Category: Pro-Trump Insurrection

How Christian nationalism paved the way for Jan. 6

As the January 6 congressional investigative committee takes a break, lets

MAGA Jesus. Photo by Tyler Merbler, via Flickr.

remind ourselves about the role Christian Nationalism played, and continues to play, in stirring political violence and rebellion in this country.

“Christian Nationalism” is an ideology promoting the belief that the USA is a “Christian nation,” “God’s very own country” in fact, now being used by God to spread his divine gifts of salvation, liberty, democracy, and capitalism to the rest of the world.

According to Christian nationalists, America is unlike any other nation in the world because it occupies a unique place in God’s heart. America is a “chosen nation.” If you look for this message in the parades and other official events celebrating Independence Day, you can’t miss it.

Below is an excerpt from an article in Religion News Service titled “How Christian nationalism paved the way for Jan. 6” written by Jack Jenkins. He disects the influence of Christian nationalism in the revolt of January 6:

WASHINGTON (RNS) — On June 1, 2020, then-President Donald Trump marched across Lafayette Square outside the White House, trailed by an anxious-looking team of advisers and military aides. The group shuffled past detritus left by racial justice protesters after a frantic mass expulsion executed by police minutes prior with clubs, pepper balls and tear gas.

The dignitaries stopped in front of St. John’s Church, where presidents, including Trump, have traditionally attended services on their Inauguration Day. St. John’s, which had suffered a minor fire the day before, was closed. But Trump took up a position in front of its sign and turned toward the cameras, a Bible held aloft.

“We have the greatest country in the world,” Trump said. In the distance, sirens wailed.

Washington’s Episcopal bishop, whose diocese includes St. John’s, condemned

“Jericho March” participants march around the U.S. Capitol, Tuesday Jan. 5, 2021, in Washington. RNS photo by Jack Jenkins

Trump’s stunt, saying it left her “horrified.” But White House chief of staff Mark Meadows declared he was “never prouder” of the president than in that moment, calling it a rejection of “the degradation of our heritage or the burning of churches.” Trump’s evangelical Christian advisers were similarly effusive, lauding the photo op as “important” and “absolutely correct.”

In retrospect, the “symbolic” message of Trump’s Bible photo op, as he termed it, operates as a bookend to the Christian nationalism on display at the attack on the U.S. Capitol seven months later. It communicated, however histrionically, that the president was leading an existential fight against politically liberal foes calling for a racial reckoning, but at the center of which was an attack on Christian faith. From that moment on, Christian nationalism — in the broadest sense, a belief that Christianity is integral to America as a nation and should remain as such — provided a theological framework for the effort to deny Democrats the White House.

As Trump’s poll numbers dipped the same month as the photo op, his campaign redoubled efforts to stir up support among his conservative Christian supporters. Then-Vice President Mike Pence embarked on a “Faith in America” tour, while Trump conducted interviews with conservative Christian outlets and held rallies at white evangelical churches.

Referring to “American patriots,” Trump told rallygoers at Dream City Church in Phoenix: “We don’t back down from left-wing bullies. And the only authority we worship is our God.”

In August at the Republican National Convention, Trump described early American heroes as people who “knew that our country is blessed by God and has a special purpose in this world.” Pence, in his speech, adapted Christian Scripture by swapping out references to Jesus with patriotic platitudes.

Despite then-candidate Joe Biden’s public discussion of his Catholic faith, and the overt religiosity of the Democratic National Convention, Donald Trump Jr. told the GOP crowd that “People of faith are under attack” in the United States, pointing to restrictions on large gatherings due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Yet it was Trump’s religious supporters who did the attacking the final night of the RNC. After leaving the convention’s fireworks-filled celebration at the White House, conservative Christian commentator and Trump loyalist Eric Metaxas was filmed punching an anti-Trump protester off his bike and fleeing into the night, only admitting to the assault days later in an email to Religion Unplugged.

After Trump lost the election in November, a report from the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and the Freedom From Religion Foundation concluded that Christian nationalism, also referred to as white Christian nationalism, was used to “bolster, justify and intensify the January 6 attack on the Capitol,” according to BJC’s Amanda Tyler.

RELATED: New report details the influence of Christian nationalism on the insurrection

In the days after the vote, Florida pastor Paula White, leader of the White House faith office, preached a sermon from her home church in which she called on “angels” from Africa and other nations to assist in overturning the election results. The next night, insisting she was only addressing “spiritual” matters, White vacillated between the ethereal and the electoral: She entreated the Almighty to “keep the feet of POTUS in his purpose and in his position” and decry any “fraud” or “demonic agenda” that “has been released over this election.”

You can read the entire article here.

Glenn Greenwald: Civil Liberties Are Being Trampled by Exploiting “Insurrection” Fears. Congress’s 1/6 Committee May Be the Worst Abuse Yet.

Glenn Greenwald has published a lengthy, detailed analysis of the many ways in which the Democratic party is currently exploiting the Capitol Hill riot on January 6 to implement drastic government overreach and the curtailment of American civil liberties.

The mechanism for this overreach is the House Select Committee currently  investigating the January 6 riot.

I have excerpted the heart of Greenwald’s conclusions below. However, I encourage you to read the entire article at Greenwald’s substack space. It is truly impressive and deeply disturbing.

The article is entitled “Civil Liberties Are Being Trampled by Exploiting ‘Insurrection’ Fears. Congress’s 1/6 Committee May Be the Worst Abuse Yet.”

Below is the excerpt:

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) arrive for the House Select Committee hearing investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol on July 27, 2021 at the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

This congressional committee is designed to be cathartic theater for liberals, and a political drama for the rest of the country. They know Republicans will object to their deliberately unconstitutional inquisitions, and they intend to exploit those objections to darkly insinuate to the country that Republicans are driven by a desire to protect the violent traitors so that they can deploy them as an insurrectionary army for future coups. They have staffed the committee with their most flamboyant and dishonest drama queens, knowing that Adam Schiff will spend most of his days on CNN with Chris Cuomo comparing 1/6 to Pearl Harbor and the Holocaust; Liz Cheney will equate Republicans with Al Qaeda and the Capitol riot to the destruction of the World Trade Center; and Adam Kinzinger will cry on cue as he reminds everyone over and over that he served in the U.S. military only to find himself distraught and traumatized that the real terrorists are not those he was sent to fight overseas but those at home, in his own party.

