Hawley with Blood on His Hands

This is not the blog article I intended to post on January 10, but little did I know when I made my Jan. 5 post, partly about the end of the election season in the U.S., that it was going to end so violently.

Hawley, the Embarrassing Missouri Senator

In that Jan. 5 post I wrote, “Embarrassingly for many of us Missourians, last Wednesday Sen. Josh Hawley announced his intention to object to the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral college victory, which will lead to hours of debate tomorrow on what should be merely a routine matter.”

On Jan. 6, Hawley (b. 12/31/79) not only persisted in calling the presidential election into question, even after the insurrectionist mob stormed the Capitol, he cheered that mob on as DJT had done in his inflammatory speech at the “Save America” rally earlier in the day.

Here is the photo of Hawley taken early on Wednesday afternoon by Francis Chung, a photojournalist for E&E News:  

As Katie Bernard wrote for the Kansas City Star this morning, this image “seemed to crystallize Hawley’s week-long role as the face of the Electoral College challenge to Biden—and the chaos it unleashed.”

Again, this is highly embarrassing to many of us Missourians—and adds to our ongoing and deep disappointment that he defeated Claire McCaskill, the highly qualified incumbent, in the 2018 senatorial election.

Hawley, the Outspoken Evangelical Christian

Senator Hawley is also an embarrassment for those of us who identify as Christians—as is much of the conservative evangelicalism with which he has long associated.

As John Fea, a university professor and prolific blogger,  pointed out yesterday, “The U.S. Senators who objected to the Electoral College results were almost all evangelicals.”

Described as “a conservative, evangelical Presbyterian,” for many years Josh Hawley has been clear in his support of the issues most important to the Christian Right: a strong advocate for “religious freedom” and strong in his opposition to abortion and gay rights.

Back in 2015 at the beginning of his campaign to become the Attorney General of Missouri, he was lauded by Don Hinkle, the editor of The Pathway, Missouri’s conservative Southern Baptist newspaper.

As Hinkle pointed out, Hawley had worked on the Becket legal team that “won two of the most important religious liberty cases of our time.” One of those was the highly publicized Hobby Lobby case refusing to include abortion drugs in the insurance provided for their employees.

Hawley has also taught at Blackstone Legal Fellowship, a program seeking to train (conservative) Christian lawyers. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has labeled that organization “an extremist group.”

 Blackstone is an arm of Alliance Defending Freedom, which SPLC has designated as a hate group since 2016. That is largely because the “freedom” they defend is the freedom to discriminate against LGBTQ people and to block legal abortion activities.

Hawley, the Co-instigator of Sedition

It seems manifestly obvious that DJT instigated the insurrection of January 6. But more than anyone else, Hawley was the leading co-instigator.

On the afternoon of that fateful day, the editorial board of the Kansas City Star declared, “No one other than President Donald Trump himself is more responsible for Wednesday’s coup attempt at the U.S. Capitol other than one Joshua David Hawley.”

The headline for that editorial unequivocally stated their assessment of Hawley’s involvement in the chaos at the Capitol: “Assault on democracy: Sen. Josh Hawley has blood on his hands in Capitol coup attempt.”

Accordingly, Heather Cox Richardson wrote yesterday, Hawley “watched his star plummet today.” Former Senator John Danforth (R-MO), his key mentor, said supporting Hawley was the “worst mistake of my life.”*

In addition, one of Hawley’s major donors called him “an anti-democracy populist” who provoked the riots. And Simon & Schuster canceled Hawley’s new book contract.

What Hawley did, most probably intending it to greatly enhance his viability as the 2024 Republican candidate for the presidency, may, in stark contrast, have essentially ended his political career.

And perhaps the terrible events at the Capitol on January 6 will mark the beginning of the end of Trumpism and of the conservative evangelical Christian support of a very flawed President.

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* Part of my 11/15/17 blog post was a positive assessment of former Senator Danforth. And here is what Fea posted this morning about Danforth and Hawley.

Are Anti-Gay People/Groups Hateful and Mean?

It is rather astounding that the straight/gay issue seems to be the most debated, most divisive, and most destructive point of contention among Christians and Christian organizations today. Is there any way to lessen the discord caused by this contentious wedge issue?

Opposition to the Nashville Statement

The gay/straight problem was thrust into the spotlight anew by the issuance of the “Nashville Statement” on Aug. 29. That statement by conservative Christian evangelicals vigorously upheld traditional marriage and rejected same-sex marriage. (Here is a link to the complete document.)

As could have easily been predicted, there was prompt opposition to the Nashville Statement, including derogatory comments about the signers, many of whom are Southern Baptist pastors and leaders of SB institutions and agencies.

Soon there were public statements from the other side, such as the one by the noted pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber. On Aug. 30, she issued the “Denver Statement” which counters point by point the articles of the Nashville Statement.

