Resisting White Christian Nationalism

“Christian nationalism” has become a widely maligned target for many in the mainstream and left-wing news media, for many former (especially “exvangelical”) Christians, and for many “nones.” But there are also Christians who (mistakenly, I believe) promote that position.

The term “Christian nationalism” is used, and misused, in a variety of ways, and it is not easy to define it non-controversially. Here, though, is a succinct definition by two sociologists that gets to the heart of the matter:

Christian nationalism is a cultural framework…that idealizes and advocates a fusion of Christianity with American civic life.*¹  

MORE² is a local group in the Kansas City area,*² and its “clergy caucus” is actively resisting White Christian nationalism—and it should be recognized upfront that Christian nationalism is largely promoted and abetted by White (and male) Christians.

The picture above is of a poster given to each of us who attended the May 9 rally sponsored by MORE² and held in Quindaro, Kansas City (Kan.). Stephen Jones, co-pastor of the First Baptist Church of Kansas City (Mo.), is the leader of the clergy caucus, and his church emphasizes the Beloved Community.

There are many good resources for learning/sharing about the meaning of White Christian nationalism and its threat to democracy and religious freedom in the U.S. Here are some of those for you to consider:

◈ The Baptist Joint Committee on Religious Liberty (BJC) has long been working on issues related to religious freedom and church-state separation. At the meeting on resisting Christian nationalism organized by Pastor Jones in Kansas City on March 7, a staff member from BJC was the guest speaker.

In 2019, the BJC launched a new movement called “Christians Against Christian Nationalism.” In December 2022, Time magazine ran a rather lengthy article about Amanda Tyler, the executive director of the BJC, and the work of that new group she started.

◈ The documentary movie Bad Faith was released on March 29, and it is a highly informative film depicting the growth of the Christian nationalist movement in the U.S. from the 1970s to the present. I encourage you to read about this powerful film on their website*²—and to see it, if possible.

In stark contrast to my high praise of Bad Faith, it is strongly criticized by some conservative evangelicals. For example, a review on MovieGuide.org says that it is “a bad, abhorrent piece of progressive propaganda” produced by “Christian socialists” such as William Barber, the “heretical black activist.”

◈ Jim Wallis’s new book The False White Gospel was published on April 4, and as I wrote in my review of that book,*⁴ he avers that the old heresy of white supremacy is now operating with a new name: white Christian nationalism.

That heresy, he says, is “the single greatest threat to democracy in America and to the integrity of the Christian witness” (p. 17). 

◈ The Summit for Religious Freedom, conducted by Americans United for the Separation of Church and State (AU) was held in Washington D.C. on April 14. The May issue of Church and State (C&S), AU’s monthly periodical, is largely about that. I encourage you to read about it here. *⁵

As Rachel Laser, the Jewish woman who is the president and CEO of AU, writes in the above issue of C&S, “The wall of separation between church and state is not a wall that divides us; it’s a wall that unites us—that ensures no one is favored, that allows us to thrive in our differences.”

In summary, we who oppose White Christian nationalism need to clearly state what we are for, not just what we are against (as Wallis emphasizes in the last chapter of his book). Broadly speaking, we are for the freedom of religion for everyone.

We are also for the freedom of Black people, Latinx people, Indigenous people, LGBTQ people, immigrants seeking asylum, and others who are so often mistreated and scorned by those who foster Christian nationalism. (I will be writing more about freedom (= Liberty) in my blog post planned for May 30.)

Let’s resist White Christian nationalism and welcome all into the Beloved Community!

_____

*¹ Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry, Taking America Back for God (2020), p. 10. Whitehead is also the author of American Idolatry: How Christian Nationalism Betrays the Gospel and Threatens the Church (2023).

*² MORE² stands for the Metro Organization for Racial and Economic Equity. It was formed in 2004 and is financed by supporting “members,” most of whom are churches in the area, now including Rainbow Mennonite Church (where I am a member). Ruth Harder (my pastor) spoke at the beginning and end of the May 9 rally.

*³ One of the many prominent progressive Christians speaking in that documentary is Randall Balmer, an ordained Episcopal priest and a professor of religion at Dartmouth College. Balmer (b. 1954) is also the author of Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right (2021). Further, last month he wrote an important article on Christian nationalism, published here.