But the manipulative political design of this spectacle should not obscure how threatening it nonetheless is to core civil liberties. Democrats in politics and media have whipped themselves into such a manic frenzy ever since 1/6 — indeed, they have been doing little else ever since Trump descended the Trump Tower escalator in 2015 — that they have become the worst kinds of fanatics: the ones who really believe their own lies. Many genuinely believe that they are on the front lines of an epic historical battle against the New Hitler (Trump) and his band of deplorable fascist followers bent on a coup against the democratic order. In their cable-and-Twitter-stimulated imaginations, shortly following this right-wing coup will be the installation of every crypto-fascist bell and whistle from concentration camps for racial and ethnic minorities to death or prison for courageous #Resistance dissidents. At some point, the line between actually believing this and being paid to pretend to believe it, or feeling coerced by cultural and friendship circles to feign belief in it, erodes, fostering actual collective conviction and mania.

And when fanatics convince themselves that their cause is not only indisputably just but an imperative for survival, then any doubts or questions about methods and weapons can no longer be acknowledged. The war they are fighting is of such overarching importance and righteousness that there is no such thing as unjust or excessive means to achieve it. Just a cursory examination of liberal discourse is enough to see that they have long ago arrived at and flew past this point of sectarian zealotry. And that is what explains their overwhelming support for state and corporate censorship of the internet, increasing reverence for security state agencies such as the CIA and FBI, love for and trust in corporate media, and a belief that no punishment or level of suffering is excessive when it comes to retaliation against their political enemies, including but not only those who participated in any way in the 1/6 protests.

This is, after all, a movement that has long opposed the death penalty and whose more left-wing factions spent 2020 rioting in cities to protest police violence and chanting “Defund the Police!,” yet their only lament about Ashli Babbitt seems to be that she was the only pro-Trump “fascist” shot and killed by noble police officers on that day. They have pranced around for decades as criminal justice reformists, denouncing harsh prosecutorial strategies and judicial punishments, yet are indignant that people who put their feet on Nancy Pelosi’s sacred desk or vandalized the sacred halls of American power with their dirty and deplorable presence are not spending decades in a cage. They spent 2020 depicting police officers as racist savages, only to valorize the Capitol Police as benevolent public servants whom only barbarians would want to harm, then gave them an additional $2 billion to intensify their surveillance capabilities and augment their stockpile of weapons. Their fury that Trump officials did not end up spending decades in cages due to vague associations with Russians is exceeded only by their rage that pro-Trump protesters at the Capitol are being sentenced to months rather than years or decades in prison.

A political movement that operates from the premise that its cause is too important to be constrained is one that inevitably becomes authoritarian. That such authoritarianism is the defining feature of American liberalism has been evident for several years. And an investigative congressional committee that they control, aimed squarely at their political enemies, accompanied by demands that anyone resisting it be imprisoned, can only lead to very dark and dangerous destinations.

You can read the entire piece here.

Why Guy Saperstein is Leaving America, And Why I Often Consider It Myself

First a short biography of Mr. Saperstein:

In 1972, he founded a law firm in Oakland which became the largest plaintiffs civil rights law firm in America, in the process successfully prosecuting the largest race, sex and age discrimination class actions in American history. Guy also prosecuted False Claims Act cases against Lockheed Missiles & Space Co. regarding satellite surveillance systems, and against Raytheon, Boeing and TRW regarding the sham National Missile Defense Program. A former president of the Sierra Club Foundation once described by Bill O’Reilly as “a member of the nefarious Left-Wing Mafia,” he is the author of “Civil Warrior: Memoirs of a Civil Rights Attorney.”

Below is an excerpt of his article entitled “Why I Am Leaving America“:

After six decades fighting for social justice and enjoying the embodiment of the American Dream, this couple are moving on from a lost nation.

My wife and I have spent sixty years fighting for social justice in America and trying to be good citizens, me as a civil-rights lawyer who litigated — and won — the largest race, age, and disability employment discrimination cases in American history, and my wife as a teacher, social worker, healthcare activist and philanthropist. I retired at fifty-one, having built an enormously lucrative practice, never losing a case as I pursued legal restitution on behalf of clients who had gotten the short end of the stick.

I was the very embodiment of the American Dream. But over the decades, I’ve become convinced that America is in terminal decline and that the battle for justice and equity is hopeless. The reasons are multiple. 

America once led the world in innovation. No more. We don’t even have one mile of high-speed rail, unless you count Disneyland. China has 30,000, and counting. Which country do you think is prepared to prosper in the next century?

We can’t even keep our roads repaired. America’s roads are a mess, many as bad as any Third World country. In fact, that is what America is becoming — a Third World country.

The battle is lost. America is in terminal decline and nearly 75 million Americans seem to be willing to pull it down further. How can it be that so many millions voted for a man who failed in everything he ever tried—a man who started more than a score of businesses and every one failed, who cheated repeatedly on three wives before each marriage failed, who is despised by even members of his own family, who went out of his way nearly every day to show that he is a racist and a sexist, a man who has been caught, according to the Washington Post, in more than 30,000 lies in just the four years he was president, who cheated at nearly everything, including golf, how is it that such a man is held up as a paragon of virtue by nearly half of the electorate? Something has gone seriously off the rails. 

I can no longer bear the chest-thumping triumphalism of the No-Nothing Party. I can’t stand the self-congratulatory promotion of the hoary notion of American exceptionalism. People who think America is the greatest in all things are people who simply have never been anywhere else. America is not now — and has never been — a representative democracy and won’t be in my lifetime and probably not in yours, either. Biden won by 7.3 million votes — a smashing win, right? — but if just 43,000 votes in a few states had switched, Donald Trump would still be president today. In California, Governor Gavin Newsom could have received 49% of the vote in the recall election and have lost and some Republican hack could have received 18% and won. And because each state has two senators, 18% of the electorate elects 51% of senators. Explain that to Cleisthenes.

We now have an active right-wing attack on voting itself, much of it racially motivated, but imperiling us all. And then, alas, we have the filibuster, which has almost made America ungovernable.

I want out. I’m tired of waking up to some crackpot ranting that COVID is a hoax, or vaccines don’t work, or masks are an assault on freedom, or that the 2020 election was stolen and Joe Biden is not really President, or that January 6 was just a peaceful gathering of fun-loving people.