Bolz-Weber’s statement does not denigrate or malign the signers of the Nashville Statement; she merely contradicts their arguments one by one.

But other opponents have called the signers of the Nashville Statement mean and hateful (homophobic).

Some of the signers may, in fact, be mean and hateful—but are they all and should they all be disdained in that disrespectful way?

Opposition to the SPLC

Perhaps emboldened by the Nashville Statement—or challenged by the opposition to it—on Sept. 6 forty-seven conservative evangelicals sent a letter (see here) asking the mainstream media not to cite data on hate groups compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). 

In part, they wrote:

The SPLC is a discredited, left-wing, political activist organization that seeks to silence its political opponents with a “hate group” label of its own invention and application that is not only false and defamatory, but that also endangers the lives of those targeted with it.

That is a rather defamatory statement against a group whose founder, Morris Dees, has been repeatedly targeted by his opponents.

Moreover, if SPLC identifies some anti-gay Christian organization as hate groups, it is because they have seen how some people have “acted out” against LGBTQ people on the basis of the stated position of those groups.

Opposition to the Opposition

Here is my stance on this prickly issue:

(1) I strongly disagree with the Nashville Statement and basically agree with the Denver Statement. Further, June and I have been supporters of the SPLC since we came back to the U.S. to live in 2004; we have sent monetary gifts to them every year since then and will continue to do so.

(2) Still, it is most likely that those who signed the Nashville Statement did so not because of malice but because of their religious convictions—and those convictions are held primarily because of the way they interpret the Bible.

(3) Admittedly, the anti-gay sentiments of the signers of the Nashville Statement can be, and have been, shamefully used to treat gay people in mean and hateful ways. But for most of the signers that is not their intention; many of them probably seek to be loving without being affirming.

(4) Since many gays and lesbians have been caused to suffer as a result of the teaching and/or preaching of conservative evangelical organizations and churches, the SPLC has every right to oppose the hateful activities which have been spurred by those groups.

(5) Judging others, calling them names, and ridiculing their beliefs only creates greater division, larger wedges, and more animosity. Thus, it is imperative for us Christians to work on building bridges between people with conflicting convictions and incompatible interpretations of the Bible.

Exposing Hate Groups

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is a nonprofit civil rights organization dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of society. The SPLC was co-founded in 1971 by civil rights lawyer Morris Dees (b. 1937), who continues to serve as the “Chief Trial Attorney” for the organization.

The SPLC’s primary publication is the quarterly Intelligence Report. “The Year in Hate and Extremism 2011” is the theme of last month’s issue, and according to their calculation, for the first time in the history of the organization the number of hate groups in the U.S. now totals more than 1000.

The FBI explains that the primary purpose of hate groups is “to promote animosity, hostility, and malice against persons belonging to a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin which differs from that of the members of the organization.”

SPLC points out that while there are now 1,018 active hate groups in the U.S., that does not imply that all those groups advocate engaging in violence or other criminal activity. Still, they foster hatred toward others. The main types are black separatists, Klansmen, neo-Confederates, neo-Nazis, racist skinheads, and white nationalists. Other hate groups on the list target gays or immigrants.

The SPLC also publishes a “Hate Map,” indicating the location of their identified hate groups. Since I live in Missouri, I was sorry to see that there are 26 such groups to be found in MO, which is above the average per State. Of those, five are identified as “White Nationalists,” there are four each of groups typed as “Christian Identity,” Ku Klux Klan, “Neo-Nazi,” and “Racist Skinhead,” and three are “Black Separatist.”

In Kansas, only three hate groups are listed, one being Westboro Baptist Church, whose “over-the-top” anti-gay activities are widely known—and an embarrassment to most Christians, especially to those who are members of Baptist churches.

The Ku Klux Klan is, of course, one of the oldest (first formed in 1865) and best known hate groups in the U.S., and it was a bit disconcerting to see that four KKK groups are currently active in MO. Other groups, not so well known but also influential in some circles, include the neo-Nazi Nationalist Socialist Movement, the white supremacy group known as the Council of Conservative Citizens, and the Kingdom Identity Ministries, which has played a key role in advancing the Christian Identity movement since the early 1980s.

In addition, SPLC has identified some more “mainstream” Christian organizations as also being hate groups, much to the consternation of those organizations, such as the American Family Association, founded in 1974 by Donald Wildmon, and the Family Research Council, led by Tony Perkins since 2003.

When groups exists wholly, or even partly, for the purpose of discriminating against and demeaning people who are not white (Aryan), not Christians, or not heterosexuals, etc., they should be exposed as hate groups and opposed by people of good will.

The Southern Poverty Law Center is rendering a valuable service in exposing hate groups and their activities. I am happy that June and I have been supporting members of SPLC since 2004, the year we left Japan and began living in the U.S. again.