*⁴ The book review I submitted to The Englewood Review of Books (ERB) last week is available for your consideration here. It should be available on the ERB website before long.

*⁵ Last week I learned that after 20 years of writing for Baptists Today, Baptist News Global, and Good Faith Media, Thinking Friend Bruce Gourley has become the new editor of Church and State.  

 

Does America Need More Atheists?

An opinion piece on the October 3 website of the Washington Post caught my eye and captured my attention. It was by WaPo’s contributing columnist Kate Cohen and titled “America doesn’t need more God. It needs more atheists.” 

Kate Cohen is a mother, an atheist, and an author. Her book, We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe (and Maybe You Should To), which was also published on Oct. 3, states that being a mother led her to “come out” as an atheist.

Cohen was raised Jewish and married a Jew in a Jewish wedding—but she explains that she never really believed “in that jealous, capricious, and cruel Old Testament God” (p. 12). But she never identified herself as an atheist until she began rearing her children.

In her book, Kate tells how she vowed to teach her children “what I truly thought about everything,” and she “did not let them decide for themselves,” for she strongly believed that “passing on one’s preference for reason, evidence, and honesty…is the truly moral choice” (pp. 13, 14).

Kate was born and reared in Virginia. She graduated from Dartmouth University and married in 1997. She is now in her late 40s, but I was unable to find out how old her children are. They are probably young adults now and it would be interesting to know how they have turned out.*¹

There are positive aspects of Kate Cohen and her book that should be recognized. She is honest in identifying who she is rather than seeking (any longer) to keep her lack of religious faith closeted. And she encourages others to be honest also as intimated in her book’s subtitle.

Even though I have spent most of my life seeking to help people become God-believers, I think those who don’t believe in God should be able to identify themselves openly rather than pretending to be and to believe, what they are not and do not. Honesty, indeed, is the best policy.

Further, Cohen seeks to remove the stigma from those who identify as atheists. She writes, “Like atheism, homosexuality is a difference that can be hidden. Sociologists call it a Concealable Stigmatized Identity” (p. 221), but she claims that that stigma is disappearing more rapidly for LGBTQ people than for atheists.

But as a God-believer—and because I am a God-believer—I certainly think that people need to be respected/accepted regardless of their religious faith or lack thereof. After all, that is what freedom of religion means.

There are also highly questionable aspects of Cohen’s book. While there are some nuanced places, she gives the impression that all atheists are largely the same, and “good,” whereas all who believe in God/religion are also largely the same, and “bad.” (See, for example, p. 228).

In strongly encouraging people who do not believe in God to affirm their atheism, she writes,

If you need a reason to let people know that you don’t believe moral authority derives from a Supreme Being, then I offer you no less than making America a safer, smarter, more just, and more compassionate country.*²

It is because of that belief that the WaPo article was titled “America doesn’t need more God It Needs More Atheists.”

On the previous page, she asserts, “…peel back the layers of discrimination against LGBTQ people and you find religion.”

She further contends that “control over women’s bodies,” as well as “school-library book bans, and even the backlash against acknowledging the racist underpinnings of our nation are motivated by religion.”

To such charges, I can only say “Yes, but….” Yes, there are Christians who are exactly such as Kate mentioned. But, there are Christians who are against discrimination and control as much as she is. And regarding climate change, note what Pope Francis said about in his 10/4 “apostolic exhortation.”*³

Moreover, if truth were known, my guess is that there is a large percentage of atheists who support discrimination and control as well as the (mostly) conservative evangelical Christians she uses as her foil.

So, no, Ms. Cohen, America doesn’t need less God and more atheists. It needs more intellectually honest and intelligent atheists (or whatever) as well as intellectually honest and intelligent God-believers to work together to make our society more compassionate and more just for all.

_____

*¹ In her book, Cohen says that her children are “engaged, informed, and savvy citizens” (p. 227).

*² These words are in a paragraph that begins with her saying that “anti-atheist sentiment is not a matter of life and death in America. But transphobia is, sexual violence against women is, forced birth is, climate change is, and global pandemics are” (p. 230).

*³ I wrote about this in some detail in my Oct. 13 blog post (see here).

 

Does Equality Vitiate Religious Freedom?