While Trump has been diminished, we are surrounded by his supporters — Americans who voted for one of the most despicable men who ever strut upon the American stage, most of his supporters continue to believe — with no evidence — that he won. Most prefer superstition to science, many would apparently rather die than wear a mask or take a vaccine, and tens of millions believe cockamamie conspiracies. These people are not going away.

This woebegone predicament is likely to get worse. Moreover, our priorities as a nation seem perilously upside down. We spend more than twice the amount for healthcare as any developed nation and get the crappiest healthcare system in the world because the medical Establishment — mainly the drug companies — has Washington in its pocket. And that includes Biden. 

We have among the worst economic disparities in the world — which are getting worse — a hollowed-out middle class, money overwhelming politics, and even the Democrats unable to do anything about any of this. . .

You can read the rest of the article here.

I’ve got to tell you, Mr. Saperstein is my kind of guy.

America needs many, many more principled, morally astute, courageous fighters for equality, justice, and peace like Mr. Saperstein. His pending emigration will be a great loss to this country.

The fact that he has come to the conclusion that America is hopelessly circling the drain; that our democracy is doomed; that the future looks increasingly bleak; that far from being a shining city on a hill, America has devolved into a neo-fascist corporate state, addicted to endless entertainment, violence, and self-gratification; that any and all efforts to slow our national decomposition — if not reverse it altogether — are a hopeless waste of energy doomed to failure presents us with the tragic lessons learned by a man who has spent his entire adult life fighting in the trenches on behalf of the poor, the marginalized, and the dispossessed.

I happen to agree with his conclusions. And I often think about moving to another country myself.

However, unlike Mr. Saperstein, I have never expected to see substantial outbreaks of justice and equity in my lifetime. Perhaps I am too much of a cynic. Or maybe I just take the Christian doctrine of original sin too seriously.

Nevertheless, apparent failure here and now can, indeed, become extremely depressing. Even to cynical believers in human sinfulness like me.

But I cannot allow such disappointments to become debilitating; they never provide a reason for throwing in the towel.

Because I am always, first and foremost, a citizen of the kingdom of God. That is where my loyalty lies, not in the US of A.

I have been placed in this country as a witness to God’s kingdom even as I, along with Mr. Saperstein, watch America’s rampant, rampaging imperialism, militarism, and economic exploitation ravage its citizens together with everyone else in the world who happens to possess something that America wants for itself.

And I do see small glimpses of the righteousness of God’s kingdom here and there, flashing narrow, intermittent shafts of eternal light into very dark, otherwise hopeless, places.

So, even though part of me wants to flee with Mr. Saperstein, I can’t.

I will continue to wait and to work and to “fight the good fight” in the land where Jesus’ placed me as I wait for His return.

I pray that you will, too.

Study Uncovers the Core of White Supremacy at the Heart of Jan. 6 Insurrection

Robert Pape is a researcher at the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, a think tank he runs at the University of Chicago.

He recently published the results of a study into the backgrounds and identities of all those arrested and charged for their participation in the January 6th attack on our Capitol building in Washington, D.C.

We have long known that Christian Nationalism was an important, motivating ideology for many of the Trump followers involved in that attack.

Dr. Pape’s report now shows the equally important role played by White Supremacy in motivating that attack.

This marriage of Christian Nationalism with White Supremacy is not new, of course. It has a very long history in this country.

The fact that many people who call themselves Christians believed that Jesus Christ had blessed this violent attack; the fact that they claimed their involvement was integral to their patriotic, Christian witness; that “keeping America white” is a major plank in their “Christian worldview”; all combined with the evidence indicating that this movement continues to expand is more than abundant reason to weep for the evangelical church in this country.

If you know Christian leaders/teachers who are instructing their congregations about the gross, anti-Biblical, anti-Christian errors of this American idolatry, then please encourage them and offer your support.

If the leaders and pastors of your church are remaining silent or, worse yet, endorsing the heresies of Christian Nationalism and White Supremacy, then talk with them, correct them, express your dissatisfaction with their departure from Biblical truth; tell them that they are wrong and pray for their transformation.

The Truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is on the line.

The New York Times article by Alan Feuer entitled “Fears of White People Losing Out Permeates Capitol Rioters Towns, Study Finds” explains the details [all emphasis is mine]:

Counties with the most significant declines in the non-Hispanic white population were the most likely to be homes to people who stormed the Capitol.

Jason Andrew for The New York Times

When the political scientist Robert Pape began studying the issues that motivated the 380 or so people arrested in connection with the attack against the Capitol on Jan. 6, he expected to find that the rioters were driven to violence by the lingering effects of the 2008 Great Recession.

But instead he found something very different: Most of the people who took part in the assault came from places, his polling and demographic data showed, that were awash in fears that the rights of minorities and immigrants were crowding out the rights of white people in American politics and culture.

If Mr. Pape’s initial conclusions — published on Tuesday in The Washington Post — hold true, they would suggest that the Capitol attack has historical echoes reaching back to before the Civil War, he said in an interview over the weekend. In the shorter term, he added, the study would appear to connect Jan. 6 not only to the once-fringe right-wing theory called the Great Replacement, which holds that minorities and immigrants are seeking to take over the country, but also to events like the far-right rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 where crowds of white men marched with torches chanting, “Jews will not replace us!”

“If you look back in history, there has always been a series of far-right extremist movements responding to new waves of immigration to the United States or to movements for civil rights by minority groups,” Mr. Pape said. “You see a common pattern in the Capitol insurrectionists. They are mainly middle-class to upper-middle-class whites who are worried that, as social changes occur around them, they will see a decline in their status in the future.”

One fact stood out in Mr. Pape’s study, conducted with the help of researchers at the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, a think tank he runs at the University of Chicago. Counties with the most significant declines in the non-Hispanic white population are the most likely to produce insurrectionists. This finding held true, Mr. Pape determined, even when controlling for population size, distance to Washington, unemployment rate and urban or rural location.

Law enforcement officials have said 800 to 1,000 people entered the Capitol on Jan. 6, and prosecutors have spent the past three months tracking down many of them in what they have described as one of the largest criminal investigations in U.S. history. In recent court filings, the government has hinted that more than 400 people may ultimately face charges, including illegal entry, assault of police officers and the obstruction of the official business of Congress.

