“You
give me your vote and I’ll give you special privileges and do all I
can to codify your worldview in our government.
Both parties have
delivered.”
– Rachel
Laser, head of Americans United
for
Separation of Church and State
In addition to her role at
Americans United (AU), Rachel Laser is a lawyer, advocate, and
strategist who has dedicated her career to making our country more
inclusive. Rachel Laser says …
“This old playbook,
which threatens to normalize the weaponization of religion, is too
easily pulled out and put back in use by those in power who are
seeking to preserve traditional power structures. We especially see
this today with the Trump administration.”
(Meredith
Thompson. “Defending the Separation of Church and State: An
Interview with Rachel Laser.” The Humanist. August 06,
2020.)
In a coordinated effort,
the Trump administration, the US Supreme Court, and state legislative
initiatives like Project Blitz (a full-frontal assault by Christian
nationalists to force a narrow set of religious beliefs into shared
secular laws) are attempting to redefine religious freedom to mean
religious privilege.
James Randy Forbes, a
member of the Republican Party and U.S. Representative for Virginia's
4th congressional district from 2001 to 2017, founded Project Blitz.
The group is a coalition of Christian right groups, including the
Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation, the National Legal
Foundation, and the Wallbuilders Pro-Family Legislators Conference.
Project Blitz has specific
goals – to inject religion into public education, to attack
reproductive healthcare, and to undermine LGBTQ equality using a
distorted definition of “religious freedom.”
In order to achieve these goals, the Project Blitz campaign arms
state-level politicians with model bills, proclamations, and talking
points through its legislative guide.
Project Blitz described
their purpose as “the fight for faith” and cast unnamed political
opponents as attacking faith itself. This is the template for the
method they then turn on groups and individuals. The group has
repeatedly smeared lawmakers that stand against its Christian
nationalist agenda as “anti-faith” in order to undermine their
position.
The Religious Blitz For
Trump
With a huge majority of
evangelical Christians lined up behind Trump, as have white
Catholics. (A May poll by Public Religion Research Institute showed
the president’s standing slipping among both groups.) Trump has
repaid them with devoted attention to issues such as abortion, school
vouchers, and religious liberty.
(David A. Graham. Jeff
Sessions Explains Why Christians Support Trump.”
The Atlantic.
June 30, 2020.)
.
Michael Gerson, in a 2018
Atlantic cover story,
criticized the habit of “evangelicals regarding themselves,
hysterically and with self-pity, as an oppressed minority that
requires a strongman to rescue it. This is how Trump has invited
evangelicals to view themselves. He has treated evangelicalism as an
interest group in need of protection and preferences.”
But, at what price to
their professed faith do Christians absorb Trump love? As the single
largest religious demographic in the United States – representing
about half the Republican political coalition – sees itself as a
besieged and disrespected minority, evangelicals have become
simultaneously more engaged and more alienated.
Gerson, a nationally
syndicated columnist appearing twice weekly in The Washington
Post, who also served as a top aide and speechwriter for George
W. Bush, says …
“The moral
convictions of many evangelical leaders have become a function of
their partisan identification. This is not mere gullibility; it is
utter corruption. Blinded by political tribalism and hatred for their
political opponents, these leaders can’t see how they are
undermining the causes to which they once dedicated their lives.
Little remains of a distinctly Christian public witness.”
(Michael
Gerson. “The Last Temptation.” The Atlantic. April 2018.)
Gerson
sees this as the result when Christians become one interest group
among many, scrambling for benefits at the expense of others rather
than seeking the welfare of the whole. Gerson contends, “Christianity
is love of neighbor, or it has lost its way. And this sets an urgent
task for evangelicals: to rescue their faith from its worst leaders.”
“Fox
News and conservative talk radio are vastly greater influences on
evangelicals’ political identity than formal statements by
religious denominations. In this Christian political movement,
Christian theology is emphatically not the primary motivating
factor.”
– Michael
Gerson
Christians have called
Trump “the chosen one,” and Pentecostal minister Paula White said
that saying no to Trump is the same as “saying no to God.”
Conservative radio host Wayne Root has even called Trump “the
second coming of God.”
