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Has American Conservatism Abandoned the Christian Right?

By Bradley Onishi

…Bible. Christian nationalism is, in the words of Perry and Whitehead, less about what we’ve traditionally understood as Christian beliefs and doctrines and more about “historical identity, cultural preeminence, and political influence.” Rather than a stable ideology, it is a cultural identity, more a matter of how one thinks of oneself and the stories one draws on than a coherent theological belief system. For many Christian nationalists, the coun…

Evangelicals Looking for Walker to “Do Nothing” in 2016 Election

By Sarah Posner

…inctly Christian worldview.” Instead, he said, the Republican conversation about religious freedom should be (and, he predicted, will be) “more substantive” about the Free Exercise Clause, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and other laws and policies. But not all evangelicals are convinced by Moore’s call for a different sort of rhetoric. Moore, said Keith Miller, an attorney who works for Hillsdale College and contributes to the evangelical…

The White Nationalist Fringe Just Took a Giant Step Closer to the Center of the GOP

By Annika Brockschmidt

…t that these lines are being spoken openly to wild applause speaks volumes about the real opinions of the America First movement as a whole, regardless of their Young Republicans Club aesthetic. That Torba was that open about this language is an escalation in the sense of what they believe they can get away with in public[…].” Lorber agrees, noting that two of the “leading grandfathers of the white nationalist movement” were present, and that, “A…

Gay Marriage isn’t About Christianity So Much as Christian Nationalism

By Evan Derkacz

…blog post by political science prof Daniel Bennett: [S]ame-sex marriage is about more than morality or ideology. It is about how people view the United States of America. *It’s been brought to my attention that this post could be read as an implication of plagiarism, which was the furthest thing from my mind. I meant only to highlight how fascinating it is that two entirely different data sets yielded a similar, though slightly unusual, conclusion…

How the FBI Aided and Abetted the Rise of White Christian Nationalism — An Interview

By Bradley Onishi

…reminds me a lot of what Perry and Gorsky write in The Flag and the Cross about how Christian nationalism is really about order and freedom. And the idea there is that the White Christian has the sole authority to use violence to put the social order in its proper place. Absolutely. One of the well-known lines Hoover wrote is: “The criminal is the product of spiritual starvation. Someone failed to teach him and lead him to God and to learn God’s…

If the Media Are Reluctant to Properly Label the GOP’s Racist, Christian Nationalist Ideologies, We’ll Have Trouble Hanging on to Democracy

By Annika Brockschmidt

…some kind of evil, élite force interested in eradicating it. It’s not just about passive demographic change, and the news stories we see pretty often about when a county or a city or the nation will no longer be majority white. It’s about an apocalyptic threat perpetrated by what these conspiracists think of as a cabal. They see, for instance, abortion as a scheme to lower the white birth rate. They see residential integration as a scheme to lower…

What Pence and Kaine Reveal About Divides in Catholicism

By Patricia Miller

…tice. It was George W. Bush, when he was running for president, who talked about “creating a culture of life.” But in Bush’s formulation it was to assert that he wouldn’t back the kind of draconian laws, that Pence has supported as governor of Indiana, designed to decrease access to abortion; that he would instead try to change “hearts and minds.” This, of course, was meant as a reassurance to independent, suburban women that he wouldn’t undermine…

In Israel, Left and Right Join to Protest New Government Threat to Democracy — What’s Striking is What’s Missing

By Shaul Magid

…motrich’s far-right Religious Zionism Party. And yet, what the Right cares about above all is getting Israelis to stop thinking about the Occupation; to stop using the term, to erase it. The settler movement is a one-state movement (albeit not a democratic one). And in some way, these new policies have created a protest movement that can only succeed if the Occupation is sidelined, which is precisely what the Right has wanted for decades. Those no…

Hanukkah Marks the Complexities of Assimilation and Syncretism Faced by American Jews

By Yehuda Kurtzer

…e made and continue to make different choices than mine—in their decisions about who they marry, how or whether they observe, what they choose to emphasize about our tradition or our rituals or our ethics or our other passionate commitments. But the only time when religion in the modern world can feel obligated to the reasoned choices of others is when those individuals come seeking what it has to offer: a framework of meaning and purpose for thos…

Catholic Citizenship: Massimo Faggioli on the Role of Public Theologians Today

By Kaya Oakes

…ency in the church is the seminaries and the formation of priests. We hear about bishops and priests when they screw up, but hear little about seminaries. I’m afraid there’s something going on there that’s very alarming because [seminaries] have changed little with Francis. So clericalism is part of the emergency today and has consequences for priests, lay Catholics and non-Catholics. Part of this is the red line going through the whole book that…