The U.S. Democrats want equality. The Republicans oppose equality because they want to protect religious freedom. But does equality vitiate (= destroy or invalidate) religious freedom? Or does/should religious freedom vitiate equality? Those are questions now confronting the polarized U.S. Senate. 

From BreakPoint's website, 
which strongly opposes the Equality Act

The House-Passed Equality Act

On February 25, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Equality Act, a far-reaching measure that has been decades in the making and would prohibit public discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

Prior to the House vote, on Feb. 19 Pres. Biden issued this official statement: “The Equality Act provides long overdue federal civil rights protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, locking in critical safeguards in our housing, education, public services, and lending systems.”

Leaders from groups like the ACLU and Human Rights Campaign argue that the Equality Act ensures that gay and transgender Americans are no longer fired, kicked out of their housing, or otherwise discriminated against due to their sexuality or gender identity.

The Equality Act of 2021 was passed in the House of Representatives by a vote of 224-206. Every Democrat in the House voted for it, but only three Republicans did.

The Senate-Opposed Equality Act

As things stand now, the Equality Act is not likely to be passed by the U.S. Senate. That is because of the filibuster rule that requires 60 votes to pass most legislation. Far more than 40 of the 50 Republican Senators are opposed to the House-passed bill.

Perhaps the main reason for the Republican opposition is their unwillingness to approve anything favored by Democrats. But the primary reason given publicly for their opposition centers around “religious freedom” concerns.

If full equality of LGBTQ persons becomes the law of the land, religious leaders and/or institutions can no longer discriminate against, or denounce, such people.

Such discrimination or denouncement is based on religious beliefs that homosexual activity and gender transitioning are contrary to God’s will, the Bible, and/or traditional religious practices.

Does Equality Vitiate Religious Freedom?

I have been a long and persistent advocate for religious liberty. People should be free to hold religious beliefs and to engage in religious activities without interference by others, including—or especially—governmental interference.

But what if one’s religious beliefs/practices infringe upon the civil rights of other people? Shouldn’t the civil rights of all take precedence over the religious rights of some?

The U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. That was a good and important bill that has helped eliminate much—but, unfortunately, not all—harmful discrimination in this country.

But there were those who thought that that bill impinged upon their freedom of religion.

For example, ultra-conservative Bob Jones University in South Carolina, which thought that the Bible opposes the mixing of the races, as most Southerners thought from before the Civil War, continued to oppose racial equality until the year 2000.

In a radio broadcast on Easter Sunday in 1960, Bob Jones Sr., the school’s founder, explained: “If you are against segregation and against racial separation, then you are against God Almighty because He made racial separation in order to preserve the race through whom He could send the Messiah and through whom He could send the Bible.”

Jones had the right and the constitutional freedom to make such a statement. But the government had the right to champion the civil rights of all citizens, and eventually Bob Jones University had to enroll Black students and then even permit interracial dating.

Bob Jones Sr. and Bob Jones Jr. didn’t have to change their religious beliefs, but they did have to change their school’s practices because of its negative impact on other people.

Isn’t it the same now with regards to LBGTQ people? People should be free to hold whatever religious beliefs they wish. But in practice, civil rights, the right of full social equality, must be upheld for all people.

Equality doesn’t vitiate religious freedom. But the religious freedom of some must never be allowed to vitiate the civil right of equality for all.

_____

Here are some pertinent online articles that deal with the central issue of this post:

Equality Act stirs passions about the definition of religious liberty and RFRA’s role (Mark Wingfield, Baptist News Global, March 8)

LGBTQ rights bill ignites debate over religious liberty (David Crary, Religion News Service, March 8)

What’s in store for the Equality Act, and why do some religions want a revision? (Yonat Shimron, Religion News Service, Feb. 26)

Do No Harm Act (Human Rights Campaign, Feb. 25)

Did Your Church Open Sunday?

Although you may not have heard about it, Sunday (May 3) was ReOpen Church Sunday. Did your church open? Mine didn’t either. But should they have? Is religious liberty being attacked by the federal and state governments? That is what some Christians are charging.

There are at least three important issues that intersect in the discussion about when to reopen in-person church services: (1) religious freedom, (2) local church finances, and (3) public health. 