In his study, Mr. Pape determined that only about 10 percent of those charged were members of established far-right organizations like the Oath Keepers militia or the nationalist extremist group the Proud Boys. But unlike other analysts who have made similar findings, Mr. Pape has argued that the remaining 90 percent of the “ordinary” rioters are part of a still congealing mass movement on the right that has shown itself willing to put “violence at its core.”

Other mass movements have emerged, he said, in response to large-scale cultural change. In the 1840s and ’50s, for example, the Know Nothing Party, a group of nativist Protestants, was formed in response to huge waves of largely Irish Catholic immigration to the country. After World War I, he added, the Ku Klux Klan experienced a revival prompted in part by the arrival of Italians and the first stirrings of the so-called Great Migration of Black Americans from the rural South to the industrialized North.

In an effort to determine why the mob that formed on Jan. 6 turned violent, Mr. Pape compared events that day with two previous pro-Trump rallies in Washington, on Nov. 14 and Dec. 12. While police records show some indications of street fighting after the first two gatherings, Mr. Pape said, the number of arrests were fewer and the charges less serious than on Jan. 6. The records also show that those arrested in November and December largely lived within an hour of Washington while most of those arrested in January came from considerably farther away.

The difference at the rallies was former President Donald J. Trump, Mr. Pape said. Mr. Trump promoted the Jan. 6 rally in advance, saying it would be “wild” and driving up attendance, Mr. Pape said. He then encouraged the mob to march on the Capitol in an effort to “show strength.”

Mr. Pape said he worried that a similar mob could be summoned again by a leader like Mr. Trump. After all, he suggested, as the country continues moving toward becoming a majority-minority nation and right-wing media outlets continue to stoke fear about the Great Replacement, the racial and cultural anxieties that lay beneath the riot at the Capitol are not going away.

“If all of this is really rooted in the politics of social change, then we have to realize that it’s not going to be solved — or solved alone — by law enforcement agencies,” Mr. Pape said. “This is political violence, not just ordinary criminal violence, and it is going to require both additional information and a strategic approach.”

Mr. Pape, whose career had mostly been focused on international terrorism, used that approach after the Sept. 11 attacks when he created a database of suicide bombers from around the world. His research led to a remarkable discovery: Most of the bombers were secular, not religious, and had killed themselves not out of zealotry, but rather in response to military occupations.

American officials eventually used the findings to persuade some Sunnis in Iraq to break with their religious allies and join the United States in a nationalist movement known as the Anbar Awakening.

Recalling his early work with suicide bombers, Mr. Pape suggested that the country’s understanding of what happened on Jan. 6 was only starting to take shape, much like its understanding of international terrorism slowly grew after Sept. 11.

“We really still are at the beginning stages,” he said.

Christian Nationalism and Political Conformity

Condemning Christian nationalism has become all the rage among certain members of the evangelical punditry. Even a few evangelical Republicans felt uncomfortable at the sight of Jesus flags and Christian paraphernalia on prominent display among the rioters who stormed Congress on January 6th.

In the immediate aftermath of those events, I saw a number of editorial condemnations on television and in print chastising any Christian’s involvement in violence or sedition. Each of them raised the same questions in my mind, for they all were morally tepid and intellectually shallow, ignoring the role those very media outlets had played in promoting president Trump’s “Big Lie” about a stolen election.

I wholeheartedly agree with the reminder that Christians should not commit acts of violence, especially when those actions lead to others being

FILE – In this Jan. 6, 2021 file photo, Trump supporters participate in a rally in Washington. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

killed and injured. However, I also found it very strange for right-wing, Christian, patriotic pundits, people who swear allegiance to a nation founded upon revolution, violence, and bloodshed, to suddenly clutch their pearls and faint at the sight of modern “patriots” doing what they believed needed to be done in order to save their nation and democracy.

I won’t even begin to address the hypocrisy on display when Religious-Right folks self-righteously condemn insurrection at home while heartily endorsing America’s many military coups and wars of aggression around the world! Apparently, Christians are only supposed to shun violence when the their fellow Americans become the enemy. Black and brown-skinned people around the world are always fair game.

All of this is very strange indeed unless we understand two crucial points:

First, these suddenly pacifistic, evangelical commentators were demonstrating how deeply embedded they are in the American, corporate establishment.

For all of their complaints about suffering as marginalized, Christian outsiders, none of them were willing to follow the logic of their messianic Trump-devotion to its logical conclusion. Why? Because they all had network executives telling them to toe a more establishment line or they would need to empty their desks and head for the unemployment line.

None of them were condemning police violence when BLM protesters were being assaulted by lines of militarized patrolmen wielding plexiglass shields and billy clubs.

Second, their exclusive focus on an anti-violence message exposed the consistent lack of self-awareness and intellectual rigor that characterizes so much of American evangelicalism today.

Of course, superficial critiques may be better than no critique at all, but if we only ever scratch the surface of a problem, then the underlying disease is allowed to deepen and spread. (On a side note, this was also my response to Mark Galli’s tepid critique of president Trump in his editorial at Christianity Today.” Only fellow evangelicals would interpret his words as shocking.)

Linking the errors of Christian nationalism to the dangers of patriotic violence (at home, mind you; violence abroad is always permissible for Christian America) is only the tip of the iceberg.

I recently began reading a book by the US historian, John W. Compton, entitled, The End of Empathy: Why White Protestants Stopped Loving Their Neighbors (Oxford, 2020). Compton first tells the story of how white Protestantism once led the way in condemning, addressing, and working to transform the many social, cultural, and political evils in this country.

Child labor laws, worker safety regulations, the 6-day work week, the 8-hour work day, a living wage, plus much more were policies all implemented in response to massive Christian political pressure during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

But all of that changed in late 1970s-early 1980s with Ronald Reagan’s presidency and the rise of his neo-liberal economic agenda. Nowadays, Christians concerned with things like social justice are regularly condemned for compromising the gospel. What happened?

I won’t answer that question here, but I will share a few thoughts from Compton’s introductory chapter where he begins to lay out his argument about the transformation that led to the wholesale conformity of American Christianity to the social/political/cultural status quo.

