less so leverage American civilian and military aid to demand changes in the settlement policies, for instance, that the US rightly recognizes as in violation of international law.

It also revealed the Democrats' unwillingness to challenge Islamophobia, and even a willingness to play on it. Ilhan Omar is a black Congresswoman who is Muslim, relatively young (37), progressive on most issues, and an immigrant from Somalia. By bashing her, Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer could give a nod to conservative white voters who would never vote for a Democrat in 1000 years that Democrats, too, can be anti-Mulsim, anti-black, anti-immigrant, and against uppity young women - all in one package!

Is that a stretch? I don't think so. There are various kinds of people promoting anti-Semitism. White Christian Congressman Gym Jordan, for instance. (Zack Ford, Ilhan Omar’s critics have little to say about Jim Jordan’s anti-Semitic tweet Think Progress 03/04/2019) But the biggest group by far is made up of fundamentalist Christians. And this isn't a recent recognition. Michael Lind did a great review essay 24 years ago on Pat Robertson's book The New World Order (1991) that details how Robertson presents an anti-Semitic vision of history, Rev. Robertson’s Grand International Conspiracy Theory New York Review of Books 02/02/1995. Robertson did a follow-up book along the same lines, The Turning Tide: The Fall of Liberalism and the Rise of Common Sense (1993). Lind noted in 1995 that Robertson "is the founder and leader of the most powerful grass-roots movement in American politics today", meaning the Christian Coalition, then the most prominent Christian Right group.

Robertson is still around, though his personal influence is not so dominant among the Christian Right as it was in 1995. But anti-Semitic theology is just as present if not more so today as it was 24 years ago. Much of it centers around "End Times" theology, the most prominent versions of which look forward with happy anticipation to the day that all the Jews in the world will be "gathered" into Greater Israel where most of them will be slaughtered in a huge war. The remaining few Jews will then convert to Christianity and the Second Coming of Christ can occur. There are variations on the details. One of the fundamentalists in the following video has the unslaughtered Jewish remnant converting when Jesus returns to Earth. Why Evangelical Christians Love Israel Vice News 05/15/2018 (published on YouTube):

The establishment Democrats are willing to challenge Christian fundamentalist political positions. But they are not willing to directly challenge this kind of incredibly influential anti-Semitism directly. Because Democrats have been tiptoing around Christian fundamentalists since 1978. So when we see things like the Trump-Pence Administration flaunting with their friendship with John Hagee, leader of the group Christians United For Israel (CUFI), a large and prominent fundamentalist group that promotes an anti-Semitic End Times ideology (Kelsey Bradshaw, S.A. pastor John Hagee meets with President Trump to discuss international affairs San Antonio Express 04/05/2017), the Democrats don't rush to denounce them in public, much less try to pass censure resolutions against them.

But a black, immigrant Muslim Congresswoman criticizing the influence of the Israel lobby in promoting US support for the rightwing Netanyahu government, that's something Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer were willing to jump on right away, fecklessly dancing to the Republicans' tune, as they so often do.

Part of what establishment Democrats have done to appear at least critical-minded toward Republican and far-right Islamophobia is to urge that the national, state, and local governments work with members of the American Muslim community to combat extremism. One of the biggest American and European criticisms of Muslim extremism and even Islam generally is their hostility to women's rights. Far-right parties in Europe who are conservative or even hostile toward protecting women's rights, like the far-right Austrian FPÖ and their partners in the "turquoise" faction of the Austrian Christian Democratic (ÖVP) party, use women's rights as one of the main slogans for their Islamophobia and general hostility to Muslims. And as a cover for their own anti-women's-rights stances.

Congresswoman Omar would seem to be a good personal example and advocate for a women's-rights-friendly version of Islam, as one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress. This press release from her office in January is an example, Rep. Ilhan Omar Introduces First Bill Providing Childcare for Workers Affected by the Shutdown 01/24/2019:

Rep. Ilhan Omar (DFL-MN), along with over thirty members of the House Democratic Caucus, introduced the Federal Worker Childcare Protection Act of 2019 today—which ensures that federal employees affected by the shutdown are eligible for reimbursement of their childcare expenses. ... There are about 100 childcare facilities in federal buildings across the country providing care to 7,500 children a day, two thirds of whom are children of federal employees. As long as those daycares are closed, many parents are paying double – fees to their interim provider, on top of fees to the closed daycare to maintain their child’s place once the government reopens.

“What this bill does is simple: it makes sure that the people who are suffering because of the President’s manufactured crisis are at the very least able to cover their childcare expenses,” Rep. Omar said. “This bill is personal for me. I am a working parent with three beautiful children and I know firsthand the costs associated with child care.”