Baptist Church in Des Moines, Iowa, on May 3

The ReOpen Church Sunday Initiative

Liberty Counsel is a conservative Christian law group that promoted May 3 as ReOpen Church Sunday. That organization was founded in 1989 by Mathew D. (Mat) Staver, who was the dean of the law school at Liberty University from 2006 to 2014.

I first learned about Staver in 2005 when talking with people from Kentucky who had bussed to D.C. to protest the removal of the Ten Commandments in public places. They did that in front of the Supreme Court Building, and I wrote about that in my book Fed Up with Fundamentalism (2020 ed., pp. 123-4).

In the days leading up to May 3, Staver and Liberty Counsel had promoted ReOpen Church Sunday, and more information about that can be found on their website.

For Staver and his supporters, the issue is primarily one of religious freedom. They claim that government agencies prohibiting churches from meeting for worship services, even during the current pandemic, violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The Church Finances Issue

Despite stay-at-home orders, some churches have defied those directives and held public meetings anyway. Some did that because of their strong belief that they had the right and the need to conduct public worship.

Although usually not said, no doubt many of those churches were inclined to go against the grain for fear of losing financial support. And, in fact, a large majority of churches have seen a  marked decline in offerings and are suffering because of that.

(Without fail, we who are church members need to send our tithes and offerings to our churches even when they cannot conduct public worship.)

Already on April 24, an article in The Washington Post was titled “Church donations have plunged because of the coronavirus. Some churches won’t survive.” Four days later, ReligiousNews.com reported that more than $400,000 had already been raised for small churches at risk during covid-19.

The Churches Helping Churches Initiative relief fund was launched about a month ago, and by last Wednesday had received more than 1,000 applications.

The Public Health Issue

As a strong advocate of religious liberty and an ardent supporter of local churches, I sympathize with those who wanted to open their churches on May 3—or before. But I am also a strong supporter of the government seeking to protect the life and health of the citizens of the country.

I see no indication that churches (or synagogues or mosques) have been unfairly signaled out for mistreatment, although there were a few questionable actions by some local agencies.

I also see considerable indication that many governors and mayors have acted decisively to restrict public meetings in order to keep people safe during the pandemic.

Some have charged that the caution has been excessive. But how can people say that with a straight face when already there have been 70,000 covid-19 deaths in the U.S.?

What about May 10?

In Missouri where I live, Governor Parson’s March 21 order banning gatherings of more than 10 people expired yesterday (May 4). That means that, among other things, events in large venues and stadiums, including churches, will now be able to open with some restrictions.

Many churches in Missouri and elsewhere, it seems, will again have public worship on May 10, which is Mother’s Day. I hope and pray that that will not mean the deaths of an increased number of mothers, and others, because of opening churches too soon.

Affirming Secularization, Opposing Secularism

One of the most influential theological books published in 1965 was Harvey Cox’s The Secular City. Through the years I have thought much about that immensely popular book, which sold over one million copies.

Secularization vs. Secularism 

Cox’s first chapter is “Biblical Sources of Secularization” and the first subsection is “Secularization vs. Secularism”—and that distinction is one that I have considered highly important from the time I first read it while still in graduate school.

According to Cox, secularization is the historical process by which one dominant religion no longer has control over a particular society or culture. But secularization is much different from secularism. 

So, what is secularism? Secularism, Cox contends, is “an ideology, a new closed worldview.... It menaces the openness and freedom secularization has produced.” Among other things, it especially menaces religious faith (and this is my contention, not explicitly expressed by Cox).

Cox wrote in the introduction to the 1983 edition of his book that the “sharp difference” between secularization and secularism was central to the entire argument of his book.

Why Affirm Secularization?

“Secularization,” according to Cox, “represents an authentic consequence of biblical faith.” Thus, “Rather than oppose it, the task of Christians should be to support and nourish it” (2013 ed., p. 22).

For those of us who place a high priority on religious freedom—and Cox (b. 1929) is an ordained Baptist minister, and true Baptists have always been advocates of religious freedom—secularization is good partly because as Cox says early in the Introduction of his book,

Pluralism and tolerance are the children of secularization. They represent a society’s unwillingness to enforce any particular world-view on its citizens (p. 3).

Thus, secularization is consistent with the principle of the separation of church and state, which I have often written about. (For example, see here.) As Brian Zahnd points out in his book Postcards from Babylon (2019),

in the American experiment the United States deliberately broke with the Christendom practice of claiming to be a Christian nation with a state church. It was America that pioneered the experiment of secular governance (p. 46).