While Trump has eased
enforcement of the so-called Johnson Amendment (which bars religious
groups from endorsing or opposing political candidates), reversed
Obama-era protections for transgender people, and moved the U.S.
Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, his Christian base largely remains
loyal on the verge of the 2020 election.
Still, it is amazing that
Christians vote for a candidate who does these things:
* Says, “It is what it
is,” in reference to the current number of the U.S COVID-19 deaths,
* Separates families at
the border and puts children in cages,
* Repeatedly lies
(evidence shows over 20,000 lies while in office,
* Prefers forms of
communication that are insults and demeaning comments,
* Denies knowledge of
hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels,
* Embraces White
nationalism,
* Demeans women over and
over.
And, of course, Trump and
the GOP have promised to restore Christian supremacy and have
simultaneously propped up white supremacy along with it. In black
communities of faith, the scourge of police brutality and the broader
racial inequalities pervade our nation’s criminal justice system.
Meanwhile, in many white faith communities across the country, a
deliberate avoidance of and in some cases an active dismissiveness
toward these issues has taken root.
Surveys in 2018 conducted
by PRRI (Public Religion Research Institute), a nonprofit and
nonpartisan organization dedicated to conducting independent
research, found that white Christians – including evangelical
Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics – are nearly twice
as likely as religiously unaffiliated whites to say the killings of
Black men by police are isolated incidents rather than part of a
pattern of how police treat African Americans.
(Alex
Vandermaas-Peeler, Daniel Cox, Maxine Najle, PhD, Molly
Fisch-Friedman, Rob Griffin, Ph.D., Robert P. Jones, Ph.D. “Partisan
Polarization Dominates Trump Era: Findings from the 2018 American
Values Survey.” PRRI Research. October 29, 2018)
The PRRI surveys found
nearly three-quarters (73%) of Democrats and 54% of independents say
the recent killings of African Americans are part of a broader
pattern of how police treat African Americans. By contrast, only 22%
of Republicans – including 27% of Republican women but only 19% of
Republican men – say these killings are part of a broader pattern
of African Americans’ treatment by police, while nearly eight in
ten (77%) Republicans say these killings are isolated incidents.
Perhaps, most astounding …
“The surveys also
found white evangelical Protestants stand out for the extent to which
they believe recent killings of black men are isolated incidents.
More than seven in ten (71%) of white evangelical Protestants say
these killings are isolated incidents, a view shared by roughly six
in ten white Catholics (63%) and white mainline Protestants (59%).
“In contrast, only
about four in ten (43%) Hispanic Catholics and about one-third of
religiously unaffiliated Americans (33%) and Hispanic Protestants
(32%) say these killings are isolated incidents. Just 15% of black
Protestants identify the recent killings of black men by police as
isolated incidents, while more than eight in ten (84%) say they are
part of a broader pattern.”
(Alex
Vandermaas-Peeler, Daniel Cox, Maxine Najle, PhD, Molly
Fisch-Friedman, Rob Griffin, Ph.D., Robert P. Jones, Ph.D. “Partisan
Polarization Dominates Trump Era: Findings from the 2018 American
Values Survey.” PRRI Research. October 29, 2018)
The results point to a
stark conclusion: While most white Christians think of themselves as
people who hold warm feelings toward African Americans, holding
racist views is nonetheless positively and independently associated
with white Christian identity. Again, this troubling relationship
holds not just for white evangelical Protestants, but also for white
mainline Protestants and white Catholics.
As white Christians vote
for their perception of Godly standards, they feel themselves
slipping from the status of being a culturally dominant majority to
just another subgroup in our extraordinary cultural mosaic of
America.
Put more simply, they feel
outnumbered. After all, as the Pew Foundation’s Michael Lipka
notes, “A rising share of Americans do not identify with any
religion, while a shrinking portion of the population is Christian.”
This bloc of voters
does not fear a specific minority as much as they fear becoming one.
“Of all
the changes to identity and belonging, the century’s second decade
has been particularly marked by a religious sea change. After more
than two centuries of white Anglo-Saxon Protestant dominance, the
United States has moved from being a majority-white Christian nation
to one with no single racial and religious majority.”
– Robert
P. Jones, CEO and founder PRRI (2019)
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