This page explores the experience and activities of white American Christians who supported/support white supremacy in different forms. Much of white American Christianity itself has been paganized - they returned to a pre-Christian time when pagan worship was ethnic and tribal.  This is a heresy in Christian theological anthropology.  The early Christians reflected on Jesus' humanity as being for all humanity.  Only much later did ethnic-tribal ideas and behaviors creep into the Christian fold.  Protestantism had been tied to nation-building from its beginning, as rulers broke away from the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic Church alike (Martin Luther in Germany, John Calvin in Geneva, etc.).  "Race" became tied to that nation-building effort in colonialism.  It is no coincidence that Ron Suskind, Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush, said, “We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.

The selection of perspectives on church history in this section — Church and Empire — has been guided by three factors: (1) to demonstrate that Christianity has not been a “white man’s religion”; (2) the study of empire as a recurring motif in Scripture by recent biblical studies scholars; and (3) explorations of biblical Christian ethics on issues of power and polity, to understand how Christians were faithful to Christ or not.  Christian relational ethics continues a Christian theological anthropology that began with reflection on the human nature of Jesus, and the human experience of biblical Israel.

This topic is closely linked to the older pre-colonial influences. See Tribalism: The Chosen People-Racist Synthesis and Authoritarianism: Augustine’s Authoritarian-Theocratic Synthesis to understand the theological roots of this mistake. See Religious Pluralism and Tolerance to understand Christianity, not secularism, as the foundation for religious pluralism, and resources highlighting White Christian Anti-Supremacists for those who opposed it.

See Race to see the impact of white supremacy in the U.S. whether Christian or not.

Slavery in the New England Colonies: Key Moments and Motivations. An outline (8 pages) of early events in the English Puritan colonization of New England. The outline draws on historical research to show how the Pequot War of 1637 - 38 was motivated, in large part, by financial reasons: The Puritans of Mass Bay Colony needed cheap labor, as the seven year contracts of English indentured servants were expiring, and the seven year monopoly on trade with Old England was expiring as well. New England then participated in the Triangular Trade, transporting enslaved Pequots and bringing back enslaved Africans. This outline focuses on stated motivations by the English settlers and slave traders involved. They drew on biblical language and categories but utterly betrayed Christian faith.

A Long Repentance: Exploring Christian Mistakes about Race, Politics, and Justice in the United States

A series of blog posts where we explore how Christian (mostly Protestant) heresies started and continue to influence our modern political and racial challenges. This includes the very notion of race itself, and how our modern economics, housing, schooling, and policing systems have been shaped. Christians must take responsibility for these heresies in the framework of repentance.  We have designed a study guide to accompany the blog posts.  Please consider using it for personal reflection or discussion in your family, church, organization, etc.

Reflection on the Presidential Election of 2016

Text of a reflection written on November 30, 2016. The reflection voiced a concern about how white American evangelicals are turning towards Vladimir Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church as a model of a state-church partnership, in order to politically oppose Muslims and pro-gay voices.  This continues to unfold.  See Young Turks, Putin Spies Infiltrate Major Christian Organization (The Young Turks, Jan 11, 2019) involving "The Fellowship Foundation" aka "The Family" in Washington DC and the National Prayer Breakfast being a way to work around the State Department.  See Jonathan Larsen, At the Head of the National Prayer Breakfast, a GOP Megadonor (The Young Turks, Feb 5, 2019) re: Ron Cameron and Doug Burleigh

White American Evangelical Political Attitudes and Behavior: Explanation and Correctives

White American evangelical political attitudes can be characterized by the debate between John Winthrop and Roger Williams, and their respective attitudes towards Native Americans, slavery, fairness, and faith in civic space.  This is a presentation also explores Scripture and church history to argue that Roger Williams was correct.  Given to the staff of Emmanuel Gospel Center, Apr 18, 2018, as a follow-up to how Christian restorative justice impacts ministry; audio file here

The Role of Jesus in Revolution and the Pursuit of Justice

This is an evangelistic message that highlights the Christian-led and Christian-influenced non-violent resistance movements throughout the world in the 20th century.  They show the connections and spiritual vitality of Christian faith under empire or empire-like oppression.

Why Question Atheism from a Political and Moral Perspective?

A presentation on how the Enlightenment tradition gave birth to racist liberal democracies on the one hand, and Marxist communism/state-capitalism on the other.  The Enlightenment tried to dethrone Christian faith from political theory and the Christian church from political power.  Thus, the ideology of the individual and the nation-state went to these two extremes, colored by the presumption of cultural, intellectual, and spiritual superiority that Europeans had about themselves.  Protestant heresies, fed by self-imposed Protestant ignorance about the church prior to Luther, and combined with a growing nationalism, accelerated the problem.  Race became the badge of membership in Empire or the token of citizenship in the Nation-State.  Authentic Christianity, therefore, must stress Pentecost (a principled cultural diversity) as the expression of Jesus' new humanity for all humanity.  

Human Dignity: Does Every Individual Matter?

Science, philosophy, existentialism, other religions, and double-predestination based theologies mean that some human beings do not matter. Only a fully Trinitarian theology with a medical substitutionary atonement can provide an adequate foundation.

God as the Foundation of Human Rights

Text of a message on Genesis 1 - 11. Genesis 1 - 11 was aware of other Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean creation stories, and argued against them, as shown by the literary analysis of these literatures.  Topics of disagreement include:  the value of every human being; the relations of humans and God/gods; the reason for catastrophes like the Flood; the resolution or movement.

The Kingdom You No Longer Want 

Text of a message and slides on Luke 13:17 - 21 given at Neighborhood Church of Dorchester on August 13, 2017, the day after the white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Why Did God Choose a "Chosen People"? Why Not Just Skip Right to Jesus?

These are important questions when considering the question of race, because we have to explain why God needed to work with biblical Israel as a “chosen people” in the first place, to protect and defend them at times, and to purify them at other times. Due to how this history is easily misappropriated, we have to examine not only why these interpretations of the Bible are wrong, but also why they happened in the first place.

Slavery, Race, and Belief Systems

Links to a section on our website with resources exploring the intersection of racism, slavery, and belief systems, focusing on the Trans-Atlantic slave trade to the present.

Foundation 1: Protestant Retributive Over Restorative Justice

Timothy Gorringe, God's Just Vengeance: Crime, Violence, and the Rhetoric of Salvation. Cambridge University Press | Amazon page, 1996. The Protestant Reformers were not just church planters and missionaries; they were regime builders who had to answer the question, “What gives us the right to punish people?” Their answer: God’s divine justice is retributive, not restorative. Gorringe notes that wherever penal substitution goes, punitive sentencing increases; see our blog post on retributive vs. restorative justice, which is found here.  More resources on Christian theology intersecting with the criminal justice system, which can be found on our website here.  Our study and action guide to Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow, which includes insights about the difference between restorative and retributive justice, can be found here. 

Dominique DuBois Gilliard, Rethinking Incarceration: Advocating for Justice That Restores. InterVarsity Press | Amazon book, Feb 6, 2018.  Gilliard finds not one, but five, pipelines to prison.  Points out that America's highly retributive culture and institutions are influenced by penal substitutionary atonement, which supposes a highly retributive, not restorative, God. 

Foundation 2: European Views of White Racial-Cultural Superiority

J. Kameron Carter, Race: A Theological Account. Oxford University Press | Amazon page, 2008. Carter gives a sobering account of how Western Christians developed the blood theory of race, taking biblical Israel as a "race" when in reality it was a multi-ethnic faith community; important for Christians to own.  Catholic Spain suspected Jews of not truly converting to Christianity, so they emphasized Judaism as a "race" rather than a faith.  Then, in the Americas, the Spanish developed many terms to differentiate combinations of blood relations.

Willie James Jennings, The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race. Yale University Press | Amazon page, 2010. Jennings is a brilliant storyteller, explaining key encounters between Western Christians and African and Native American people; important for Christians to own this responsibility since colonialism and race (with natural science) went together.  See also Grawemeyer Awards, Willie James Jennings: Work on Christianity and Race Earns Religion Prize. Grawemeyer Awards, 2014. See also Sarah Ruble, Race and Christian Faith  a professor of religion at Gustavus Adolphus College, who has 9 video sessions exploring colonial and U.S. history from the 1600s.

Foundation 3: The Doctrine of Discovery

Kim Benita Vera, From Papal Bull to Racial Rule: Indians of the Americas, Race, and the Foundation of International Law. California Western Law Journal, 2012. Vera examines theologians Francisco de Vitoria and Grotius, who rebutted Pope Nicholas’ papal bull of discovery, but nevertheless relied on discovery to anchor a Eurocentric foundation of territorial law.

Mark Charles and Soong-Chan Rah, Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery. InterVarsity Press | Amazon page, 2019. See also Doctrine of Discovery (website). The Doctrine of Discovery is important for its impact on “land rights” granted to European powers and “just war” being an acceptable rationale for taking war captives into slavery.

Foundation 4: The National Covenant and Christian Identity Nationalism

Mark A. Noll, America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln. Oxford University Press | Amazon page, 2002. Noll shows howEnglish Puritans read themselves into the story of Israel entering the promised land, and produced the ideology of the national covenant.  They deployed this national covenant idea against the Native Americans externally, and to maintain religious cohesion internally.  This contributes directly to the ideas of manifest destiny and American exceptionalism, specifically, white American Protestant exceptionalism. See, for example, this 1630 sermon from Puritan John Cotton, "God’s Promise to His Plantation” where he says, “In a vacant soyle hee that taketh possession of it, and bestoweth culture and husbandry upon it, his Right it is.”

John Fea, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? Westminster John Knox Press | Amazon page, 2016. National Geographic, The New England Colonies and the Native Americans. National Geographic, June 26, 2020. “Puritan minister Increase Mather believed that the illness and decimation of the New England Native Americans was an act of God to support the colonists’ right to the land.”

Howard Zinn, The Myth of American Exceptionalism. MIT Video Productions, Mar 14, 2005. Zinn, in this hour long lecture with Q&A, shows how the English Puritans appear to have been inspired by the notion of a national covenant imposed upon a country from the model of King Henry VIII in England, as well as the Presbyterian Scottish covenanters led by John Knox and James VI, which led to nationalistic religious purges like the Witchcraft Acts in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, and the five major Scottish witch trials between 1590 and 1662. Kurt Andersen, How America Got Divorced from Reality: Christian Utopias, Anti-Elitism, Media Circus. Big Think, Oct 8, 2017.

Kurt Andersen, How Religion Turned American Politics Against Science. Big Think, Jan 18, 2018. Andersen points out how the rise of Christian nationalism promotes “magical thinking” which was seen somewhat in the Protestant anti-intellectualism that was used to argue against Catholicism, and resulted in conspiratorial paranoia about witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts, wistful gold digging in colonial Virginia, medical quackery in the early 1800s, extreme Protestant cults like Mormonism, etc. The modern Republican Party has been led to reject science, climate change, etc.

Katherine Carte, Religion and the American Revolution: An Imperial History. University of North Carolina Press | Amazon book, Jun 14, 2021.  Significantly, Gordon S. Wood, What Made the Founders Different. Mercer University, Nov 18, 2011. Wood, at the 56 min mark discusses the “Founding Fathers” and their suspicion and aversion to traditional biblical faith in the Trinity and the atoning importance of Jesus, contradicting the Christian nationalist revisionist history about the supposedly Christian origins of the US.

