Weekly Roundup: America’s Tense Moment
In the week before the election, Brad and Dan begin with another chapter of Falwell’s Follies. Dan then explains why the polls are similar, but different from 2016 and how Trump’s surrender to COVID has hurt his reelection chances. Brad expands on his explanation of why the Supreme Court should be expanded by providing numbers on how many unfit and inexperienced judges–including ACB–Trump and McConnell have pushed through, explaining how the Senate process has been tainted, and reminding everyone that Trump lost by 3 million votes.
From there, they spend time on a host of Christian nationalism stories–from Patriot churches, to GOP officials riding around with Bibles and guns to protest COVID safety measures, and finally the immoral Trumpism of theologian Wayne Grudem.
The episode finishes with analysis of Paula White’s editorial in Christianity Today and how it symbolizes Evangelicals’ ongoing commitment to Christian nationalism and the Trump presidency.
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After Evangelcalism with David Gushee
Dan speaks with Dr. David Gushee, Professor of Ethics and Director of the Center for Theology and Public Life at Mercer University. The former president of the American Academy of Religion, he is a prolific author who writes often about his journey out of evangelicalism. He and Dan discuss his new book, After Evangelicalism: The Path to a New Christianity. Their discussion delves into issues such as community, race, and sexuality–and how White evangelicals are getting those tragically wrong. Gushee proposes new ways of Christian believing, belonging, and behaving, one that emphasizes being a light the world rather than a vector of exclusion and political power.
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Weekly Roundup: Hunter Biden Explained, Pope and Civil Unions, and the American Values Survey
Opener: Brad and Dan each get 2 minutes uninterrupted on the last debate
Explainer: Hunter Biden non-scandal mularkey
Explainer: Pope announces he is in favor of same-sex couples having civil unions (but not marriages?)
Deep Dive: The American Values Survey from PRRI
- -critical issues for Republicans and Democrats (one thinks COVID is a big deal; the other doesn’t)
- -how White Evangelicals are different from any other religious group in the country
- -attitudes toward race, income inequality, and climate change across party and religious lines.
Audience Question: What do we think of court packing?
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81% WTF (Re-release): The Historical Receipts on Evangelical Leaders Hypocritical Support for Trump
The episode that started it all! On one of our very first shows, we went to the historical record to quote all the evangelical leaders who did everything possible to decry Bill Clinton after his sex scandal/impeachment. They called for integrity, morality, and virtue in the White House. They feared for a country without a godly leader. Those same leaders are remain Trump’s most vocal supporters. Weeks before the election, a great episode to remind us of where we have been and what’s at stake.
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Weekly Roundup: Constitutional Originalism and Biblical Literalism
Dan briefs us on the dueling presidential town halls before he and Brad explain the tenets of Constitutional Originalism, a legal philosophy Amy Coney Barrett claims to hold. They compare it to a separate, but related issue–biblical literalism. In both cases, conservative actors claim to hold the “original” meaning of the text in order to […]
Sarah Levin, Co-Chair of the DNC Interfaith Council and Founder of Secular Strategies
Brad speaks with Sarah Levin, the Co-Chair of the DNC’s Interfaith Committee and the Founder of Secular Strategies, a firm dedicated to mobilizing secular voters. They discuss the values that matter to non-religious voters and how they can be mobilized politically. Perhaps most importantly, they dig into the possibilities for including secular people in interfaith dialogue at the political level. Sarah articulates her commitment to working with, rather than against religious voters who want to cultivate an inclusive, science-based, and democratic ethos in the United States.
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Weekly Roundup: Pretty Fly for a White Guy
Some major announcements! We are now a proud partner of the Capps Center at UCSB! Capps is dedicated to ethics, religion, and public life in a way that matches up seamlessly with our approach on SWAJ. Check out their new series on indigenous religions!
We begin this episode by discussing the VP debate, particularly Mike Pence as a familiar type: The White Evangelical pastor.
We then discuss a cluster of issues surrounding science and COVID–Trump’s use of medicines that made from aborted fetuses (a big deal to the Religious Right, supposedly), the New England Journal of Medicine’s endorsement of Biden, and the general ignoring of scientific counsel on the part of the Trump administration.
We also analyze Senator Mike Lee’s comments that democracy is not necessarily the best form of government–statements in line with Dominionist theology and part of what Brad calls “the dangerous allure of totalitarianism.” The danger of these comments was brought into stark relief when news of a kidnapping plot against Governor Gretchen Whitmer emerged. While the major media outlets won’t call it what it is, we will: this was an act of homegrown White terrorism and it is related to Trump’s call to “liberate Michigan!”
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Trump’s COVID Diagnosis, the ACB “Celebration of Life,” and White Evangelical Racism with Prof. Anthea Butler
Brad speaks to Professor Anthea Butler, a captain in the Biden campaign’s “Catholics for Biden” initiative, and chair of the Religious Studies department at the University of Pennsylvania. They discuss the details of Trump’s COVID diagnosis and how his recklessness is fueled by four things:
- Prosperity Gospel positive thinking,
- racism,
- capitalism,
- hypermasculinity.
These themes ground a conversation that ranges from Trump’s lack of empathy for Americans, especially BIPOC, who have contracted the virus, his supporters’ call for empathy after telling the nation that it was okay if “grandma dies” to save the economy, the conservative Evangelicals and Catholics who held a superspreader prayer rally at the Lincoln Memorial, and the belief that whiteness is a shield against the iniquities that plague other people.
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Weekly Roundup: Trump’s Debate Coup and How the Office Warned us About 2020
On an abbreviated Weekly Roundup Brad discusses the first presidential debate, the media’s inability to call out Trump’s threats of violence and election delegitimization, the ways White Catholics and young Evangelicals might be souring on the president, the new documentary that shows how the White House worked with churches to radicalize marginalized people, and how “The Office” warned us about the 2020 hellscape.
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America First vs. the American Dream
Sarah Churchwell is Professor of American Literature and Chair of Public Understanding of the Humanities at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. In her book, Behold, America (Bloomsbury 2018) she explores the entangled history of America First and the American Dream.
‘The American dream is dead,’ Donald Trump said when announcing his candidacy for president in 2015. How would he revive it? By putting ‘America First’.
The ‘American Dream’ and ‘America First’ are two of the most loaded phrases in America today, and also two of the most misunderstood. The American Dream began as a pledge for equality rather than as a dream of supremacy and ‘making it big’. America First has not just served as an isolationist term, but as an early slogan of the Ku Klux Klan with surprising links to the present.
Both phrases were born nearly a century ago and instantly tangled over capitalism, democracy and race, coming to embody opposing views in the battle to define the soul of the nation. Behold, America recounts the unknown history of these two expressions using the voices that helped shape that debate, from Capitol Hill to the newsroom of the New York Times, students to senators, dreamers to dissenters.
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