Concerning Christian political involvement:

Religious believers are on average much like similarly situated secular citizens when it comes to their behavior in the political realm. Like their secular neighbors, believers routinely base their political decisions on self-interest or ingrained prejudice rather than careful and disinterested study of sacred texts or deliberation about the will of a higher power. (4-5)

On the Christian vision for the church’s role in transforming society:

…from the mid-nineteenth century through the 1960s, most non-Southern Protestants not only professed to believe that Christian principles, properly understood, favored government efforts to aid the downtrodden; they were also embedded in religious networks that were capable…of focusing attention on specific social problems and incentivizing the faithful to take responsibility for correcting them.

On the current state of American evangelicalism:

In the new age of personal autonomy, the leaders of the Religious Right flourished by reshaping the Christian message to comport with the prejudices and material self-interest of their target demographic.

I will probably review this book here when I have finished digesting all that it has to say.

But in short, nowadays the average Christian doesn’t work at thinking, and thus acting, differently in the light of God’s word. We conform to the ways of those around us, ignore the illuminating study of the holy scriptures, and are afraid to stand alone on behalf of those less fortunate than ourselves.

For now, I will only note a deeper description of the dangers that accompany Christian nationalism. The heart of that danger is cooption, conformity to the national status quo — which explains a lot about American evangelicalism and the Religious-Right in this country.

Once Christians begin to imagine that their country is God’s country; that its national history is a story written by and for Christians like themselves, then it is a very tiny step to confuse national interests with Christian interests. National norms become Christian norms (think of laisse faire capitalism) and Christian norms become national norms (think of the fight over equal rights for gay citizens).

Granted, this confusion may require a reimagined past that describes our current state of affairs as a gross deviation from historic norms (think of  David Barton and Wallbuilders promoting a fictitious story of our “Christian” founding fathers and the Constitution’s adherence to the Bible). But modern diversions into sin cannot change America’s basic orientation as a “Christian nation” – at least, to the minds of Christian nationalists.

The identity between the one and the other is very simple for Christian nationalism and it goes far beyond a problem with violence. Christian values become America’s true, historic values. Thus, American true values are Christian values. This is where Christian nationalism becomes heretical.

Yet, this false identity between nation and church is ignored by pundits on the Religious-Right who now chastise Christian insurrectionists for colluding with violence.

The genuine danger for the church in this country is not that it would collude with violence but that it would continue to collude with American exceptionalism.

The greatest political danger facing evangelicalism today is our willingness to roll over and accept the economic and political status quo, embracing corporate, crony capitalism, labor exploitation, systemic racism, militarized policing, social Darwinism, and American exceptionalism as God’s preferred methods of directing a nation.

Where is the Christian voice of dissent to all these sins?

Where are the people who will not conform to their political surroundings and vote and think and act like their neighbors?

Where are the Christian activists willing to break away from the way things today are in order to pursue God’s vision of the way things ought to be tomorrow?

More Advice to Churches Divided by Trumpism, QAnon, Stolen Elections, and Other Myths, Part 2

[This is my second post addressing the problems of political divisions in American churches. You can read the previous post here.]

In the New Testament passages that I cited in the last post, Paul warns his young friend Timothy about the dangers created by church members who believe in mythology, promote mythology, and stir up divisive controversies and squabbles as they spread their favorite mythologies.

Paul’s advice to Timothy is simple: Don’t tolerate any of these things.

In 2 Timothy 2 he says, Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels . . . Opponents must be gently instructed, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.

Let’s notice several issues in these letters.

First, what are the “myths” Timothy must combat? We can sidestep the debate over the specific content of the myths confusing Timothy’s churches. For our purposes, it is enough to understand what a myth was and how it functioned for those who believed it.

A myth was an invented story that explained why things are the way they are for those who believed it. Myths ordered a believer’s view of the world, bringing a sense of meaning and purpose to the devout.

For Christians, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, announcing the arrival of God’s kingdom on earth, is to accomplish all of these same things. But, of course, Christians believe that the Gospel is not a “myth,” in the common sense of that word, because we believe that the Gospel message is historical fact.

Second, we see that the contest between fact and fiction in religious debate is an ancient one. It is particularly dangerous to organize one’s view of the world around fancifully invented stories. As a Christian, I’d say that this is the problem with non-Christian religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, and Mormonism, to name only a few.

Third, anyone hoping to share the Gospel effectively with people devoted to mythology would do well to know the myths themselves and have some ability to point out their errors. Share the Gospel and knowledgeably point out the falsehoods of the myth. In other words, from a Christian perspective, replace fiction with facts. Then call for confession, repentance, and conversion.

Allowing a lie to shape the course of one’s life never pleases God.

Fourth, recognize the fact that not everyone will be willing to repent and change. Some people will prefer their mythology to the Truth of Jesus Christ. Here the leader/teacher must have wisdom. Recall, that Timothy was dealing with “church members” who claimed to be Christians.

They probably claimed to have a “new insight” that somehow enhanced or added to their Christian life. It would be tempting for a leader to think, “well they have some odd ideas, but they still confess Christ, so I’ll leave well enough alone.”

Bad idea.

People who cling to mythologies while continuing to profess faith in Christ are usually eager to share with others how much their mythical beliefs had added to their lives. Faith in Jesus is supplemented, and eventually usurped, by the mythology as the all-important elements of faith.

No faithful church leader can tolerate such compromise. No falsehood is EVER compatible with the truth of the Gospel. Controversy is inevitable. Paul judges it all very harshly. He concludes that such people have fallen into the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.

Division in the Body of Christ, foolish quarreling, replacing the centrality of worship and service to Jesus Christ with other competing priorities, causes, leaders, or belief systems is all the devil’s work. He loves to see it happen. Wise, godly leaders will respond accordingly.

Fifth, the Christian church is not intended to include anyone and everyone. It is, after all, the Body of CHRIST. The church must reach out to everyone, hoping to persuade everyone, but will finally recognize that the Family of God only includes those who surrender their hearts, minds, and wills to the Lord Jesus.

And this family never entertains mythology and lies.

So, when people choose to reject the burdens and responsibilities of Christian discipleship; when they cling to their mythologies and continue to spread contentious lies inside the church; when they decide that pastoral correction infringes upon their freedom to believe what they want, and they eventually decide to leave, the church has not been split. The wheat has been sifted from the chaff.