Charles Coulombe, Calvinism as the Continuing Driver of American Culture. Joboww, Jul 18, 2016. A 10 minute video where Catholic thinker Coulombe points out that Calvinism interpreted material wealth that came from hard work a sign of God’s election, and how the Hebrew story of exodus and inheritance was used poetically and politically by Calvinists: Ulster Scots Protestants going to Ireland; the Afrikaners going to the Transvaal in South African; and the Puritan New Englanders going to North America.

Foundation 5: The Meritocracy Theory of Land Conquest

English and Scottish land law development heavily influenced colonial and U.S. policies, because peasants and urban poor people came to North America because they were displaced in both Scotland and England.

Linda Coombs, A Nation in Balance: Sovereignty, Earth and the Meaning of Right Relation. Partnership of Historic Bostons, Oct 26, 2024. This Native American approach to defining “freedom” is an important critique of all Western political philosophy. The West defines “freedom” only in terms of people not ruling arbitrarily over people. It does not refer to right relationship with the land.

“Aquinnah Wampanoag citizen, educator and author Linda Coombs on how Native people saw sovereignty as the right relationship to the earth. For English colonists, sovereignty meant control over land – and land meant property. For the Eastern Woodland's Native people, sovereignty meant something very different indeed. In this important and revelatory presentation, Aquinnah Wampanoag citizen, educator and author Linda Coombs delves into the true meaning of sovereignty as being in right relationship to the Earth. She reveals how the Wampanoag people did that for thousands of years before European contact, and recounts the cost of colonization, which caused, and continues to cause, the disruption of our intended lives.”

David Hall, What They Left Behind: The English Politics the Puritans Rejected. Partnership of Historic Bostons, Sep 29, 2024.

“Every householder who came to Massachusetts and Connecticut came to a grant of land free of rents. It’s your own land. Nobody in England of their status — nobody in England of their status — owns land free of rents. Now, no one has put on paper yippie! But we can feel it in the security they feel about having children. They’re going to have property to pass on to their children. The large families they start having. That’s out of a sense of economic “looks good downstream — I can pass something on to my children.””

John Locke, Two Treatises of Government. Amazon book, first published 1688. John Locke is the foremost Enlightenment political theorist who influenced the American founders.  He argued for political liberalism at home in England, defending property rights, yet argued for taking Native lands in the American colonies.  How?  With a heretical interpretation of Genesis 1, making "dominion" conditional on "development."  He also told deliberate falsehoods about the Natives.  Locke departed from Christian ethical thought on property rights, which was human rights oriented.

Locke’s historical and theological background is the Enclosure Movement, the Dissolution of the Monasteries by King Henry VIII, and English colonialism.  See Ian Angus, Against Enclosure: The Commoners Fight Back. Monthly Review Online, Jan 19, 2022. See our Anastasis blog post discussing creation and atonement demonstrates how early Christians interpreted Genesis 1 correctly, here. This accelerated and exacerbated the English lords’ practice of enclosing “common land” or common property; see Kings and Generals, Enclosure: How the English Lost Their Lands. Kings and Generals, Aug 1, 2021. Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400-1580 and Geoffrey Moorhouse, The Last Divine Office: Henry VIII and the Dissolution of the Monasteries.  The same idea was promulgated by the Dutch Reformed - see Jacob Alan Cook, A Short History of the Roots of Colonialism, Racism and Whiteness in ‘Christian Worldview’. Baptist News Global, Nov 2, 2021. Abraham Kuyper, “defended Dutch colonial endeavors in South Africa as a necessary fulfillment of God’s commission in Genesis 1 to fill the earth and subdue it. “We must never, as long as we value God’s Word, oppose colonization,” Kuyper argued. “Is it not simply human folly to remain so piled up in a few small places on this planet?” Deutsche Welle, Burnout: The Truth About Overwork and What We Can Do About It. DW Documentary, Apr 29, 2022. This excellent 42 minute video documentary starts with two documents on English law: The Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest, which was eroded by the Enclosure Movement.

Matt Schrage, Rousseau and Locke on Property and the State. Matt Schrage blog, Apr 26, 2018. Schrage contrasts Rousseau’s and Locke’s arguments for private property. For Rousseau, private property was the derivation of human political life, which came before it and can reorganize property. For Locke, private property was a law from God in creation that a person brought with him into the political community, and the state had to be limited and could not take away his property.

Calum Murray, John Locke's Theory of Property, and the Dispossession of Indigenous Peoples in the Settler-Colony Indigenous Peoples in the Settler-Colony.  American Indian Law Journal, Volume 10, Issue 1, Article 4, January 25, 2022. See also Trevor Wright, Private Property: Origins, Outcomes, Justifications. Medium, Apr 19, 2017. Morag Barbara Arneil, "All the World Was America": John Locke and the American Indian. University College London, 1992. Arniel, in this doctoral dissertation, shows how Locke relied very selectively on travel journals and books in his library for information about Native Americans to portray them unfavorably.  Nagamitsu Miura, John Locke and the Native Americans: Early English Liberalism and Its Colonial Reality. Cambridge Scholars Publishing | Amazon page, 2013. Miura writes a devastating and integrated analysis of Locke.  John Quiggin, John Locke Against Freedom. Jacobin Magazine, Jun 28, 2015. Quiggin argues even more strongly that Locke legitimized expropriation and enslavement.  Quiggin notes that even SCOTUS case Kelo v. City of New London, Connecticut (2005) relied on faulty Lockean assumptions. Matthew Yglesias, If Your House Is Built On Land Expropriated From Its Indigenous Inhabitants—You Didn't Build That. Slate, Sep 19, 2012. Yglesias makes a brief comment on Locke. Bryan Caplan, Do Indians Rightfully Own America? EconLog, Sep 2012. Caplan makes an argument based on the very theory of property - Lockean individualism - that is in question, showing the vulnerability of his argument. Jim Powell, John Locke: Natural Rights to Life, Liberty, and Property. Foundation for Economic Education, Aug 1, 1996. Powell explains Locke’s impact on the American Revolution and American institutions and law.  PragerU, If We Lose John Locke, We Lose America. PragerU, Jul 20, 2020. Features Ben Shapiro and highlights the conservative concern to defend Locke. Paul Corcoran, John Locke on the Possession of Land: Native Title vs. the ‘Principle’ of Vacuum domicilium. University of Adelaide, date unknown. Corcoran attempts to exonerate Locke by attributing ignorance to him, and in any case overlooks completely the heretical nature of Locke's attempt to frame his theory of property from Genesis 1, and the English background as King Henry VIII seized Catholic land in the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

Foundation 6: Personal Trauma and Violence Among Some European Settlers

David Hackett Fisher, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America. Oxford University Press | Amazon page, 1989. Fisher is vital to understand the different groups which migrated from the British Empire to America and set regional cultures.  The Scots-Irish were extremely poor whites who came from the northern border between England and Scotland where violence regularly broke out.  They were mostly Presbyterians, accustomed to slavery and larger inequalities in wealth yet based in honor-shame relations, and violently retributive, producing the Hatfields and McCoys.  They were the dominant influence in the South and Appalachian region. 

Cameron Joseph, The Scots-Irish Vote. The Atlantic, Oct 6, 2009. Whet Moser, American Violence and Southern Culture. Chicago Magazine, Jul 27, 2012. Kevin D. Williamson, The White Ghetto. National Review, Jan 9, 2014. Joseph, Moser, and Williamson all refer to the Appalachian Mountain region.  J.D. Vance, How the White Working Class Lost Its Patriotism. Washington Post, Jul 25, 2016. Excerpted from his book J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. Amazon book, Jun 28, 2016. Reviewed by Mez McConnell, A Transatlantic Elegy for an American Hillbilly. 20 Schemes, Oct 10, 2016. Rod Dreher, J.D. Vance's Straight Talk About Poverty. The American Conservative, Jul 25, 2016. See also Why Liberals Love Hillbilly Elegy. The American Conservative, Aug 5, 2016.  See also Rod Dreher, The Decline and Fall of Poor Country People. The American Conservative, Jul 26, 2016. John Daniel Davidson, The Plight Of The White Working Class Isn’t Economic, It’s Cultural. The Federalist, Aug 17, 2016. 

That Is Interesting, America’s Ancestry, Explained Through Maps. That Is Interesting, Aug 10, 2023.

Foundation 7: The Hunt For Cheap Labor

Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. Bold Type Books | Amazon page, Apr 12, 2016. Kendi begins his study with Cotton Mather and the New England Puritans as an example of white supremacy and white evangelicalism conjoined, especially with the so-called "curse of Ham."  Kendi draws on earlier precursors found in the ancient and medieval European worlds.

Peter Y. Choi, George Whitefield: Evangelist for God and Empire. Eerdmans | Amazon page, Aug 7, 2018. Choi evaluates the evangelist of the Great Awakening.  Whitefield lobbied for introducing slavery into Georgia over against John Wesley's anti-slavery stance, and despite James Oglethorpe's original vision that Georgia be a colony without slavery for resettling London's poor, especially those in debtors' prisons, with up to fifty acres in a society of agrarian equality.  Choi calls attention to the ways Whitefield worked for British imperial expansion, and discusses the broader racism and imperialism of the 18th century.

Joseph Reed Washington Jr., Puritan Race Virtue, Vice, and Values 1620-1820: Original Calvinist True Believers' Enduring Faith and Ethics Race Claims. Peter Lang, Inc. | Amazon page, 1987. Washington focuses on major figures in evangelical Calvinism: Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, and other pro-slavery theologians. Katharine Gerbner, Christian Slavery: Conversion and Race in the Protestant Atlantic World. University of Pennsylvania Press | Amazon page, Mar 5, 2018.  Gerbner begins with white Protestant evangelicals in the Caribbean from the 1670's.  They hardened their views of race to defend slavery - in response to other Protestant missionaries who assumed that conversion would grant an enslaved person freedom.  The slaveholders attacked the missionaries, and defended Christian slavery as beneficial for the enslaved.

Gerald Horne, The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America. NYU Press | Amazon page, 2014. Horne highlights how the British colonists in America understood how the British Empire was employing free Africans in the navy and army, moving towards abolition, and in the case of Somerset 1772, honoring the English Christian legal tradition of setting free an enslaved person who set foot on the soil of England.  They declared their independence from Britain, in part, to preserve slavery and put political-military power behind their heretical interpretation of slavery in the Bible.

Mark A. Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis. University of North Carolina Press | Amazon page, 2006. Noll’s very readable and concise study of why, starting from the issue of slavery, American evangelicalism must be considered a heretical aberration from English-speaking Christians outside the US. Noll points out that American Catholics retained a memory of the church's abolitionist posture from its earliest times.  See also Elizabeth L. Jemison, Proslavery Christianity After the Emancipation. Tennessee Historical Quarterly/JSTOR, Winter 2013. Jamison examines the persistence of the belief that chattel slavery was biblically appropriate. For a refutation, see Race: Slavery and Belief Systems.

Genetically Modified Skeptic, How Religious Was America in 1776? Genetically Modified Skeptic, Oct 16, 2024. Based on the sociological estimates and statistics of Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-2005: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy. Rutgers University Press | Amazon page, 2005. During colonial times, approximately only 17% of the colonies’ population were “religious” and thus Christian. White people had higher rates of churchgoing, with South Carolina having the highest rate of White churchgoing, notably with the lowest ratio of White to Black people. Only when the individual states stopped supporting state-churches — they stopped paying ministers with government funding — did religious adherence rise because of the increased competition in the religious marketplace.

Foundation 8: Church and State

Alvin Carpenter, Southern Baptists and Southern Slavery: The Forgotten Crime Against Humanity. A.L. Carpenter | Amazon book, 2013. The Southern Baptist Convention is the only denomination to have been created from the idea that the African, by biblical decree, was forever doomed to slavery. Carpenter explores how such an incredible evil could have been perpetuated upon a people by the Southern Baptists and why they felt compelled to argue for the defense of the institution of slavery until the last shot was fired in the Civil War. Southern Baptists deeply believed it was a Divine right to buy and sell the African, a fact that has been buried in the annals of Southern Baptist history.