In February 2010 I mentioned Cox in my blog article (see here) about Lesslie Newbigin, the outstanding British missionary who spent nearly forty years in India. In 1966 he wrote Honest Religion for Secular Man—and that was the most influential book (for me) that I read in 1967, my first full year in Japan.

As I wrote in that blog posting, Newbigin averred that Indian society changed, largely for the better, through the process of secularization. He gave these examples: “the abolition of untouchability of the dowry system, of temple prostitution, the spread of education and medical service, and so on” (p. 17).

And like Cox, he contended that secularization, which must be clearly distinguished from secularism, has roots in the Judeo-Christian faith.

Why Oppose Secularism?

The distinction between secularization and secularism, such as made by Cox and Newbigin (and me), is not widely recognized now. “Secularism” is the general term used for both—and Andrew Copson’s informative little book Secularism: A Very Short Introduction (2019) describes secularism in words very similar to how Cox explains secularization.

As an ideology, though, secularism is confined to “temporal” or “this-worldly” things, with emphasis on nature, reason, and science. For the most part, there is rejection of transcendence or anything that is not obviously a part of the visible world.

When secularism is truly an ism, it is a worldview that has no room for God, by whatever name God might be understood—or for Truth, Beauty, and Goodness.

While, certainly, I affirm the right of people to be secularists, if that is their free choice, still, I firmly, and sadly, believe that true secularists are missing much of great significance.

Recognizing the difference between secularization in the public square and secularism in one’s personal worldview, I staunchly affirm the former and oppose the latter—as I generally oppose all isms, including Christianism, which I plan to write about next month.

Still Fed Up with Fundamentalism’s View of Three Other Issues

Abortion. Homosexuality. Capital punishment. These are the three highly controversial issues dealt with in the ninth chapter of my book Fed Up with Fundamentalism, which is currently being (slightly) revised and updated. And, yes, I am fed up with the predominant conservative evangelical views on all three of these highly contentious issues. 

What about Abortion?

As I write in the ninth chapter of Fed Up . . ., back in 1986 I felt too intimidated to attend a political rally in Kansas City because of the protesters who had gathered outside the venue, yelling “Baby killer! Baby killer!” as the candidate who had come to speak was noted for her acceptance of abortion in some cases.

Obviously, these were anti-abortion (aka “pro-life”) people protesting the “pro-choice” (aka pro-abortion) position of Harriet Woods, the senatorial candidate and the sitting Lieutenant Governor—the first woman ever elected to statewide office in Missouri.

Following the long tradition of the Catholic Church, in recent decades most conservative evangelical Christians have adopted the view that human life begins at conception, so all abortions are the same as murder, for they kill human beings. That view was the basis for the raucous protests against Woods (1927~2007).

However, neither science nor the Bible unambiguously specifies when human life begins. Thus, most of us non-fundamentalist Christians hold that abortion, especially when done in the first trimester, should be legal, safe, and rare.

What about LBGTQ Equality?

The LGBTQ issue is the second explosive matter that partly explains the overwhelming support of DJT by conservative evangelicals from before his election in 2016 to the present. Although it is hard to know what DJT actually believes on any issue, it is clear that Clinton was/is not only “pro-choice” but also advocates LBGTQ equality.

Most conservative evangelical Christians “cherry-pick” Bible verses to strongly oppose equality for practicing homosexual persons or the right of gays/lesbians to marry.

Although the right to marry has been granted by the Supreme Court (in the Obergefell v. Hodges decision of 2015), many evangelicals continue to oppose same-sex marriage just as they still oppose abortion despite the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision of 1973.

I am fed up with the negative, judgmental, “holier-than-thou” attitude of most conservative evangelicals on this issue as well. Not only do they condemn even “monogamous” homosexual activity, they covertly support discrimination against and harassment of LGBTQ persons.

And now, legislation which seeks to protect gays/lesbians from mistreatment is seen by some evangelicals as curtailing their (the evangelicals’ own) religious freedom! Surely, though, religious freedom, which I continue to advocate strongly, can never be condoned if that “freedom” results in harming other people.

What about Capital Punishment?