But the Democratic establishment isn't interested in Omar as a model of a small-d democratic and successful Muslim woman. (Much less a large-d Democratic one!) They are more interested in discrediting her as a progressive and a black Muslim immigrant woman. Even at the cost of stepping on the publicity for their own HR1 bill to secure elections and fight corruption. All while tip-toing around Republican white supremacy and anti-Semitism.

Even Chuck Todd was willing to (mildly!) press Congresswoman Liz Cheney on Republican anti-Semitism this past Sunday. (Ben Kamisar, Rep. Liz Cheney blasts House Democrats for 'enabling' anti-Semitic comments Meet the Press 03/10/2019)

Phyllis Bennis was present at the event that the Democratic establishment used to bash Congresswomen Omar, and she describes it in The Democratic Party Attacks on Ilhan Omar Are a Travesty The Nation 03/05/2019:

The most recent attacks on Representative Omar are based on her answer to a broad question about anti-Semitism during a recent town hall meeting at Busboys & Poets in Washington, DC. I was there, sitting just a few feet from Omar, asking a question during the Q&A. She never said that Jews have dual loyalty. She never expressed “prejudicial attitudes” or supported “discriminatory acts” against Jews or anyone else. And yet that is the language being proposed for a Democratic Party–sponsored resolution aimed at undermining Omar’s credibility, and likely that of Rashida Tlaib, the other Muslim woman just elected to Congress. Like Omar, Tlaib, who is Palestinian, stands forthrightly in support of Palestinian rights, against the power of the pro-Israel lobby and other lobbies that use money to influence Congress to support guns, environmental destruction, and Israeli violations of human rights—and she stands against racism and anti-Semitism.

These members of Congress understand that real anti-Semitism in the United States has been rooted in white supremacy since the Ku Klux Klan reemerged in 1915 and added Jews to the African Americans who had long been their primary target. That’s the real anti-Semitism we’re seeing — the violence of the Charlottesville march by Nazis and the Klan, the Pittsburgh synagogue murders, all of it rooted in white supremacy. Criticism of Israel, and of its human-rights and international-law violations and its lobbies, is simply not anti-Semitism. [my emphasis]

The white Christian fundamentalist anti-Semites are also among the whites most likely to support intense white supremacist ideas and practices. And Donald Trump. The prominent "Ex-Eveangelical" writer Chris Stroop (also a scholar of Russia) writes about the centrality of the Christian Right to the radicalization of the Republican Party and to Trump's grassroots supprt (#ChristianAltFacts, or, how the Christian Right Broke America 02/24/2017)

Fundamentalists–including the vast majority of white Evangelicals in the US–are inherently authoritarian. Authoritarianism, for its part, is a form of abuse on a social scale that depends on gaslighting, hence post-truth politics and “alternative facts.” And ... it is the Christian Right’s #AltFacts, post-truth ethos that has radicalized and overtaken the Republican Party. Having broken one of our two major parties, the Christian Right broke America. It’s been a long time coming, but here we are–and since those of ex-Evangelicals who grew up indoctrinated and mobilized to fight the culture wars have been well aware of the plan, many of us are particularly angered and even retraumatized by the white Evangelical backlash that, with 81% of the white Evangelical vote, has brought us the disastrous Trump presidency. [my emphasis]

Branko Marcetic at Jacobin Magazine argues that the Ilhan Omar flap shows that, Actually, the Democrats Don’t Care About Identity 03.09.2019:

The controversies around Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar are instructive. As numerous writers, a number of them themselves Jewish, have explained at length, there was nothing antisemitic or even particularly controversial about what Omar has said about the pro-Israel lobby in DC, which, contrary to what some pundits might tell you, is not synonymous with the Jewish community. Nonetheless, she received a torrent of attacks, much of it from the pro-Israel Right, casting her comments as antisemitic.

Given the prevailing rhetoric over the last few years, one would have expected the Democratic party and its boosters to close ranks around Omar. After all, they’ve spent the Trump administration celebrating women’s defiant voices in politics, urging others to listen and believe women, and making the defense of immigrants a key plank of the party, while valorizing black women and their pivotal electoral role. And here they were faced with a barrage of dishonest attacks on not just an outspoken woman, but an outspoken black, Muslim, refugee woman, whose voice her political opponents were trying to silence at the same time as they lobbed racist attacks at her and she faced death threats.

Instead of adhering to their self-declared principles, the party and its prominent loyalists instead quickly joined the right-wing pile-on against Omar, to the point of putting offensive, racist words in her mouth that she never actually said. In some cases, the same people who jumped to criticize her and silence her voice had previously expressed platitudes about women and girls persevering against adversity, and black women being the party’s backbone. [my emphasis in bold; internal links omitted]

And, of course, it remains the case that Israelis themselves seem to be far more willing to criticize Israel's most questionable policies than even Democratic Members of Congress in the US:

“When the hell will someone in this government let the Israeli public know that this is a country for all its citizens and that every person is born equal. And also, that the Arabs are human beings,” ⁦@GalGadot⁩ https://t.co/gt5Cc0dK4v

— Joe Cirincione (@Cirincione) March 11, 2019

How do Christian fundamentalists justify the notion that God wants Donald Trump to be President?