Remember that Paul also says:

As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned. (Titus 3:10-11)

If anyone does not obey what we say in this letter, take note of that person, and have nothing to do with him, that he may be ashamed. (2 Thess. 3:14)

The apostle John says about those who leave the church (rather than correct their false teaching) that “they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.” (1 John 2:19)

In fact, in 1 Corinthians 11:19 Paul even goes so far as to say, “No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God’s approval.”

To show which of you have God’s approval…

You may have noticed by now that “church splits” are not what concern me most at this point in America’s post-Trump history.

The greater problem, I believe, is the way in which Trump’s presidency exposed the infantile “spirituality” of American evangelicalism, the widespread failure of evangelical leadership, the lack of deep, meaningful kingdom discipleship among so many who call themselves Christians.

The evangelical wing of American Christianity must take our recent political history as a wake-up call.

Unthoughtful cries for “church unity” are NOT what is most needed in this moment.

Instead, the more necessary cry is It’s Time for the Church to Grow Up?! Evangelicalism’s wholesale devotion to Donald Trump; the continuation of “Stop the Steal” rhetoric within the church (and much more) all demonstrate the failure of meaningful discipleship development inside our churches.

We don’t understand the Lordship of Christ.

We don’t understand the nature and meaning of the kingdom of God.

We don’t understand what Jesus meant when he said, “Seek God’s kingdom first.”

We don’t understand what it means to live as a citizen of God’s kingdom.

We don’t grasp the all-encompassing upside-down, inside-out nature of Jesus’ ethical teaching.

Don’t be distracted by the superficial calls of distress, wailing superciliously about the dreaded dangers of division.

Focus instead on meeting the needs of the hour: It’s Time for the Church to Grow Up!

[In the next post on this subject, I will finally get to the article that initially prompted my thoughts. Thanks for reading.]

How Would Jesus Have Stormed the Capitol Building?

Jack Jenkins has written a good article for the Religious News Service again discussing the dangers of Christian nationalism among Trump-devotees and Christian conspiracy theorists.

The article is entitled, “For insurrectionists, a violent faith brewed from nationalism, conspiracies and Jesus.” I have posted an excerpt below, or you can read the entire piece by clicking on the title above. But first, I will share a few of my thoughts…

Sadly, I don’t think this problem is going away anytime soon.

One issue that jumped out to me as I read the article is the utter inadequacy of the way most evangelical churches approach adult education and “discipleship development” within their congregations.

Throwing a handful of Christians into a room together so that they can “share” their thoughts on the Bible is about as productive as giving a typewriter to a room full of monkeys and expecting them to produce the Declaration of Independence.

It ain’t gonna’ happen.

The Holy Spirit does not guarantee the gift of wisdom to those who will not study widely, do not read frequently, and will not begin humbly to confess their own misguided inclinations.

What DOES happen, quite predictably, is what we see today: the country-wide display of nationalistic, political idolatry erupting from huge swaths of the conservative, evangelical religious community.

Here is the excerpt:

As insurrectionists began the attack on the Capitol, a banner waved above the throng. It read: ‘Proud American Christian.’

Trump supporters climb inauguration scaffolding outside the Capitol, Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Moments before the assault on the U.S. Capitol began Wednesday (Jan. 6), a mass of Trump supporters gathered at a northwest entrance. They were angry: Footage highlighted the presence of Proud Boys, an organization classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, who were

Women blow shofars during the Jericho March, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2020, in Washington. RNS photo by Jack Jenkins

shouting one of their favorite chants: “F— Antifa!”

As throngs surged toward a barricade manned by a vastly outnumbered handful of police, a white flag appeared above the masses, flapping in the wind: It featured an ichthys — also known as a “Jesus fish” — painted with the colors of the American flag.

Above the symbol, the words: “Proud American Christian.”

It was one of several prominent examples of religious expression that occurred in and around the storming of the Capitol last week, which left five people dead — including a police officer. Before and even during the attack, insurrectionists appealed to faith as both a source of strength as well as justification for their assault on the seat of American democracy.

While not all participants were Christian, their rhetoric often reflected an aggressive, charismatic and hypermasculine form of Christian nationalism — a fusion of God and country that has lashed together disparate pieces of Donald Trump’s religious base.

“A mistake a lot of people have made over the past few years … is to suggest there is some fundamental conflict between evangelicalism and the kind of violence or threat of violence we’re seeing,” said Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a history professor at Calvin University and author of “Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.”

“For decades now, evangelical devotional life, evangelical preaching and evangelical teaching has found a space to promote this kind of militancy.”

A form of this faith was on display in front of the Capitol the day before the attack, when hundreds of Trump supporters massed near the building for a “Jericho March.” The event’s name was a reference to the biblical account of Israelites besieging the city of Jericho in the Book of Joshua, a religious tale liberal religious activists have also invoked for their own events. . . 

Politico Discusses the Dangers of Violent ‘Christian’ Extremism

The scare quotes around ‘Christian’ in the title are mine not Politico’s. I am loath to admit that anyone conspiring to commit acts of violence or terrorism can be called a Christian.

Yet, I realize that immaturity, including gross childishness, exists within every community, including the Christian household.

Zack Stanton has written an article at Politico interviewing Elizabeth

Elizabeth Neumann

Neuman from the department of Homeland Security. Ms. Neuman is a Christian herself, making her interview particularly interesting.

The article is entitled, “It’s Time to Talk about Violent Christian Extremism.” I have posted an excerpt below, or you can read the entire

Zack Stanton writes for Politico

piece by clicking on the title above.

For two decades, the U.S. government has been engaging with faith leaders in Muslim communities at home and around the world in an attempt to stamp out extremism and prevent believers vulnerable to radicalization from going down a path that leads to violence.

Now, after the dangerous QAnon conspiracy theory helped to motivate the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, with many participants touting their Christian faith — and as evangelical pastors throughout the country ache over the spread of the conspiracy theory among their flocks, and its very real human toll — it’s worth asking whether the time has come for a new wave of outreach to religious communities, this time aimed at evangelical Christians.

“I personally feel a great burden, since I came from these communities, to try to figure out how to help the leaders,” says Elizabeth Neumann, a former top official at the Department of Homeland Security who resigned from Trump administration in April 2020. The challenge in part is that, in this “particular case, I don’t know if the government is a credible voice at all,” she says. “You don’t want ‘Big Brother’ calling the local pastor and saying, ‘Hey, here’s your tips for the week.’”