Edward J. Blum, Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865--1898. LSU Press | Amazon book, 2007. Reconstruction in the American South collapsed due to Southern Protestant resistance to dismantling white supremacy, and lack of leadership in the North and at the federal and national levels.  Despite many new Catholic immigrants and new black churches, Northern and Southern white Protestants used Reconstruction to rebuild the nation around white, male Protestant leadership.  The intersection of penal substitutionary atonement with the failure of Reconstruction and race relations is offered on the Anastasis blog here.

Daniel G. Hummel, The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism: How the Evangelical Battle over the End Times Shaped a Nation. Eerdmans | Amazon page, May 4, 2023. J.N. Darby came from the U.K. to the U.S. to spread dispensationalism, which suited white American interests of abandoning Reconstruction because of its focus on soul-winning evangelism only. Dwight L. Moody advanced this position by overlooking the moral sin of slavery and the moral stain of the Civil War.

Charles Reagan Wilson, Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865-1920. University of Georgia Press | Amazon book, 1980, 2009. Wilson examines how the unique form of white evangelical Christianity of the American South continued after the Civil War.  The "civil religion" fueled the "Lost Cause" position that the South defended "States Rights" against an overreaching federal government and Northern aggression.  "Recent scholarship affirms its continuing power in the minds of many white southerners" 

Kelly J. Baker, Gospel According to the Klan: The KKK's Appeal to Protestant America, 1915-1930. University of Kansas Press | Amazon book, 2011. Part of the troubling history showing how white supremacy and Klan movements were nourished within Protestant congregations.  See also Joshua Rothman, When Bigotry Paraded Through the Streets. The Atlantic, Dec 4, 2016. about the second KKK of 1915, subtitled "A century ago, millions of Americans banded together in defense of white, Christian America and traditional morality—and most of their compatriots turned a blind eye to the Ku Klux Klan"

Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey, The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America. University of North Carolina Press | Amazon book, 2012. how the color of Jesus' skin and portrayals of Jesus were used to justify white supremacy, territorial expansion, and white imperialism.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett, On Lynchings. Dover Publications | Amazon book, 1892. This courageous African-American journalist began her coverage of Southern lynchings with this book.  Often, Southern white Protestants lynched black men on charges of raping white women, or otherwise violating a white supremacist social order.  Notions of white female purity were taken from Christian ideas, as were exaggerated notions of male guardianship of that purity.  Note chapter two begins with Mrs. J.S. Underwood, wife of a pastor, falsely accusing a black man of entering her house, chloroforming her, and raping her.  Lynchings were often a spectacle held after church services.  An Anastasis blog post explores the inner connection between lynching and the idea that divine justice is retributive as articulated by penal substitutionary atonement, here.

General James Rusling, Interview with President William McKinley. The Christian Advocate, Jan 22, 1903. 17. President McKinley believed God told him to take the Philippines from Spain, in order to “uplift and civilize and Christianize them.” This, despite the Philippines being the most Catholic country in Asia.

James Q. Whitman, Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law. Princeton University Press | Amazon book, Feb 2017. See reviews by Rafael Medoff, Book Review Was Hitler Inspired by Racist American Laws? Haaretz, Nov 2017. and Ira Katznelson, What America Taught the Nazis. The Atlantic, Nov 2017. Katznelson finds the devastating truth that Nazi lawyers thought that American race law was too racist for Nazi Germany.  Both Germany and the U.S. are children of Protestant mistakes and the Enlightenment's scientific racism.  One difference which must be accounted for, however, is that in Germany, Christian faith was in decline, whereas in the U.S., Christian faith was quite strong.  This means white evangelicals learned to make white supremacy co-exist with their theology.

Danielle L. McGuire, At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance--A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power. Knopf | Amazon book, Sep 7, 2010. McGuire narrates the history of white male sexual aggression against black women, and how that also motivated black churches and the Civil Rights Movement.  McGuire continues in the path set by Ida B. Wells and Darlene Clark Hine in calling our attention to oppression by both gender and race.

Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White. Routledge | Amazon book, 1995. An historical work showing how the Irish in Europe and elsewhere were not assimilated into the category of whiteness, whereas in the United States they were and did.  The Anglo-Saxon Protestant elites offered the Irish Catholics positions in the city police or working class wage-earning roles (p.189).  This strengthened the optics and social force of whiteness.  Interesting side observations about Catholic and Protestant perspectives.

David R. Roediger, Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs. Basic Books | Amazon book, 2005. Reedier recounts how Jewish, Italian, Ukrainians, and Polish immigrants from the 1880's - 1930's became "white" even though the Anglo-Saxon Protestants initially rejected them.  They participated in the labor movement, the New Deal, and purchased homes.  There was also the legal construction of whiteness developed against Asian immigrants through Takao Ozawa vs. U.S. (1922) and U.S. vs. Bhagat Singh Thind (1923).

Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. Liveright | Amazon book, 2017. Rothstein details the long history of white racist segregation policies through both private and government agencies (federal, state, municipal), starting from the New Deal and the GI Bill.  It serves as an important backdrop to specifically white evangelical efforts to self-segregate in the realm of housing and schooling, and the enthusiastic complicity of white evangelical churches in the government-funded white-flight from the cities to the suburbs.  See for example the historical commentary by Rose Hackman, The Michigan Town Where Only Christians Are Allowed to Buy Houses. The Guardian, Feb 9, 2018.  More information on America's racist housing segregation is found on the Anastasis website here. 

Kevin M. Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America. Basic Books | Amazon book, 2015. Kruse points out how the idea of the US as a Christian nation emerged from corporate leaders in the 1930's eager to fight the New Deal.  Eisenhower started the National Prayer Breakfast.  Congress added the phrase "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance, and made "In God We Trust" a national motto.  Church membership rose to 69 percent of the population.  See also Kevin Kruse, Christian America Is an Invention: Big Business, Right-Wing Politics and the Religious Lie That Still Divides Us. Salon, Apr 19, 2015. See review by Ron Briley, How Corporate America Invented ‘Christian America’ to Fight the New Deal. Church and State, Mar 23, 2016. See also Rachel Siegel, Here's the Sermon That God ‘Under God' Added to the Pledge. The Washington Post, Jun 16, 2018. Discusses Rev. George Docherty.

Bronson Barringer, The Business of War: Theological and Ethical Reflections on the Military-Industrial Complex. Wipf and Stock | Amazon page, Mar 2020. An outstanding collection of essays about U.S. militarism and its impacts on domestic and foreign affairs.

Julie J. Ingersoll, Building God's Kingdom: Inside the World of Christian Reconstruction. Oxford University Press | Amazon book, 2015. Ingersoll narrates the rise of a peculiar branch of the Calvinist, Reformed tradition, led by Rushdoony, North, etc.  They see the Sinai laws, unmediated by the teaching of Jesus, as a blueprint for civil society.  This position is critiqued on the Anastasis blog here.

Carolyn Renee Dupont, Mississippi Praying: Southern White Evangelicals and the Civil Rights Movement, 1945-1975. NYU Press | Amazon book, Aug 23, 2013. Dupont shows how evangelicals in Mississippi actively rejected the Christian argument for the equality of its black citizens.  Therefore, their faith was not incidental to their white supremacy, but constitutive of it.  They mobilized against school integration after Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.  See review by Matthew Tuininga, Mississippi Praying. Reformation 21, July 2015. for a summary.  See Tobin Grant, What Catalyst Started the Presbyterian Church in America? Racism. Religion News Service, Jun 30, 2016. to see the link to the PCA denomination, where the majority of Mississippi's churches joined the PCA. 

Charles Marsh, God's Long Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights. Princeton University Press | Amazon book, 1997. Marsh follows various Christians after the summer of 1964 in Mississippi, when violence against blacks and the murder of three civil rights workers drew national attention.  Marsh does excellent biographical work to show how Sam Bowers (KKK Grand Wizard), Fannie Lou Hamer (a black Christian activist), William Douglas Hudgins (a pastor of a church which stayed "neutral"), and others read the Bible and deployed it to defend their positions.

Mark A. Noll, God and Race in American Politics: A Short History. Princeton University Press | Amazon book, Apr 4, 2010. Noll surveys how evangelicals used the Bible at critical moments of racial conflict in American politics:  slavery, segregation, the Civil Rights era, and the "values voting" era.  Noll points out how political parties co-opt both more and less faithful expressions of Christian ethics, while white racial structures remain unaddressed.

Darren Dochuk, From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism. W.W. Norton & Company | Amazon book, 2011. Picks up where Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath left off.  How Southern white evangelicals built white Christian institutions in the West, for example in the Billy Graham crusades, Pepperdine University, Bob Shuler and the Church of the Open Door, Fuller Theological Seminary, various radio stations, etc.  This laid the groundwork for a network of support that eventually went to Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, etc.

Jim Wallis, America's Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America. Brazos Press | Amazon book, Jan 19, 2016. See also the study guide (pdf) from Wallis

Frances Fitzgerald, The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America. Simon & Schuster | Amazon book, Apr 4, 2017. Details a long history including the Southern Strategy, the Religious Right, and the compromises with the Reagan Administration.

Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America. Oxford University Press | Amazon book, 2001. Christian sociologists show how theological hyper-individualism blinds white evangelicals from seeing sin in the form of structural racial injustice.  The study is valuable as sociology, although deeper explanations for the individualism are needed.

Oliver Raphael Phillips, Culture Trumps Religion, Every Time: The Ethno-Cultural Challenge for the Church. CreateSpace Independent Publishers | Amazon book, 2013.

Dominique DuBois Gilliard, Rethinking Incarceration: Advocating for Justice That Restores. InterVarsity Press | Amazon book, Feb 6, 2018.  Gilliard finds not one, but five, pipelines to prison.  Points out that America's highly retributive culture and institutions are influenced by penal substitutionary atonement, which supposes a highly retributive, not restorative, God.  As Timothy Gorringe, God's Just Vengeance (1996) notes, wherever penal substitution goes, punitive sentencing increases; see our blog post on retributive vs. restorative justice, which is found here.  More resources on Christian theology intersecting with the criminal justice system, which can be found on our website here.  Our study and action guide to Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow can be found here. 

Second Thought, How Conservatives Co-Opted Christianity. Second Thought, Sep 24, 2021. A good summary starting with the Fundamentalist-Modernist split and Amy Semple McPherson and her use of radio and Christian nationalism.

PBS, Lyman Beecher . PBS God in American Series) discusses the well-known Presbyterian pastor and social activist Lyman Beecher (1775 - 1863).  Beecher came to believe in church-state disestablishment.  Nonetheless, he was anti-Catholic and shares in the blame for the Ursuline Convent riots in Boston, and seemed to believe in manifest destiny in the American West.  He also saw abolition as too radical, and refused to admit black students into Lane Seminary, where he was president.  