This column by Holly Meyer looks at the superficial use of the Bible by fundamentalist Christian supporters of the xenophobic Trump-Pence Administration (Sarah Huckabee Sanders says God wanted Trump to be president. She's not the only one who believes that. Nashville Tennessean 01/31/2019). One common claim is that God wanted Trump to be President and therefore supporting Trump is the same as following God's will.

Hudnut-Beumler, an American religious history professor at Vanderbilt University ... [explains] ...

It is rooted in an interpretation of Romans 13 that claims Christians need to obey leaders because God put them in positions of power for a purpose, Hudnut-Beumler said. In that section of the Bible, the Apostle Paul is explaining how to handle an oppressive, external authority, he said.

"Contemporary evangelicals, because they are so biblically driven, when they find a leader they particularly like, they love to go to Romans 13 in thinking about why people should obey or why God has perhaps raised up this leader in this time and what providential role this leader, in this case President Trump, should have," Hudnut-Beumler said.

Hudnut-Beumler gives a good, concise explanation there of how a very selective use of Christian Scripture can be used to say that leaders the Christians quoting it support were put there by God but somehow God demands that they work to oust those who they don't support.

I wouldn't want to promote this kind of argument to the level of theology. Because it's a theological illiterate approach. It's cherry-picking Bible verses for simple political propaganda purposes.

A more responsible Christian view would be to see the US as a democracy in which citizens have a responsibility to choose between less-than-godlike candidates. And that God expects Christians to try seriously to make responsible choices.

Given the shortage of divine qualities among both voters and candidates, presumably God isn‘t entirely thrilled with either the elected officials or the very human voters who choose them.

James Madison in a much-quoted passage from Federalist No. 51 defending the Montesquian notion of separation of powers referred to the shortage of divine qualities among rulers. (It was common to use "men" to refer to people collectively at that time. Or maybe he really was limiting these observations to the male gender.)

... the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department, the necessary constitutional means, and personal motives, to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defence must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man, must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.

I suppose I should add that village atheists, and often more highbrow ones, would agree with Christian fundamentalists, while inverting the argument to say that because Christians must believe the fundamentalist version, even though in the real world most do not, it shows how completely mistaken the entirety of the Christian religion must be. Although it's also fashionable these days for star American atheists to use Islamic fundamentalism to make the same argument. Which finds them arguing about the evils of Islam in the same way Christian fundamentalists do.

Are Christian Zionists starting to think of Jews as actual human beings now?

I just came across a 2017 article in the very respectable Brown Journal of International Affairs by Tristan Sturm, who makes the argument that over the last 20 years or so, the fundis no longer look at Jews as just bit players in their apocalyptic horror show. ("Christian Zionism as Religious Nationalism Par Excellence," 24:1 2017)

"Christian Zionist eschatology has revised its theology from a functional role for Jews to a discursive set of relations with Jews," Sturm writes.

The general Christian Zionist End Times view includes the variation that before the Jews go to Hail, all the Jews of the world will be slaughtered except for a handful who will convert to Christianity, i.e., stop being Jews. Then Jesus will make his Second Coming.

One thing we can assume with complete assurance is that this worldview is not in any way ”pro-Jewish.“

The Christian Zionist view looks forward to the End Times as a thing to be greatly desired. When you enthusiastically look forward to the world being rid of Jews as the culmination of history, my advice to would be: put down your AR-15, stop daydreaming about doing a rerun of the Pittsburgh massacre last Saturday, lay off the Alex Jones YouTube videos, and for God sakes get some competent psychological counseling! Really, counseling and the right kind of psychotherapy can help with this sort of thing.

I don't buy Sturms's argument yet, although I do recognize that how fundamentalist Christian Zionists read the timeless and "inerrant" prophecies in the Christian Bible does change over time. I think he may be overgeneralizing from the rhetoric of "Jews for Jesus" types and Christian Zionists living in Israel.

He also thinks this shift in their view of Jews relates to the increased popularity of "post-Tribulation Rapture" thinking compared to "pre-Tribulation Rapture." (If you have no idea what that means, count your blessings!)

I like his tag line used in the title that "Christian Zionists practice a form of religious nationalism par excellence." But I don't think he really understands the toxic soup of white racism, Christian nationalism, paranoid thinking, and just plain meanness of so much of the Christian Right.