Neumann, who was raised in the evangelical tradition, is a devout Christian. Her knowledge of that world, and her expertise on issues of violent extremism, gives her a unique insight into the ways QAnon is driving some Christians to extremism and violence.

She sees QAnon’s popularity among certain segments of Christendom not as an aberration, but as the troubling-but-natural outgrowth of a strain of American

David Reinert holds up a large “Q” sign while waiting in line to see President Donald J. Trump at his rally on August 2, 2018 at the Mohegan Sun Arena at Casey Plaza in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania.

Christianity. In this tradition, one’s belief is based less on scripture than on conservative culture, some political disagreements are seen as having nigh-apocalyptic stakes and “a strong authoritarian streak” runs through the faith. For this type of believer, love of God and love of country are sometimes seen as one and the same.

Christian nationalism is “a huge theme throughout evangelical Christendom,” Neumann says, referring to teachings that posit America as God’s chosen nation. . . . 

Rep. Adam Kinzinger Is Part of a Faithful Remnant in an Apostate Evangelicalism

Adam Kinzinger is a genuinely Christian man from the state of Illinois. He was  one of the 10 Republican members of the House of Representatives who

Congressman (R. IL) Adam Kinzinger

voted in favor of impeaching Donald Trump.

(Yes, remember that Trump was impeached while in office. His Senate trial this week is a continuation of an ongoing process, not something newly begun after Trump left office as so many want us to believe. And YES there is precedent for finishing the Congressional impeachment / Senate trial process after an elected official has left office. In fact, it’s happened three times in US history. It’s not common but neither is it an aberration.)

I call Rep. Kinzinger a “genuine Christian” not because he voted to impeach Trump — although this is the way many people will interpret that sentence nowadays when avid partisanship has become more important than rational thinking and honesty — but because of the reasons he offers to explain himself.

He both thinks and acts as a Christian should. No one can ask for better proof than that.

As I read this story two sayings of Jesus kept echoing in my mind:

Matthew 7:13-14, Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

Luke 6:26, Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you,
for that is how their [the leaders and Pharisees criticizing Jesus] ancestors treated the false prophets.

As you read the article from Christianity Today below, an attuned reader will see that Rep. Kinzinger is in excellent company.

Family members have now disowned him. Many who voted for him are now calling for his head.

But this is the very predictable fate of faithful people who speak truth to power and stand for what is right while others conspire to spout lies.

One last observation before the article excerpt:

The entire drama of the Trump presidency, its aftermath, and the enthusiastic support (often bleeding into open idolatry) has demonstrated a massive  failure of leadership in the American conservative/fundamentalist/ evangelical church.

There are no two ways about it.

If our churches and our leaders had really been fulfilling the Lord Jesus’ “Great Commission” where believers are commanded to “make disciples of every nation [by] teaching them how to obey everything that Jesus has taught us [i.e. concerning how to think, understand, and behave as citizens of the kingdom of God] Donald Trump’s wholesale cooption of US evangelicalism would never have happened.

Yep, that’s right. The truth is that stark.

I know many will insist that equally sincere people can easily come to different positions on such things. My answer is Balderdash!

The issue here concerns spiritual maturity and faithful discipleship. BOTH of which have been in short supply among evangelical leaders these past 4 years.

CT’s article about Rep. Adam Kinzinger make this very, very clear. Read the

Kate Shellnut, Senior News Editor for Christianity Today

entire piece below. It is entitled, “Meet the Republican Congressman Who Says His Faith Led Him to Vote for Impeachment.” The author is Kate Shellnut, Senior News Editor.

From his office in the Capitol, US Rep. Adam Kinzinger could see a little bit of the crowd on the lawn on January 6. He heard the flash-bangs go off on the steps as rioters made their way inside. And he could feel the spiritual weight of what was unfolding.

“I’m not one of these people that senses evil all the time or anything. It’s probably only happened maybe twice in my life,” the Illinois congressman said. “But I just felt a real darkness over this place, like a real evil.”

Kinzinger, a nondenominational Protestant, doesn’t talk much about his faith in public and is wary of conflating the mission of the church with the work of politics. But he saw serious implications for both in the wake of the Capitol breach and felt convicted to speak out.

“Although I’m not great at citing verse and chapter, I know the Bible speaks quite a bit about conspiracies and about allowing that darkness into your heart, about the importance of truth, the importance of being a light in dark places, of being truth,” he said on a call with CT and other news outlets this week.

“I’m not a Christian leader. I’m not a pastor. But I am a person who shares the faith and who looks at what that’s done to the political system in this country, and I decided to speak out.”

In the days after the attack, Kinzinger called on Christian leaders “to lead the flock back into the truth.” He opposed President Donald Trump for continuing to tout claims that the election had been stolen and was one of ten House Republicans who voted in favor of impeachment.

The backlash was swift, coming from Kinzinger’s district in northern Illinois, where a majority of Republicans disagreed, and from his fellow believers, with many white evangelicals continuing to support Trump even as his false claims encouraged rioters at the Capitol.

Franklin Graham condemned Kinzinger and the other Republicans who voted for impeachment for turning their back on the president despite the good he had done on issues like abortion, foreign affairs, and religious freedom. “It makes you wonder what the thirty pieces of silver were that Speaker Pelosi promised for this betrayal,” the evangelist remarked.

A relative sent the congressman a certified letter accusing him of “doing the Devil’s work.”

Kinzinger said that despite the opposition, the stance was the easiest of his career. Political analysts say it will likely cost him politically, though, and will at minimum isolate him from his party ahead of the impeachment trial set to begin the week of February 8.

At 42, Kinzinger has served in Congress for a decade and has been part of the church all his life; he was raised Baptist and now attends Village Christian Church in Minooka, Illinois. He has a conservative voting record and is outspoken in his stance against abortion, recently urging congressional leaders to preserve the Hyde Amendment, which bars the use of federal funds to pay for abortions.

But unlike most Republicans in Congress, Kinzinger has been openly critical about conspiracies spreading baseless claims that the election was stolen from Trump.

Last year, before Marjorie Taylor Greene controversially became the first open QAnon adherent elected to the US House, he said the conspiracy was a “fabrication” and had “no place in Congress.” Prior to the election being called for Joe Biden, Kinzinger urged people to stop using “debunked misinformation” to claim fraud and refused to challenge state results without solid evidence in court.