Wikipedia, Kanawha County Textbook Controversy (Wikipedia article) re: 1974 in West Virginia; see the participation of Christian people and groups

Wikipedia, Paul Weyrich (Wikipedia article) one of the leaders of the Moral Majority political movement from the 1970's, co-founder of The Heritage Foundation (influential right-wing think tank) and co-founder of ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) which writes bills, who was in favor of voter suppression; see The Young Turks, Hypocrite Mitch McConnell Cool With Suppressing Voters. The Young Turks, Jan 31 2019. at the 6:05 min mark

NBC News and Martin Luther King, Jr., 'New Phase' Of Civil Rights Struggle, 11 Months Before His Assassination. NBC News, May 8, 1967. published April 4, 2018.  King speaks of how the U.S. government gave land to white Americans in the West and Midwest to provide them with an economic base, but denied the same to black Americans 

Wikipedia, Loving v. Virginia (Wikipedia article), 1967; the federal Supreme Court case banning anti-miscegenation laws, which they deemed as an aspect of white supremacy.  The decision overturned Virginia's ban on inter-racial marriage in Commonwealth v. Loving, wherein Judge Leon M. Bazile declared, "Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix." 

John C. Rao, Americanism and the Collapse of the Church in the United States.  Remnant Press, 1984.

David D. Daniels, Why Pentecostalism's Multiethnic Beginning Floundered. Christianity Today, 1998.

A.G. Miller, A Timeline of Black Christianity Before the Civil War. Christianity Today, 1999.

Wikipedia, John Ashcroft (Wikipedia) When he was Attorney General of Missouri, Ashcroft fought the court-ordered desegregation of St. Louis and Kansas City. He took the case all the way to the Supreme Court, and lost; it was his version of "standing in the schoolhouse door," claimed an old acquaintance. While serving as governor, Ashcroft fought the court order again, almost earning him a contempt of court citation. He also repeatedly vetoed laws seeking to increase voter registration in St. Louis, which had the state's highest concentration of black voters and lowest rate of voter registration. As senator, Ashcroft successfully fought Bill Clinton's attempt to elevate Ronnie White— the first African American to serve on Missouri's high court, and an eminent judge with the highest ABA ratings—to the federal bench. Ashcroft accepted an honorary degree from Bob Jones University, which banned interracial dating, and he gave an interview to the pro-Confederacy Southern Partisan magazine. (On an unrelated note, he thought calico cats were a sign of the devil, and when he visited the Hague, had his team check to make sure there were none on the premises.) Ashcroft served George W. Bush from 2001-05.  He is a conservative Christian from the Assemblies of God denomination.

John T. McGreevy, Parish Boundaries: The Catholic Encounter with Race in the Twentieth-Century Urban North. University of Chicago Press | Amazon page, May 1998. “The history of Catholic parishes in major cities such as Boston, Chicago, Detroit, New York, and Philadelphia, melding their unique place in the urban landscape to the course of twentieth century American race relations. In vivid portraits of parish life, John McGreevy examines the contacts and conflicts between Euro-American Catholics and their African-American neighbors. By tracing the transformation of a church, its people, and the nation, McGreevy illuminates the enormous impact of religious culture on modern American society.”

J. Brent Walker, Critique of David Barton’s Views on Church and State. Baptist Joint Committee, Apr 1, 2005.

James Q. Wilson, American Exceptionalism. American Enterprise Institute, Aug 23, 2006.

Gary W. Deddo, Neighbors in Racial Reconciliation: The Contribution of a Trinitarian Theological Anthropology. 2007. Deddo offers a valuable corrective to individualism on the basis of the Triune God, and covenantal love.

John Coffey, The Abolition of the Slave Trade: Christian Conscience and Political Action. Jubilee Centre, 2007.

Chris Hedges, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. Simon & Schuster, Jan 2008.

“Hedges, who grew up in rural parishes in upstate New York where his father was a Presbyterian pastor, attacks the movement as someone steeped in the Bible and Christian tradition. He points to the hundreds of senators and members of Congress who have earned between 80 and 100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential Christian Right advocacy groups as one of many signs that the movement is burrowing deep inside the American government to subvert it. The movement's call to dismantle the wall between church and state and the intolerance it preaches against all who do not conform to its warped vision of a Christian America are pumped into tens of millions of American homes through Christian television and radio stations, as well as reinforced through the curriculum in Christian schools. The movement's yearning for apocalyptic violence and its assault on dispassionate, intellectual inquiry are laying the foundation for a new, frightening America.

American Fascists, which includes interviews and coverage of events such as pro-life rallies and weeklong classes on conversion techniques, examines the movement's origins, its driving motivations and its dark ideological underpinnings. Hedges argues that the movement currently resembles the young fascist movements in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and '30s, movements that often masked the full extent of their drive for totalitarianism and were willing to make concessions until they achieved unrivaled power. The Christian Right, like these early fascist movements, does not openly call for dictatorship, nor does it use physical violence to suppress opposition. In short, the movement is not yet revolutionary. But the ideological architecture of a Christian fascism is being cemented in place. The movement has roused its followers to a fever pitch of despair and fury. All it will take, Hedges writes, is one more national crisis on the order of September 11 for the Christian Right to make a concerted drive to destroy American democracy. The movement awaits a crisis. At that moment they will reveal themselves for what they truly are -- the American heirs to fascism. Hedges issues a potent, impassioned warning. We face an imminent threat. His book reminds us of the dangers liberal, democratic societies face when they tolerate the intolerant.”

Charles A. Coulombe, Puritan's Empire: A Catholic Perspective on American History.  Tumblar House | Amazon page, Sep 9, 2008.

David Van Biema, The New Calvinism. Time, Mar 12, 2009.

Michael Spencer, The Coming Evangelical Collapse. Christian Science Monitor, Mar 10, 2009. very prescient

Brian Bantum, Why Christians Can't Be Post-Racial: Christian Existence in the Murky Waters of Race and Place. theotherjournal blog, Aug 17, 2009.

CBS News, Hutaree Militia Raided by the FBI. CBS, Mar 2010. The Hutaree Militia was a “Christian militia” group in Michigan who were “preparing for the end-times.” The FBI arrested the members and broke up the group.

David Goldfield, Evangelicals, Republicans, and the Civil War . New York Times, Jul 7, 2011. notes that the anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic Know-Nothing party of the 1850's, was white evangelical

Gordon S. Wood, What Made the Founders Different. Mercer University, Nov 18, 2011. at the 56 min mark discusses the “Founding Fathers” and their suspicion and aversion to traditional biblical faith in the Trinity and the atoning importance of Jesus, contradicting the Christian nationalist revisionist history about the supposedly Christian origins of the US.

Tim Keller, Racism and Corporate Evil. Desiring God, Mar 28, 2012. cites Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow and William Stuntz's The Collapse of American Criminal Justice; he acknowledges structural racism in the criminal justice system, but sadly, not in the formation of his own denomination, the Presbyterian Church of America.

Tomi Obaro, For Korean-American Pastor, Being Open-Minded Builds Relationships. Washington Post, Aug 25, 2012.

Mark Charles, A Prayer of Indigenous Peoples. Wireless Hogan blog, Apr 18, 2013.

Lisa Sharon Harper, The Cost of Being "Christian". Sojourners, May 2013. about Richard Twiss, a Lakota/Sioux Christian

Alan Collins, Winfield Residents Upset Over Flier for Whites Only Pastors' Conference. Fox 6 News, 2012. and Kirsten West Savali, Alabama Church Holds “Whites-Only” Christian Conference. Praise 104.1 FM, 2012. and note the reliance on "religious freedom" to justify white supremacy

Rebecca Savastio, KKK Member Walks up to Black Musician in Bar-but It’s Not a Joke, and What Happens Next Will Astound You. Las Vegas Guardian Express, Nov 20, 2013.

Stoyan Zaimov, 'The Grandmother Locked in the Bedroom:' A Native American Perspective on History, Immigration, and Thanksgiving. Christian Post, Nov 28, 2013.

Elizabeth L. Jemison, Proslavery Christianity After the Emancipation. Tennessee Historical Quarterly/JSTOR, Winter 2013.

Randall Balmer, The Real Origins of the Religious Right. Politico, May 27, 2014.

Rod Dreher, Church to Orthodox Fascists: Repent! The American Conservative, May 5, 2014.

Alexander Chow, New Calvinism in China? Alexander Chow blog, May 22, 2014.

Fred Clark, Our Job is to Unlearn the Lies We Learned from the Theologians of Slavery, Part 1 . Patheos, Jun 20, 2014. and Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 an excellent perspective on the care we need to take when we select heroes from Christian history; and a reminder that white American evangelicalism drove a wedge between evangelism and social justice discipleship, which is the theology and practice many inherit today

Kay Higuera Smith, Jayachitra Lalitha, L. Daniel Hawk, Evangelical Postcolonial Conversations: Global Awakenings in Theology and Praxis. InterVarsity Press | Amazon page, Jul 2014.

The Reboot, That Time When Jesus Started a Riot. The Reboot blog, Aug 14, 2014.

Alan Noble, The Evangelical Persecution Complex. The Atlantic, Aug 4, 2014. explores theological and cultural roots of a damaging attitude in the Christian community

Reggie L. Williams, Bonhoeffer's Black Jesus: Harlem Renaissance Theology and an Ethic of Resistance. Amazon book, Sep 14, 2016.

N.T. Wright, Justification, Reconciliation, Racism, and Community. Fuller Seminary video, Nov 8, 2014.

Alan Noble, Sin’s Part in the System (and Vice Versa): Thoughts on Voddie Baucham’s “Thoughts on Ferguson”. Christ & Pop Culture, Nov 28, 2014.

Greg Boyd, How Christians Should Respond to Ferguson. Reknew, Dec 3, 2014.

Napp Nazworth, Russell Moore on Racism and Southern Baptists: God Is Giving Us a Second Chance. Christian Post, Dec 18, 2014.

Mark Charles, The Doctrine of Discovery - A Buried Apology and an Empty Chair. Wirelesshogan: Reflections from the Hogan, Dec 22, 2014.

Paul Alexander, Before There Was Whiteness. Evangelicals for Social Action, Jan 12, 2015.

Miranda Blue, The Family Leader Is Distributing David Barton’s ‘Christian Nation’ Bible To Every Iowa State Legislator. Right Wing Watch, Jan 28, 2015. “Iowa Religious Right group The Family Leader, a key player in the GOP’s first-in-the-nation caucus, has a new plan to encourage legislators in Iowa to “do what God has asked them to do.””

Greg Boyd, Thank You Obama for Denouncing "Christian" Violence: It is Actually Far Worse Than ISIS. Reknew blog, Feb 6, 2015.

Paul Harvey, Race, Culture, and Religion in the American South. Oxford Research Encyclopedias, Mar 2015. is a very helpful summary with good bibliography

Russell Moore, The Cross and the Confederate Flag. Moore to the Point blog, Jun 19, 2015. President of Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptists

David Niose, Anti-Intellectualism is Killing America. Psychology Today, Jun 20, 2015. about the lack of reasoning and morality in our culture

Carol Kuruvilla, How White Christians Used The Bible -- And Confederate Flag -- To Oppress Black People. Huffington Post, Jun 22, 2015.

Matthew Tuininga, Presbyterians and the Political Theology of Race, Part 1: Cultural Captivity? . Reformation 21, Jun 2015. notes that white Protestant Christians set the culture; they were not victims of it.  See Part 2: Old Testament Politics and Part 3: Gospel Politics

Ryan J. Cobb, et.al., Congregational Size and Attitudes towards Racial Inequality among Church Attendees in America. Religions Journal, Jun 25, 2015.