It cannot be denied that the Old Testament not only condones capital punishment, it even commands it.

It is not surprising, therefore, that fundamentalists and most conservative evangelicals who view the Old and New Testaments as equally inspired and equally the inerrant Word of God, which is to be literally interpreted and followed, are also people who generally favor the use of capital punishment.

It seems disingenuous, though, to base the legitimacy, or the necessity, of capital punishment in contemporary society because of the teachings of the Bible but then completely disregard the many commands—such as for cursing parents (Ex. 21:17), profaning the Sabbath (Ex. 31:14), or committing adultery (Lev. 20:10)—for the use of capital punishment in the Old Testament.

Most of us Christians who are not, or no longer, fundamentalists or conservative evangelicals recognize the clear call for capital punishment for various crimes/”sins” in the Old Testament. However, based on the teachings of Jesus, we believe that Christians should oppose, rather than affirm, capital punishment.

Still Fed Up with Fundamentalism's View of Religious Freedom

This article is based on the sixth chapter of my book Fed Up with Fundamentalism (2007), which I am currently updating (and slightly revising) for re-publication by the end of the year. Matters related to religious freedom were not prominent during the first decades of fundamentalist Christianity, but such matters became a major concern in the 1980s and the following decades.  

Current Emphases

From the first years of the resurgence of fundamentalism, conservative evangelical Christians have made ongoing efforts to get prayer back into public schools, to procure sanctions for public displays of the Ten Commandments, and to protect the use of “one nation under God” in the pledge of allegiance and “in God we trust” on USAmerican currency.

Those emphases were accompanied by strong condemnation of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which conservative evangelicals saw/see mainly as an anti-Christian organization. To combat the activities of the ACLU, in 1990 Pat Robertson founded a new legal action organization, naming it the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ).

The headquarters of ACLJ is, as they proudly state, “just steps away from the Supreme Court and Congress.” Since 1992, Jay Sekulow has been the chief counsel of ACLJ. Many of you, though, know his name in another context: in 2017 Sekulow (b. 1956) also became one of DJT’s lawyers.

The ACLJ has been a major force of the Religious Right seeking religious freedom as they understand it. But the freedom they seek is mainly the freedom for Judeo-Christian religion to have predominance in the public square.

Current Ties to the Republican Party

It is evident that the ACLJ and most other Religious Right organizations are closely aligned with the Republican Party. That link is clearly seen with Sekulow being both the chief counsel of the ACLJ and a prominent member of the President’s legal team.

The Faith and Freedom Coalition is another prominent organization of the Christian Right. Incorporated in 2009, founder Ralph Reed (b. 1961) has described it as “a 21st century version of the Christian Coalition.”

Even though it is a 501(c)(4) non-profit organization, there is no question of it working
“hand in glove” with the Republican Party.

Since 2010, they have held conferences in Washington, D.C. My 6/5/11 blog article was about the 2011 conference, which I attended as a researcher. Nearly all the Republican 2012 presidential hopefuls spoke, as did DJT, who decided not to run for President that year.

The ties of the Faith and Freedom Coalition as a conservative evangelical Christian organization and the Republican Party could not have been more evident. This link as well as much that was said about the emphases mentioned above, also made evident a very questionable understanding of the principle of the separation of church and state.

Current Rejection of the Separation of Church and State

Although I am still very much a baptist (with a small “b”), Fed Up with Fundamentalism was written when I was still a Baptist, and the sixth chapter is clearly the most Baptistic chapter of the book.

Earlier and more consistently than any other Christian denomination, beginning with Roger Williams, who in 1638 started the first Baptist church in what is now the United States, up until about forty years ago Baptists have been outspoken proponents of the principle of the separation of church and state.

(Click here to read my 2/5/11 article titled “In Praise of Roger Williams.”)

But with the conservative resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention, that historic position has been largely lost. Consequently, I am fed up with fundamentalism’s view of religious freedom, for it does not endorse that precious freedom for all people equally.

Burning Bernie

Last week Sen. Bernie Sanders made some strong statements about Pres. Trump’s nominee for Deputy Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. Sanders has been severely criticized for those utterances, even by some who are not Republicans or conservative evangelicals.