Kinzinger said Christians in Congress may, in good faith, take opposite stances, but he also sees them holding a unique responsibility to consider the spiritual implications of their decisions. He’s calling for fellow Republicans to join him to #RestoreOurGOP and had discussed concerns with friends in the party, such as Jaime Herrera Beutler. The Washington Republican, another churchgoing evangelical, joined him in voting for impeachment. “I’m not choosing sides,” she said. “I’m choosing truth.”

Other evangelicals in the party, like Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, voted no on impeachment, saying Trump’s words did not constitute an incitement of violence, but still reckoned with the deeper undercurrents of what happened on January 6. She acknowledged a “complete lack of leadership” and a “crisis of contempt in America” and asked Trump supporters like herself to take responsibility for enabling bullying behavior for the sake of favorable policies.

But Kinzinger said it’s not enough for members of Congress to have these kinds of tough conversations. He wants to see the church take the lead.

A Lifeway Research survey conducted in the fall found half of pastors in the US said they frequently hear members of their congregation sharing conspiracy theories. “I think there are scales on their eyes,” said Kinzinger.

He believes the spread of lies among Christians is part of a much more serious battle than political races, citing Ephesians 6:12’s reminder that “we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world” (KJV). He said too many Christians have been co-opted into prizing political victories over spiritual ones.

“If you think about the Devil’s ultimate trick for Christianity, really, he doesn’t care what the tax rates are. It doesn’t matter. What he cares about is embarrassing the church, and it feels like it’s been successful,” the congressman said. “But I also think this is an opportunity for the church to have a massive rediscovery of what our mission and our role in this world is.”

During his inauguration, Biden referenced Augustine’s line from City of God about a people being defined by their common loves. What he left out was Augustine’s teaching that love must be rightly ordered, with love of God above all, scholar Han-luen Kantzer Komline noted.

Kinzinger lamented what he saw as Americans’ disordered priorities—how they’ve allowed allegiances to the country, the economy, the president, or their political identities to distract from their primary identity as citizens of heaven.

“We get wrapped up on thinking that every little political victory we do, which has an impact on an election, is actually fighting for God and the truth. I think to an extent some of that is true. The Supreme Court now is very conservative. I like that. I think that is good for Christianity,” he said. “But I think we need to go a level above that … and say, What is our role as Christians? Truthfully, it’s to make disciples, to love the Lord your God, and love your neighbor.”

For Kinzinger, his faith offers an eternal perspective on his day-to-day work as a congressman. While he aims to fight for life, truth, and freedom, he believes following Christ trumps any political outcome. Right now, it means he can “accept his fate” among the minority of GOP lawmakers backing impeachment.

In the long-run, the debates over policies or political alliances are “not really going to matter,” he said this week. “But what does matter is what we did with this time on earth, how we talked about the Lord, how we stood up for truth.”

 

Another Example of White, Male Privilege as Republicans Tell Democratic Congress Women to “Just Move On”

I recently posted a blog entry describing the Southern Baptist Convention’s decision to issue a wholesale condemnation of Critical Race Theory without ever consulting a single African-American Southern Baptist (yes, they do exist).

How could that happen? It is astonishing.

I have a number of thoughts on this question which I will explore in a future post in this series on Critical Race Theory (for previous posts on this subject, see here, here, here, and here), along with my continuing observations

Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib

about the problems of systemic racism in America (for a recent example see here).

I am a huge fan of all the members of the group of junior congressional women the media have dubbed “The Squad.” This includes Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and now Jamaal Bowman, and Cori Bush.

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Each of them continue to demand that those involved in the Capital attack on January 6th must be held accountable. Anyone who understands the nature of justice must agree with them. There ought to be broad bipartisan support for their calls of accountability.

Instead, many members of the Republican party are telling these representatives, and especially the women, to “move on,” that they are making a mountain out of a molehill.

More than that, several Republicans have publicly denounced these women

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar

as liars, making easily refutable statements about them never being endangered at all.

I realize that a major factor in this argument is political partisanship, which teaches you to never give your opponent a break. Add a dash of simply bullying and we have a good explanation of the human behavior now on display.

However, I am convinced that there is another powerful factor involved — white, male privilege.

Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley

White, male privilege thrives in situations allowing women’s feelings and experiences to be minimized or dismissed. Admittedly, the deeply damaged and incompetent congresswoman from Colorado, Marjorie Taylor Greene, is not a man. But there are always exceptions to every rule. I won’t pretend to know how to explain her.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) has recently told her story about being a rape survivor.

She, together with Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rahida Tlaib, and you

Congresswoman Cori Bush

can bet your bottom dollar that Cori Bush is now experiencing this as well, have received numerous death threats since arriving in Congress.

These women have good reason to feel traumatized after the events of January 6th. They are the physical embodiment of everything that violent mob of Trump supporters would love to eliminate from this country: emigrants, Muslims, people of color, and outspoken women who voice their disagreements loudly in public.

The heartless people now calling these female, public servants liars; accusing them of overreacting; or insisting that they just need “to get over it,” are behaving like abusers themselves. As AOC has said repeatedly, these are the things that abusers say to their victims.

It is no accident, then, that the majority of these voices come from white men. Men who have always enjoyed all the implicit and explicit advantages of being white men in American society.

Such men rarely have any reason to fear that they may be on the receiving end of a beating, or rape, or verbal assault from one of the other authoritarian men in their lives.

Such men are usually far too comfortable exercising power over others, especially when those “others” are powerless themselves.

Below is a video of the two, recent congressional speeches offered by AOC and Rahida Tlaib as they continue their calls for Congressional accountability.

If you can listen to these speeches impassively, without sympathy, without empathy, without concern, then I ask you to check your chest cavity, for you have no heart. I ask you to check your mind for your conscience has withered.

One of the primary qualities of a truly Christian life is the exercise of empathy.

It is the ability to see life from the other person’s perspective and to try to understand why they feel the way they do.

Jesus of Nazareth was extraordinary in the deep, deep levels of empathy that he possessed for the people he met. In fact, empathy is what led him to sacrifice himself on the cross at Calvary.

Let’s all pray for such divine-human empathy as we listen to these women describe their very legitimate fears on January 6th.