John C. Rao, Calvinism and Americanism.  Archive.org, Jul 4, 2015.  A 70 minute lecture.  At the 10 minute mark, “total depravity” for Calvinists and Lutherans (human being is a dung heap that can only be covered over by Christ) meant that nothing in the human being is good.  So the Catholic definition of “salvation” means that the image of God is saved, but for Calvinists, “salvation” means that God’s retributive justice is redirected so that we survive.  Calvin then applied rigid logic against the Catholic Church with its traditions, buildings, sacraments.  The Puritans defined faith and salvation in such a way that the community and the church itself were ultimately superfluous -- and thus individualism.  Creation and beauty and the sacraments became irrelevant, ultimately, as well.  The intellect was sacrificed for “faith alone” so that crises of faith resulted immediately in nihilism.  Rao also argues that “faith in God” ultimately becomes “faith in you” epistemically.  Then, other institutions -- including the nation, family, community -- need to be weakened so that the individual can be “free” from authority.  Rao sees the 1960s as continuous -- not discontinuous -- with Calvinism.  In addition, “America” as an actual community of relations means less than “America” as a principle or ideal, even a universal ideal that needs to be imposed everywhere else. 

Bradley Wright, Dear Pastor, Can I Come to Your Church?  Christianity Today, Jul 21, 2015. About the challenge of multi-ethnic, multi-cultural churches

Terry Goodrich, Racial Attitudes of Blacks in Multiracial Congregations Resemble Those of Whites, Study Finds. Baylor University, Aug 17, 2015.

Francie Diep, Multiracial Churches Cater to the White Congregants. Pacific Standard, Aug 18, 2015.

Deborah Jian Lee, How Segregation Fueled the Evangelical Mega-Church Movement. Huffington Post, Nov 3, 2015.

William Saletan, The Terrorists Among Us:  Forget Syria. The Most Dangerous Religious Extremists Are Migrants from North and South Carolina. Slate, Nov 30, 2015.

Jim Wallis, Slavery Never Ended. It Just Evolved. Huffington Post, Dec 18, 2015.

Laurie Goodstein, Race, History and Baptist Reconciliation. New York Times, Jan 23, 2016.

J.N.J. Kritzinger, The Involvement of White People in the Struggle Against Racism. Kathrada Foundation, Feb 10, 2017. in the context of South Africa and Dutch colonialism

Morgan Lee, Where John Piper and Other Evangelicals Stand on Black Lives Matter. Christianity Today, May 13, 2016.

Sky Palma, Billy Graham’s Daughter: “9/11 Was God’s Punishment for Trans People, Evolution, and Secularism”. Dead State, May 13, 2016. “Anne Graham Lotz appeared on right wing pundit Steve Deace’s radio show this week to remind listeners that God has forsaken the U.S. because of transgenders, the teaching of evolution, the gays, etc.”

Vince Bantu, Is Christianity the White Man's Religion? Jude3 Project, Jun 20, 2016. about Christianity in Egypt from the 2nd to 7th centuries

Tobin Grant, What Catalyst Started the Presbyterian Church of America? Racism. Religion News Service, Jun 30, 2016. In 1973, the majority of Mississippi's churches joined the PCA.

Robert P. Jones, The Eclipse of White Christian America. The Atlantic, Jul 12, 2016. and Rod Dreher, The Sun Sets on White Christian America. The American Conservative, Jul 13, 2016.

Fred Clark, Rewriting Evangelicals' Past to Preserve Our Mistakes . Patheos, Jul 18, 2016. brutal facts about white supremacy among white evangelicals

Nana Dolce, Do Racial Issues Really "Disappear" Because of the Gospel? A Response to John MacArthur . Christ and Pop Culture, Jul 26, 2016. a terrible implication of double predestination and high federal Calvinism

Adam Lee, The White Supremacist Roots of Evangelicalism. Patheos Aug 5, 2016.

Frederick Clarkson, Dominionism Rising: A Theocratic Movement Hiding in Plain Sight.  Political Research Associates, Aug 18, 2016. “The rise of Ted Cruz is a singular event in American political history. The son of a Cuban refugee and evangelical pastor, Cruz was raised in the kind of evangelicalism-with-a-theocratic-bent that has come to epitomize a significant and growing trend in American public life. That is, dominionism: a dynamic ideology that arose from the swirls and eddies of American evangelicalism to animate the Christian Right, and become a defining feature of modern politics and culture.”

Bruce Ashford, 4 Flawed Secular Models of Dealing with Racism. Bruce Ashford blog, Sep 8, 2016. Ashford is Provost and Professor of Theology and Culture at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary; significant that he admits to macro or structural racism from micro or personal decisions

Mark Charles, The Problem with the Dakota Access Pipeline. Wirelesshogan, Sep 15, 2016. discusses the "Doctrine of Discovery" from Roman Catholic papal declaration, to the US Constitution

PRRI, Backing Trump, White Evangelicals Flip Flop on Importance of Candidate Character. PRRI/Brookings Survey, Oct 19, 2016.

Shaena Montanari, VP-Elect Mike Pence Does Not Accept Evolution: Here's Why That Matters. Forbes, Nov 10, 2016.

Roland Martin, 'We're Not Going Anywhere:' Watch Roland Martin Challenge White Nationalist Richard Spencer. News One Now, Nov 22, 2016. important that Spencer claims to be a "cultural Christian"

Rev. William J. Barber II, The Racist History of Southern White Evangelicalism and the Rise of Donald Trump. Washington Post, Nov 23, 2016.

Sam Haselby, The Origins of American Religious Nationalism. Amazon book, Dec 1, 2016. See pdf book

Joshua Rothman, When Bigotry Paraded Through the Streets. The Atlantic, Dec 4, 2016. about the second KKK of 1915, subtitled "A century ago, millions of Americans banded together in defense of white, Christian America and traditional morality—and most of their compatriots turned a blind eye to the Ku Klux Klan"

Todd Lake, The Dangers of White Evangelical Nostalgia. Evangelicals for Social Action, Dec 16, 2016.

Caroline Praderio, One Man Spent Years Befriending KKK Members and Persuaded 200 of Them to Leave the Group. Business Insider, Dec 28, 2016.

Charles Coulombe, The Americanist Heresy.  Sensus Fidelium, Dec 31, 2016.  A one hour lecture.  “Saying your land is the greatest ever ever is not patriotism.  It's turning your land into a religion, an ideology.  Catholicism, in these united States, has taken a backseat to 'america' since the founding & for generations we have cared more for the land than the faith.”  Americanism was officially defined by Pope Leo XIII in the 1890s.  Leo XIII Testem Benevolentiae Nostre said, “The church often adapts itself to our modern civilization… There are some among you who conceive of, and desire, a church in America different from that in the rest of the world.”  Coulombe, however, believes that Catholics need to convert the nation per se to Catholicism, and appears to be a Catholic Integralist.  

Michael Horton, Evangelicals Should Be Deeply Troubled by Donald Trump's Attempt to Mainstream Heresy. Washington Post, Jan 3, 2017.

Sarah Pulliam Bailey, How Nostalgia for White Christian America Drove So Many Americans to Vote for Trump. Washington Post, Jan 5, 2017.

Kenji Kuramitsu, The Lasting Trauma of Japanese American Incarceration: 75 Years After Executive Order 9066. Sojourners, Feb 16, 2017.

Adam Serwer, What Jeff Sessions's Role in Prosecuting the Klan Reveals About His Civil-Rights Record. The Atlantic, Jan 9, 2017.

Myriam Renaud, Myths Debunked: Why Did White Evangelical Christians Vote for Trump? Chicago Divinity School, Jan 19, 2017. not abortion, but terrorism and economy

Goldie Blumenstyk, Jerry Falwell Jr. Says He Will Lead Federal Task Force on Higher-Ed Policy. Chronicle of Higher Education, Jan 31, 2017. “The exact scope, size, and mission of the task force has yet to be formally announced. But in an interview, Mr. Falwell said he sees it as a response to what he called “overreaching regulation” and micromanagement by the department in areas like accreditation and policies that affect colleges’ student-recruiting behavior, like the new “borrower defense to repayment” regulations.” “Religious freedom” and sexual harassment/abuse may also be at issue.

Janine Giordano Drake, Race, Class, Religion, and American Citizenship. Oxford Research Encyclopedias, Feb 2017.  A very helpful article with an extensive bibliography; invaluable as a starting point to understanding the role of religious or denominational affiliation in American history

Emma Green, These Conservative Christians Are Opposed to Trump—and Suffering the Consequences. The Atlantic, Feb 11, 2017.

Emma Green, White Evangelicals Believe They Face More Discrimination Than Muslims. The Atlantic, Mar 10, 2017. and unfortunately, furthermore: Kate Shellnutt, Most White Evangelicals Don’t Believe Muslims Belong in America. Christianity Today, Jul 26, 2017. “Pew updates its comprehensive survey of what US Muslims believe and do, and how their neighbors feel about them.”

Bruce Ashford, Can a Faithful Evangelical Be a Political Nationalist? Bruce Ashford blog, Mar 13, 2017. helpful starter saying no to ethno-nationalism, qualified yes to civic nationalism; probably not to economic nationalism

Chris Ladd, Pastors, Not Politicians, Turned Dixie Republican. Forbes, Mar 27, 2017.

Gregory A. Smith, Among White Evangelicals, Regular Churchgoers Are the Most Supportive of Trump. Pew Research Center, Apr 26, 2017.

Jack Stripling, Trump’s Liberty U. Commencement Speech Will Pair Anti-Establishment Brands . Chronicle of Higher Education, May 12, 2017. Jerry Falwell, Jr. praised Trump for the birtherism conspiracy

Henry Scott Wallace, American Fascism, in 1944 and Today. New York Times, May 12, 2017. comments on the perceptive comment of his grandfather, Henry A. Wallace, who served as FDR’s Secretary of Agriculture (1933-40) and VP (1940-44).

Andre E. Johnson, “Is this Hell”: The Mass Murder of Blacks During (Post) Reconstruction. Rhetoric, Race, and Religion | Patheos, May 15, 2017.

Joshua L. Lazard, How "Race Tests" Maintain Evangelical Segregation. Religion Dispatches, May 17, 2017.

Joe Carter, The FAQs: What Christians Should Know About the Alt-Right. The Gospel Coalition, Jun 14, 2017.

Tara Isabella Burton, Study: When It Comes to Detecting Racial Inequality, White Christians Have a Blind Spot. Vox, Jun 23, 2017.

Robert P. Jones, Trump Can't Reverse the Decline of White Christian America. The Atlantic, Jul 4, 2017.

Gordon Arnold, Jonathan Edwards: Founding Father of American Political Thought. The Imaginative Conservative, Aug 2017. summarizes Edwards' reliance on Augustine's view of total depravity.  Edwards believed government had no role towards non-Christians' participation in virtue, so could only restrain vice.  Thus, Edwards also argued with the Enlightenment views of John Locke but differed little in practice from Locke's view that government should defend property rights.  Edwards also maintained the Protestant heretical view of the 'national covenant' from Puritan New England, as applied to the United States as a whole.

Bruce Ashford, White Christian Conservatives Should Oppose Protests by White Supremacists. Fox News, Aug 12, 2017. in response to Virginia rally of white supremacists

Jemar Tisby, 10 Everyday Ways Charlottesville and White Supremacy Are Allowed to Still Happen. Reformed African-American Network, Aug 12, 2017.

Kevin M. Levin, The Pernicious Myth of the ‘Loyal Slave’ Lives on in Confederate Memorials. Smithsonian, Aug 17, 2017.

D.L. Mayfield, Facing Our Legacy of Lynching: How a Memorial Could Help Lead America—and Christians—to Repentance from a Dark History. Christianity Today, Aug 18, 2017.

Randall Ballmer, Under Trump, Evangelicals Show Their True Racist Colors. Los Angeles Times, Aug 23, 2017.

Brian D. McLaren, The 'Alt-Right' Has Created Alt-Christianity. Time, Aug 25, 2017.

David Currie, The Dangers of David Barton’s Message. Go San Angelo, Sep 13, 2017.