Bernie’s Statements

Russell Vought, Trump’s nominee, appeared before the Senate Budget Committee on June 8. There he was subjected to stiff questioning by Sen. Sanders. At issue was what Vought had written last year in support of Wheaton College’s decision to fire Larycia Hawkins, a tenured professor.

As you may remember, Hawkins was terminated over the controversy sparked by her donning a hijab in a gesture of solidarity with Muslims in the U.S. She also declared that Christians and Muslims “worship the same God.”

In defending Wheaton’s action, Vought wrote that Hawkins’s views were mistaken. “Muslims do not simply have a deficient theology, they do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ, His Son, and they stand condemned,” he asserted.

In response to those remarks, Sanders declared that what Vought wrote was “hateful,” “Islamaphobic,” and “an insult to over a billion Muslims throughout the world.”

He went on to say that Vought “is not someone who is what this country is supposed to be about.” Further, “This country since its inception has struggled, sometimes with great pain, to overcome discrimination of all forms, whether it is racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, and Islamaphobia.”

He added, “Over the years we have made progress to becoming a less discriminatory and more tolerant society, and we must not go backwards.”  

Burning Bernie

As might be expected, Sen. Sanders was widely attacked from the religious right. Some called him bigoted against evangelical Christians.

I was surprised that even some moderate Christians were also quite critical of Bernie. For example, Amanda Tyler, the new Executive Director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty (BJC), wrote critically of Sanders on June 9 (here).

Tyler averred that “Sanders’ line of questioning imposed a religious test, which is forbidden by Article VI of the Constitution.”

Michael Gerson wrote along the same lines in a June 12 op-ed piece in the Washington Post.

Agreeing with Bernie

As you might guess, there were also some who wrote in support of Sanders’ position. Here is the link to one such well-written piece, and I basically agree with it.

While I am a strong supporter of religious liberty and usually agree with the BJC, I think their (Tyler’s) criticism of Bernie missed the point.

What Vought said about Muslims, of course, he could also have said about Jews, or Buddhists—or about the large percentage of the population who do not profess faith in any religion. As a private citizen he has every right to hold to his religious convictions.

Is it not a problem, though, when people in public office openly state that everyone who has other, or no, religious beliefs is “condemned”? While personal beliefs can perhaps be intolerant, the stance of public officials must be for tolerance of people of all faiths. That, I think, was Bernie’s point.

Moreover, what Article VI of the Constitution says is that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” It doesn’t say that people can or should never be disqualified because of their religious beliefs.

Some people in the past held strong religious beliefs about the validity of slavery or of polygamy, and more recently some have held religious beliefs that condemn LGBT people. While such people have the freedom to hold such beliefs, should they be in public office?

Probably not. 

Dunn is not Done

This article is in honor of James M. Dunn, who passed away a year ago, on July 4, 2015. Perhaps he is not widely known except by those who are, or have been, Baptists. But Dunn’s emphasis on Christianity citizenship is one that is badly needed by Christians of most denominations.

Mostly, though, his strong insistence on religious liberty and on the separation of church and state is very important for all citizens of this country, whether Christian or not.

Dunn was born in Texas in 1932; he lived, went to school, and worked in Texas until 1981 when he became Executive Director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty (BJC), where he served until 1999. (Until 2005 the name was BJC for Public Affairs.) 

Perhaps my first knowledge of Dunn came in the late 1970s. While he was still the Executive Director of the Texas Baptist Christian Life Commission, he and two associates wrote Endangered Species (1976), an excellent book about the problem of world hunger.

I was moved by the “fable” told at the beginning of the ninth chapter of that book, and I found it quite powerful when I read it again this month. (For those of you concerned about the hunger issue, I highly recommend reading that short fable.)

Dunn was also the editor of, and the author of two chapters in, Politics: A Guidebook for Christians (1970). He concludes “How to Get the Church into Politics” by saying, “The local church is suited to work in politics” (p. 59). Then, he ends the next chapter with these words: “The church must move into political issues” (p. 69). 

Little did Dunn know then that the Moral Majority was going to be formed before the end of that decade, that the Christian Right was going to be moving mightily into the political arena, and that Ronald Reagan was going to be elected President at least in part because of the new political impetus of conservative Christians.

In response to those changes by conservative Christians and in the political arena, Dunn began to place more stress on religious liberty and the separation of church and state.