Kurt Andersen, How America Got Divorced from Reality: Christian Utopias, Anti-Elitism, Media Circus. Kurt Andersen, Oct 8, 2017. on historical examples of magical thinking on the part of white Protestants. Andersen is a journalist who argues that Hollywood and especially reality TV shows are a derivation from and competitor to Christian magical thinking. Right-wing media, especially right-wing Christian media, and Trump’s appeals to Christian identity nationalism, brought a convergence of those things.

Willie James Jennings, Can White People Be Saved? Reflections on the Relationship of Missions and Whiteness. Fuller Theological Seminary, Nov 2, 2017.

Father Stephen Freeman, God’s Un-American View of the Poor and Why It Matters. Ancient Faith, Nov 30, 2017. “As a culture, our myth of rational self-interest has made us leery of any scheme that attributes suffering to the structures of society. Such narratives carry a tint of Marxism for most and threaten to undermine our cherished individualism.”

Douglas Todd, Indigenous Christianity on the Rise in Vancouver and Beyond. Vancouver Sun, Dec 7, 2017.

Elizabeth Dias, White Evangelicals and Catholics Are Most Concerned About North Korea. Time, Dec 14, 2017. citing a Pew Research Center study. See also Matthew Silvan, Evangelical Trump Advisor Proclaims God’s Ok For War With North Korea. The Gamut, Aug 9, 2017. re: Robert Jeffress.

Amy Sullivan, America's New Religion: Fox Evangelicalism. New York Times, Dec 15, 2017.

Charles W. Mills, Black Rights / White Wrongs:  The Critique of Racial Liberalism. Amazon, 2017. re: the Enlightenment dethroning Christian tradition and building a racial ideology in its place.  See review by Christopher Lebron, Up from Rawls . The Nation, Jul 18, 2018.

Timothy Gloege, #ItsNotUs: Being Evangelical Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry. Religion Dispatches, Jan 3, 2018. “When working-class evangelicals began speaking in tongues in the 1900s, respectable evangelicals declared the movement a delusion of Satan. It’s not us, they insisted. When the Scopes Monkey Trial made William Jennings Bryan a laughingstock, respectable evangelicals disclaimed leadership in the fundamentalist movement they helped create. It’s not us. In the 1940s and 50s, respectable evangelicals perfected the “not us” technique. Abandoning the fundamentalist label (though holding nearly identical beliefs), they created a “neo-evangelical” identity to distance themselves from the red-baiters and conspiratorialists. Ever since, the toxic byproducts of their movement have been shunted outside the evangelical camp. Whether tele-evangelist scandals, or hurricanes-are-God’s-judgment-jeremiads, or homophobic protests at military funerals: it’s not us. In a recent Vox editorial, historian Thomas Kidd, a never-Trump evangelical, continues the refrain. The statistic that 80% of white evangelicals supported Trump is wrong, he argues, because it’s based on self-identification. They are evangelicals in name only; it’s not us.”

Kurt Anderson, How Religion Turned American Politics Against Science. Big Think, Jan 18, 2018. uses as an example the GOP leadership needing to pander to (or genuinely believe with) white evangelicals that evolution is not true, from 2008 to 2016.

Sarah Jones, Rod Dreher's Race Problem. The New Republic, Jan 25, 2018. "In wading into the shithole debate, Dreher betrays the dark side of his reverence for Western civilization"

The Editors, Orthodox Christianity and White Supremacy In Its Own Words. Orthodoxy in Dialogue, Jan 27, 2018.

Vince Bantu, Mis-Reformed, the Imperialism of Reformed Theology. Urban Perspective, Feb 19, 2018.

Matthew Avery Sutton, Billy Graham Was on the Wrong Side of History. The Guardian, Feb 21, 2018. and Cecil Bothwell, Billy Graham and the Gospel of Fear. Counterpunch, Feb 21, 2018. Billy Graham wrote a 13 page letter to President Nixon in 1969, advocating deepening the Vietnam War. Graham envisioned violating Christian just-war theory principles and the Geneva Convention. See Harvard Press, Billy Graham’s Vietnam. Harvard University Press Blog, Feb 22, 2018. See also Billy Graham’s anti-semitic, Christian nationalist self-disclosure with Nixon in 1972, James Warren, Billy Graham's Troubling, Nasty Nixon Moment. US News & World Report, Feb 28, 2018. Kristin du Mez also points out Bill Graham’s intensifying anti-communism and Christian nationalism in chapter 2 of Kristin Kobes du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. W.W. Norton & Company | Amazon page, Jun 2020.

Campbell Robertson, A Quiet Exodus: Why Black Worshippers Are Leaving White Evangelical Churches. New York Times, Mar 9, 2018.

Chris Ladd, Why White Evangelicalism is So Cruel. Forbes, Mar 11, 2018. primarily about the Southern Baptist Convention originating in the white supremacy tradition of the Old South; removed from Forbes but reposted on Political Orphans

Andrew L Whitehead, Samuel L Perry, and Joseph O Baker, Make America Christian Again: Christian Nationalism and Voting for Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election. Association for the Sociology of Religion, Jan 25, 2018. 

Carol Kuruvilla, Researchers Discover Common Thread Among Christians Who Voted For Trump. Huffington Post, Apr 4, 2018. re: Christian nationalists and Chauncey DeVega, Have Christian Nationalists Staged a "Soft Coup" With Trump as Their Figurehead? . Salon, Apr 5, 2018.

John Loughery, The Man Who Paved the Way for Irish America's Rise. National Review, Apr 14, 2018.

Richard Reifsnyder, Charles Hodge: A Conservative Theologian Finds His Way to Emancipation. Presbyterian Society, Apr 17, 2018. Hodge favored national unity over favoring a side on slavery or abolition.

Nancy D. Wadsworth, The Racial Demons That Help Explain Evangelical Support for Trump. Vox, Apr 30, 2018.

David French, An Open Letter to Trump’s Evangelical Defenders. National Review, May 3, 2018.

Jay Michaelson, Scott Pruitt Doesn’t Care About Scandals Because He’s on a Mission from God. Daily Beast, May 3, 2018. “And then there’s the third Pruitt, the pious Christian, the deacon of his Baptist church in Oklahoma, the trustee of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. How does a man so dedicated to conservative Christianity have 11 investigations into his unethical behavior?” Brian Palmer, God’s EPA Administrator. Slate, Jun 8, 2018. “Did the politics and history of evangelical Christianity create Scott Pruitt?”

Philip Bump, The Group Least Likely to Think the U.S. Has a Responsibility to Accept Refugees? Evangelicals. Washington Post, May 24, 2018.

Tara Isabella Burton, An Evangelical Christian University is Helping Make a Film That Implies God Chose Trump. Vox, May 30, 2018. re: Liberty University

Ross Douthat, The Baptist Apocalypse. New York Times, May 30, 2018. “so far the Trump presidency has clearly been a kind of apocalypse — not (yet) in the “world-historical calamity” sense of the word, but in the original Greek meaning: an unveiling, an uncovering, an exposure of truths that had heretofore been hidden”

Kenneth M. Warren, How Invisible Man Eerily Foreshadowed the Events of Today. BBC, Jun 6, 2018.

Ruth Graham, Mike Pence Gave a Trump Stump Speech to a Crowd of Southern Baptists, and It Didn’t Go Over Very Well. Slate, Jun 13, 2018. see also Jonathan Merritt, Southern Baptists Call Off the Culture War. The Atlantic, Jun 16, 2018. by moving to cut formal ties with the GOP

Seth Dowland, American Evangelicalism and the Politics of Whiteness. Christian Century, Jun 19, 2018. “If white evangelicals are united by anything, it isn't theology.”

John Fea, Evangelical Fear Elected Trump. The Atlantic, Jun 24, 2018. a history of white evangelical fear and its influence on American politics, as well as the counter-narrative of evangelicals who held a non-nationalistic position; see also Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Understanding White Evangelical Views on Immigration. Harvard Divinity School, Spr-Sum 2018. discusses white evangelical masculinity

Ed Kilgore, Alleged Russian Spy Was Working to Infiltrate Religious Right As Well As Gun Groups. New York Magazine, Jul 18, 2018. hints at the ideological and relational connections between white American evangelicalism and Putin and the official ethno-nationalist leadership level of the Russian Orthodox Church.  See also Katherine Stewart, What Was Maria Butina Doing at the National Prayer Breakfast? America’s Christian Nationalists Have Been Finding Common Cause With the Russian Government for a While Now. New York Magazine, Jul 18, 2018.

Eugene Scott, More Than Half of White Evangelicals Say America’s Declining White Population is a Negative Thing. Washington Post, Jul 18, 2018. suggesting white American Christians never really embraced Pentecost 

Ryan Lamothe, The Moral and Spiritual Bankruptcy of White Evangelicals. Counterpunch, Jul 19, 2018. and he doesn't even explore the other Republican candidates during the primaries

Zack Beauchamp, This Conversation Explains a Vital Reason Why Trump is So Popular on the Right. Vox, Jul 24, 2018. White Protestant nationalists defend "the Christian nation"; see also German Lopez, Half of Republicans Say Increased Racial Diversity Will Be "Mostly Negative". Vox, Jul 24, 2018. Lopez cites an important PRRI study; 43% of Republicans believe it will be mostly positive; and most Americans agree

Bob Smietana, Prosperity Gospel Taught to 4 in 10 Evangelical Churchgoers. Christianity Today, Jul 31, 2018. Subtitled "Survey finds most Protestants believe God wants them to prosper financially. But views diverge on whether they must tithe to receive it" reflecting how pagan white evangelicalism is.

Mark Tooley, With Fixation on ‘Doctrine of Discovery,’ Christians Ape a Secular Alternative to Christian Doctrine. The Stream, Aug 7, 2018. Fails to uphold the importance of repentance and restitution for both heresy and injustice, using “Jesus redeems” as an excuse to not repent; fails to distinguish between Western civilization and that which is evil in Western civilization; fails to recognize the Christian vocation to be better than the pagans, especially in relations of power.

Knowing Better, Overthrowing a Kingdom — Hawaii. Knowing Better, Aug 12, 2018. A 20 minute video that highlights a bit more of the Hawaiian native decision to abolish their own traditional religion. White American Presbyterian missionaries from Boston then stepped in. Within two generations, land was privatized, sugar plantation-corporations emerged, rats infested the islands, and the white descendants of these missionaries started sugar businesses. They toppled Hawaii’s Queen Liliuokalani and petitioned for the United States to intervene and make Hawaii a state. A 10 minute video is produced by Johnny Harris, How the US Stole Hawaii. Johnny Harris, Jul 13, 2020. Harris focuses on the American missionaries transitioning to the sugar businesses.

Peter Beinart, Why Trump Supporters Believe He Is Not Corrupt. The Atlantic, Aug 22, 2018. fascism is a response to the supposed corruption of purity; meanwhile it corrupts the law

Jeff Zeleny and Kevin Liptak, Trump Warns Evangelicals of 'Violence' if GOP Loses in the Midterms. CNN, Aug 28, 2018.

Daniel Larison, Iranian Christian Asylum Seekers Remain Stuck in Limbo. The American Conservative, Sep 5, 2018. notes how the Trump administration is going back on its word to even provide asylum and refuge for Christians, without explanation

Bradley J. Birzer, What Exactly is 'the West'? The American Conservative, Sep 6, 2018. Provides an example of how 'the West' claims ownership of Christianity for its cultural achievements, such as the very real human rights stance, but does not actually follow Christianity in its insistence that we repent for the wrongs we have done (in colonialism), and without acknowledging Christian impact and presence far beyond 'the West'

Timothy Isaiah Cho, A Tale Of Two Machens: How A Christian 'Hero' Let White Privilege Color His Theology. Faithfully Magazine, Sep 8, 2018) discusses J. Gresham Machen's segregationist and white supremacist views.  Machen (1881 - 1937) was a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary from 1906 - 1929, and later founder of Westminster Theological Seminary in 1929 and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church denomination in 1933.  Machen was fairly typical of white American conservative evangelicals in his views on race, and was also a radical libertarian politically.  However, Cho also highlights B.B. Warfield (1851 - 1921), who was the lone voice for racial integration and equality at Princeton for some time. 

Katherine Stewart, A Whose Religious Liberty Is It Anyway?  New York Times, Sep 8, 2018.

Michael Gerson, Christians Are Suffering From Complete Spiritual Blindness. Washington Post, Sep 10, 2018. about John MacArthur and other white evangelicals saying that social justice is not part of the gospel

Tom Porter, The Christian Right Is Looking to Putin's Russia to Save Christianity From the Godless West. Newsweek, Sep 15, 2018.

Ross Douthat, Conservatism After Christianity. New York Times, Sep 15, 2018. has a glimmer of good news: Christian conservatives are less racist than secular conservatives; see also Emily Ekins, The Liberalism of the Religious Right . New York Times, Sep 19, 2018.

Jill Lepore, These Truths: A History of the United States. Amazon book, Sep 18, 2018. 900+ page history with an eye on current questions; review by Andrew Sullivan, The American Past: A History of Contradictions. New York Times, Sep 14, 2018. see especially Civil War history

Maggie Haberman, He’s ‘One of Us’: The Undying Bond Between the Bible Belt and Trump. New York Times, Oct 14, 2018.

Tara Isabella Burton, Prominent Evangelical Leader on Khashoggi Crisis: Let’s Not Risk “$100 Billion Worth of Arms Sales”. Vox, Oct 17, 2018. re: Pat Robertson's defense of Trump and US-Saudi relations, being dependent on the military-industrial state; Robertson was speaking at Regent University, where he is Chancellor; Robertson's evangelical media group Christian Broadcasting Network has become a propaganda arm for Trump. See also Hugh Hewitt, How the Navy Could Be Torpedoing Trump’s Chances in 2020. Washington Post, Aug 17, 2019. for another example of white evangelical reliance on the military-industrial state, this time to “provide jobs” in swing states. Kevin Drum, Let’s Make the Military Into a Trump Reelection Machine! Mother Jones, Aug 19, 2019. criticizes “modern conservatism,” but he could criticize white evangelicals in particular.

John C. Richard, Jr., For Blacks, Lies Matter: Black Christians, The Trump Presidency, and New Research. Christianity Today, Oct 18, 2018. Trump's approval rating is 3% among African-Americans 

Samuel Smith, Most White Evangelicals Say Immigration, Increasing Racial Diversity Harms America. The Christian Post, Oct 30, 2018. and Carol Kuruvilla, New Study Reveals White Evangelicals’ Troubling Beliefs On Race And Immigration. Huffington Post, Nov 5, 2018.

Nicholas K. Geranios, The GOP Lawmaker Shares Document Calling For ‘Holy Army’ To Kill Men Who Flout Biblical Law. Huffington Post, Nov 4, 2018. "Washington Rep. Matt Shea (R-Spokane. on Friday said he didn’t mean to promote violence, but some of his donors aren’t buying it"

News Division, The Biblical Answer to Migrant Caravan is Bombs and Bullets. Pulpit and Pen, Nov 2, 2018. an appalling mishandling of Scripture 

Michael Brown, Midterm Talking Points for Pro-Trump Evangelicals. Stream, Nov 5, 2018.  

Carol Kuruvilla, Evangelical Pastor Claims Trump’s Immigration Policies Are Biblical. Huffington Post, Nov 6, 2018.  Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, praised Trump's hardline stance on immigration

Wes Granberg-Michaelson, The Most Disheartening Survey of Voters. Sojourners, Nov 6, 2018. stats on white evangelicals

Adam Kotsko, The Political Theology of Trump. N+1 Magazine, Nov 7, 2018. surveys various biblical passages often considered by white evangelicals, and concludes, "there is not much that any of us can do to convince evangelical Trump supporters that their anointed one is an antichrist"

Jon Swaine, Matthew Whitaker: Acting Attorney General Said Judges Should Be Christian. The Guardian UK, Nov 8, 2018.

Aaron Schrank, Immigrant Communities Were The 'Geographic Solution' To Predator Priests. NPR, Nov 8, 2018.

Sky Palma, The Christian Prophet Is Baffled That God Didn't Fulfill His 'Red Tsunami' Midterms Prediction: 'I Know What God Told Me!' DeadState, Nov 9, 2018.

William Saletan, Trump's Christian Apologists Are Unchristian. Salon, Nov 25, 2018. "Polls show that on immigration, race, and poverty, white evangelical Protestants have surrendered moral judgment and social responsibility"

Brad Mason, Then & Now: The Conservative Presbyterian Race Debate in 1964. Bradly Mason blog, Nov 26, 2018. very good historical material focused on a narrow time frame in the 20th century

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, The Report on Slavery and Racism in the History of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. SBTS, Dec 12, 2018. and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, A Southern Baptist Seminary Just Admitted its Slave-Owning Past. But It Didn’t Touch the Theology Behind It. Washington Post, Dec 13, 2018.

Nina Burleigh, Evangelical Christians Helped Elect Donald Trump, but Their Time as a Major Political Force Is Coming to an End. Newsweek, Dec 13, 2018.

Julia Ebner, The Rage: The Vicious Circle of Islamist and Far Right Extremism. I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd | Amazon page, 2018. See interview by Sean Illing, Reciprocal Rage: Why Islamist Extremists and the Far Right Need Each Other. Vox, Dec 26, 2018.  They need and resemble each other; Christians implied.

Katherine Stewart, Why Trump Reigns as King Cyrus. New York Times, Dec 31, 2018. "The Christian right doesn’t like the president only for his judges. They like his style."

Joe Heim, Evangelical Jerry Falwell Jr. Can’t Imagine Trump ‘Doing Anything That’s Not Good for the Country’. New York Times, Jan 1, 2019. and Hemant Mehta, Jerry Falwell, Jr.: There’s Nothing Trump Can Do to Lose My Support. Patheos, Jan 1, 2019.

Eric Levitz, How American Exceptionalism Is a Dangerous Myth. New York Magazine, Jan 2, 2019. involving American foreign policy; American exceptionalism is based on the Puritan "national covenant" myth

Kristin Kobes du Mez, Race, Gender, and the 81 Percent: Defining Evangelicalism and What's at Stake. AHA, Chicago, 2019. a 20 minute video narrates the history of recent attempts to define “evangelical” using the Bebbington Quadrilateral Definition (biblicism, crucicentrism, conversionism, activism. Linguistic analysis done on discourse in the 1970s and 1980s indicates that “evangelical” had become a noun, encompassing a political and white identity.

John Fea, Trump Evangelicals Long For American Past That Only Existed For Whites. Faithfully Magazine, Jan 9, 2019. gives concrete legal details about white evangelical Christianity's dominance

Young Turks, Putin Spies Infiltrate Major Christian Organization. The Young Turks, Jan 11, 2019. involving "The Fellowship Foundation" aka "The Family" in Washington DC and the National Prayer Breakfast being a way to work around the State Department. This confirms my concern which I wrote about in my Reflection on the Presidential Election of 2016, in November 2016.

Trevor Noah, Is Rep. Steve King Racist? Enter Trevor Noah: Racism Detective. The Daily Show, Jan 15, 2019. an entertaining take on a serious issue:  the monopolistic appropriation of Christianity (and other things) by whites in the name of "Western European culture". See also Andy Campbell, Leaked Chats Reveal White Nationalist Plot To Keep Steve King In Office. Huffington Post, Mar 6, 2019.

Tré Goins-Phillips, Evangelical Pastor Robert Jeffress Defends Trump: ‘Heaven Itself Is Gonna Have a Wall’. FaithWire, Jan 10, 2019. Absurd because the walls of the New Jerusalem in the Book of Revelation have open gates.

Leonardo Blair, Administrator Who Tried to Rig Online Polls for Trump 'Made Great Contributions,' Liberty University Says. The Daily Show, Jan 15, 2019. a disturbing allegation

Jemar Tisby, The Color of Compromise: The Truth About the American Church’s Complicity in Racism. Amazon book, Jan 22, 2019. and review by Emma Green, Closing the Gulf Between Black and White Christians . The Atlantic, Jan 29, 2019. and summary by Chante Griffin, 8 Unpopular Truths About US Christianity, According to Jemar Tisby’s ‘The Color of Compromise’ . Faithfully Magazine, Apr 2019.

Rod Dreher, Rene Girard & the Covington Catholic Boys . The American Conservative, Jan 27, 2019. although Dreher gives a good summary of Girard's thought, he maintains a false opposition between Christianity and progressivism, or Christianity and racial justice.  One need only ask whether Christian faith requires repentance and restitution for colonialism.

Rebecca Morin, Sarah Sanders: God Wanted Trump to Become President. Politico, Jan 30, 2019.

Stephen Mattson, White Christian Nationalism — Not Secularism — Is Destroying America. Sojourners, Feb 4, 2019.

Michael Stone, Conservative Christians Claim Ocasio-Cortez Is A Witch Leading Attack Against Trump. Patheos, Feb 20, 2019.

Matthew Continetti, What to Do About the Rebirth of Socialism. The American Conservative, Feb 16, 2019. is a good example of the white American assumption that Judaic and Christian moral values would stand against the raw materialism of capitalism; but fails to see that Christian practice and beliefs were already damaged and wounded and twisted into heretical form by colonialism and capitalism

Hasan Minhaj, Civil Rights. Patriot Act, Mar 3, 2019. on Trump's Cabinet members dropping civil rights cases:  Departments of Justice (by Jess Sessions, a Baptist), Housing and Urban Development (by Ben Carson, a Seventh Day Adventist), Education (by Betsy DeVos, a Dutch Reformed Presbyterian), Health and Human Services, Commerce (which oversees the U.S. Census)

Philip Schwadel and Gregory A. Smith, Evangelical Approval of Trump Remains High, But Other Religious Groups Are Less Supportive . Pew Research Center, Mar 18, 2019.

Jemar Tisby, White Evangelical Support for Trump Comes from Churchgoers, Not EINOs . Religion News Service, Mar 19, 2019.

Murali Balaji, White Christian Nationalism May Not Be Religious, But It Is Christian. Rewire News, Mar 21, 2019.

Adam Serwer, White Nationalism’s Deep American Roots. The Atlantic, Apr 2019. and although Serwer doesn’t mention it, Protestant roots. Explores pre-WW2 history of eugenic thought, starting with Madison Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race. Ironically, the very designation of “whiteness” that Anglo-Saxon Protestant elites created, created as its flip side a fear of becoming genetically bred into non-existence and becoming mongrelized.

Adam Gopnik, How the South Won the Civil War. The New Yorker, Apr 1, 2019. “During Reconstruction, true citizenship finally seemed in reach for black Americans. Then their dreams were dismantled.” Does not note the role of white churches.

Greg Huffman, Twisted Sources: How Confederate Propaganda Ended Up in the South’s Schoolbooks. Facing South, Apr 10, 2019. “in part through public school curriculums shaped by the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC).”