In 2000 he and Grady C. Cothen alternated writing the 14 chapters of Soul Freedom. One of Dunn’s chapters is titled “Don’t Vouch for Vouchers.” His strong opposition to school vouchers whereby children could attend private schools with public funds was one of several reasons conservative Southern Baptists opposed him.

(Last month at the Faith & Freedom Coalition meeting I attended in D.C. there were several appeals for legislation that would allow children to go to schools of their family’s choice—presumably using tax money for private schools.)

Last year the paperback edition of James M. Dunn and Soul Freedom, Aaron Douglas Weaver’s biography of Dunn, was published. The blurb on Amazon.com calls Dunn “the most aggressive Baptist proponent for religious liberty in the United States.”

It goes on to say, “Soul freedom—voluntary uncoerced faith and an unfettered individual conscience before God—is the basis of his understanding of church-state separation and the historic Baptist basis of religious liberty.”

After leaving the BJC, Dunn became Professor of Christianity and Public Policy at the School of Divinity at Wake Forest University. His legacy lives on there partly because of the establishment of the James and Marilyn Dunn Chair of Baptist Studies at WFU in 2011. 

I am most grateful for the life and work of James M. Dunn and his persistent emphasis on soul freedom--and grateful Dunn is not done influencing people about the importance of religious liberty.

ACLJ or ACLU?

In my recent article about Jane Addams, I mentioned that she was one of the co-founders of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in 1920. That organization, now 95 years old, has been much appreciated by some people and much maligned by others.

According to their Twitter page, “The ACLU is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, public interest law firm and advocacy organization devoted to protecting the basic civil liberties of everyone in America.”

The ACLU has had a long and meritorious history of advocating for basic freedoms—especially freedom of speech and freedom of religion as well as freedom from religion—of individuals and groups in the United States.

Yet, some Christian groups, such as the Liberty Institute, charge the ACLU (along with the federal government) as being “aggressive opponents of religious freedom.”

And in June of this year, Ken Ham, the founder and CEO of the ultra-conservative Answers in Genesis, wrote on his blog that the ACLU “have consistently showed that they are hostile towards Christians and Christianity.”

These are just two of many examples that might be given of conservative Christians criticizing the ACLU—and that criticism goes all the way back to 1925, for the ACLU was behind John Scopes challenging the law prohibiting the teaching of evolution in the public schools of Tennessee.

To counter the ACLU, in 1990 the American Center for Law & Justice (ACLJ) was founded by Pat Robertson, an ordained Southern Baptist minister whom Wikipedia refers to as a “media mogul.” (The similarity of the acronym was intentional.)

As you know, or would guess, the ACLJ is a politically conservative organization linked to the religious right. From the beginning it was associated with Regent University School of Law in Virginia, also founded by Pat Robertson

Since 2000, though, the ACLJ has been headquartered in Washington, D.C., and when I visited there I was impressed with its proximity to the Supreme Court Building, whose entrance is just a four-minute walk away.

Since 1992 the leader of ACLJ has been Jay Sekulow (b. 1956), who has an undergraduate and a J.D. degree from Mercer University, which was associated with the Georgia Baptist Convention until 2006.

Sekulow is a sharp, articulate spokesman for ACLJ. I have heard him speak, and chatted with him briefly, a couple of times, and I have also heard him a (very) few times on Bott Radio, where he has a 30-minute program five days a week.

His program is called “Jay Sekulow Live,” and Bott Radio calls it “a bold half-hour program addressing the problems of Christian rights in the workplace, school and marketplace of ideas.”

Through the years, most of those active in the ACLJ have reaped the benefits of “white privilege,” and it seems that they are now doing all they can to maintain “Christian privilege” as well.

That is a major difference between these two organizations: whereas the ACLJ primarily is an advocate for the religious freedom (as they understand it) of Christians, the ACLU is an advocate for the civil liberties of all Americans.

Recently, the ACLU of Kentucky has been quite active in the Kim Davis dispute that has been in the news so much. In early July they filed the initial lawsuit against Davis, the marriage license-refusing county clerk.

(I have been surprised, though, that the ACLJ has not become directly involved in the Kim Davis affair, as I expected them to.)

So, which most deserves support, the ACLU or the ACLJ? The former, I believe, for they seem to be the ones more actively seeking to love “neighbor” as “self.”