Rachel Maddow, William Barr Record Of Deception For Bush Calls Credibility Into Question. The Rachel Maddow Show | MSNBC, Apr 16, 2019. “Barr in 1989 as assistant attorney general, declared documents sought by Congress to be confidential and offered his personal summary instead, only to have his ruse exposed years later when the real document was released.” Joy Reid, Barr Delivers Speech on Religious Freedom at Notre Dame Law School. AM Joy | MSNBC, Oct 14, 2019. blamed drug abuse, violence, and mental illness on “secularists” and society’s lack of Christian values, which is a white supremacist and heretical argument, given all the heretical views lived out by white Protestants. Rod Dreher, Bill Barr: Religious Liberty Warrior. The American Conservative, Oct 14, 2019. Dreher exemplifies how conservative Christians use the term “religious liberty” to disguise what they want: “conservative Christian privilege.” Dreher does not distinguish between parents being able to pass down the faith to their children (which is still very much legal and not threatened), and having your faith reinforced throughout the public sphere (schools, etc.) in the “Christendom model.” Dreher does not understand how Christians can argue for “human rights without theocracy” in the tradition of Roger Williams and therefore embrace political pluralism on behalf of others. Dreher also fails to recognize how Barr’s contribution to executive overreach and non-accountability (see Jeremy Stahl, DOJ: If Watergate Happened Today, We’d Block Evidence From Congress. Slate, Oct 8, 2019. steps far outside of the development of Jewish law, as well as Christian character-based meritocracy found in Scripture, Christian monasticism, Christian religious orders, and Christian ethics translated for public service. Utterly disappointing. See also Matt Ford, Bill Barr’s First Epistle to the Heathens. The New Republic, Oct 22, 2019. and Rob Boston, Seeking God's Law: Past Statements By Attorney General Nominee William Barr Are Cause For Concern, Americans United Says. Americans United, Jan 2019. and Ed Kilgore, Attorney General Barr Preaches a Secular Law-and-Order Christianity. New York Magazine, Oct 23, 2019. and Kim Wehle, Bill Barr’s Constitution. The Bulwark, Nov 18, 2019. for Barr’s deliberate misreading of the separation of powers and view that the executive branch is the guardian of “liberty.” Brian Tyler Cohen, Kamala Issues Devastating News for Trump at Senate Hearing. Brian Tyler Cohen, Dec 11, 2019. highlights Kamala Harris’ accusations of misconduct against Barr (including scheming with Rudy Giuliani) at the Dec 2019 DOJ Inspector General hearing. Brian Williams, Questions Swirl Around AG Barr As Trump Impeachment Trial Begins. The 11th Hour | MSNBC, Jan 20, 2020. examines Lev Parnas’ statement implicating Barr in the Ukraine scandal. Shayna Jacobs, Lawyer for Lev Parnas Says Barr Has a Conflict of Interest and Should Recuse Himself from Criminal Case. New York Times, Jan 20, 2020. Richard Reich, 5 Ways William Barr is Turning America Into a Dictatorship. Richard Reich, Feb 25, 2020. Ari Melber, No ‘Credibility’: Trump Losing 2020 Battle To Hide Secret Parts Of Mueller Report. The Beat | MSNBC, Mar 6, 2020. a federal judge has grave concerns about the redactions Barr put on the Mueller Report. John Gerstein and Evan Semones, Barr Threatens to Bust 'Far-Left Extremist Groups' in Floyd Unrest. Politico, May 30, 2020. Barr claims with no evidence that far-left groups are to blame. Anderson Cooper, Calls BS on Barr’s Defense of Trump’s Photo Op. CNN, Jun 5, 2020. Barr lied after public opinion turned against Trump for using chemical dispersants on peaceful protesters exercising their First Amendment rights. Brian Tyler Cohen, Bill Barr Called Out to His Face For Ordering Protestors Gassed for Trump’s Photo Op. Brian Tyler Cohen, Jun 7, 2020. highlights how Barr’s explanation for the removal of the protesters conflicts with other Trump administration officials’ accounts. Glenn Kirschner, Appellate Court Rules Judge Sullivan Must Dismiss Flynn Case. Sullivan Pushes Back. Glenn Kirschner, Jun 24, 2020. examines Barr’s interference with the judiciary and the Mike Flynn case. Scott Harshberger, Why 27 Distinguished DC Lawyers Filed a Complaint with Bar Association Against Attorney General Barr. Just Security, Jul 22, 2020. Glenn Kirscher, Why Congress Should Impeach Bill Barr: Six Quick and Easy Articles of Impeachment. Justice Matters, Jul 24, 2020. Glenn Kirschner, CIA Dir John Brennan, John Durham, Steve Bannon and Bill Barr's Bogus October Surprise. Glenn Kirschner, Aug 22, 2020. Katie Benner, Barr’s Approach Closes Gap Between Justice Dept. and White House. New York Times, Sep 25, 2020. “The attorney general has brought the department closer to the White House than it has been in a half-century, historians said.” Michael S. Schmidt and Katie Benner, Justice Dept. Eases Election Fraud Inquiry Constraints as Trump Promotes False Narrative. New York Times, Oct 7, 2020. “The move comes as President Trump promotes a false narrative of widespread voter fraud ahead of the election.” Phillip Halpern, Commentary: I Won’t Work in Attorney General William Barr’s Justice Department Any Longer. San Diego Union Tribune, Oct 14, 2020. gives an insider’s view, and gives additional examples of Melania Trump’s lawsuit and letting Michael Cohen languish in prison in Lawrence O’Donnell, Halpern Leaves Justice Dept. Over Barr’s ‘Slavish Obedience’ To Trump. The Last Word | MSNBC, Oct 15, 2020. After Trump’s defeat: Katie Benner and Michael S. Schmidt, Barr Hands Prosecutors the Authority to Investigate Voter Fraud Claims. New York Times, Nov 9, 2020. and Daniel Villareal, DOJ's Election Crimes Director Resigns After Barr Authorizes Election Fraud Investigation. Newsweek, Nov 9, 2020. including Jordan Houston, Richard Pilger: DOJ Election Fraud Bureau Chief Resigns Over Barr Memo. Heavy, Nov 10, 2020.

Julie Zauzmer, The Alleged Synagogue Shooter Was a Churchgoer Who Talked Christian Theology, Raising Tough Questions for Evangelical Pastors. Washington Post, May 1, 2019. suggests that a particular combination of beliefs is dangerous: a hard “replacement” theology of Church and Israel; high federal Calvinist predestination (which both functionally removes human personal responsibility and therefore “guilt” in any sense, and makes God the functional cause of human actions, including the Jewish leadership at the time of Jesus). This does not necessitate, but does open the way to a racialized, nationalized version of “covenant” which has been a problem for Calvinists. To see an exegetical counter to the hard replacement theology, see this examination of Matthew 21:1 - 17.

Chris Buskirk, Yes, Christians Can Support Trump Without Risk to Their Witness. American Greatness, May 8, 2019. critiques David and Nancy French, and demonstrates poor ethical reasoning

Matthew Avery Sutton, The Day Christian Fundamentalism Was Born. New York Times, May 25, 2019. how white, conservative Protestants afraid of science and persecution tied together white supremacy, end-times theology, nationalism, and Zionism.

Peter Kruger (JD from Mitchell Hamline School of Law 2017), Why Did Evangelical Leaders Endorse Trump Despite His Unequivocally Divisive Rhetoric? Quora, Jul 24, 2019. a personal account starting from his college days with Cru, and his experience with evangelicals being so suspicious of the left that they disbelieved facts presented by the media

Nurith Aizenman, Malaka Gharib, American With No Medical Training Ran Center For Malnourished Ugandan Kids. 105 Died. NPR, Aug 9, 2019. a self-appointed white American evangelical “missionary” demonstrates the cost of white supremacist attitudes and funding sources in Christian missionary work

Tara Isabella Burton, The Religious Hunger of the Radical Right. New York Times, Aug 13, 2019.

E.J. Dionne, Jr., Trump is Weaponizing Evangelicals’ Mistrust. And He’s Succeeding. Washington Post, Aug 21, 2019.

Brian Zahnd, Trumped. Brian Zahnd blog, Aug 22, 2019. an excellent critique of white nationalism and Christian nationalism from a personal and pastoral point of view

Sarah Jones, What ‘The Family’ Reveals About White Evangelicals, Donald Trump, and the ‘Wolf King’. Vulture, Aug 29, 2019.

Ashton Pittman on Twitter. Twitter, Sep 1, 2019. “A Mississippi venue allegedly cancelled a couple's wedding plans after discovering the couple was a black man + a white woman. "We don’t do gay weddings or mixed race, because of our Christian race—I mean, our Christian belief," a woman says.”

David Scharfenberg, How Donald Trump Just Might Save the Republican Party — and the Country. Boston Globe, Sep 6, 2019. identifies evangelicals Marco Rubio, who gestures towards a genuine economic nationalism over against neo-conservative and neo-liberal trade policies that decimated American manufacturing, and Josh Hawley, who is an evangelical culture warrior. Note the presence of Yoram Hazony and Amy Wax at the National Conservatism Conference, who argue for “cultural compatibility” in immigration.

Brandon Ambrosino, ‘Someone’s Gotta Tell the Freakin’ Truth’: Jerry Falwell’s Aides Break Their Silence. Politico, Sep 9, 2019. “More than two dozen current and former Liberty University officials describe a culture of fear and self-dealing at the largest Christian college in the world.” See also commentary by David French, Jerry Falwell Jr. Shows How the Advance of Christendom Can Harm Christianity. National Review, Sep 11, 2019.

Derek Thompson, Three Decades Ago, America Lost Its Religion. Why? The Atlantic, Sep 26, 2019. “Not religious has become a specific American identity—one that distinguishes secular, liberal whites from the conservative, evangelical right.” “According to Christian Smith, a sociology and religion professor at the University of Notre Dame, America’s nonreligious lurch has mostly been the result of three historical events: the association of the Republican Party with the Christian right, the end of the Cold War, and 9/11.”

Frederick Clarkson, Christian Nationalists Try to Dodge the Baptists. Political Research Associates, Oct 11, 2019. an excellent article about Baptist history on separation of church and state; how Christian nationalists try to avoid direct confrontation

Akbar Shahid Ahmed, Khashoggi’s Murder Should Have Made Saudi Arabia A Pariah. 7 Men Made Sure That Didn’t Happen. Huffington Post, Oct 9, 2019. “On Sept. 10, MBS sat down with a nine-member Christian delegation that included Johnnie Moore of Trump’s evangelical advisory board and the U.S. government commission on religious freedom; Christian media executive Wayne Pederson; and former GOP gubernatorial candidate John Kenneth Blackwell… [and] Joel Rosenberg, a prolific author writing primarily for a Christian readership who runs an Israel-focused nonprofit called the Joshua Fund… “The Saudis have our number as far as the Americans and know that the evangelical community is politically salient, coherent, very important for the current administration and important for Republicans since the 1980s,” said Annelle Sheline, a fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute who studies how Arab monarchies treat religion.”

Gabby Orr, Karen Pence Sticks Her Neck Out for Trump to Protect Her Husband. Politico, Oct 17, 2019. “After questions swirled about whether Mike Pence would remain on Trump’s 2020 ticket, the second lady reemerged as a loyal campaigner for the president” through her promotion on social media

Mimi Haddad, Racism and Patriarchy—Twin Demons of Abuse. CBE International, Oct 22, 2019.

Dahlia Lithwick, The Judges Republicans Are Doing It All For. Slate, Oct 23, 2019. “Trump nominated his fifth judge rated “not qualified” by the American Bar Association this week. She’s never tried a case.” Sarah “Pitlyk’s primary legal work has consisted of attacks on abortion rights, tempered by attacks on constitutionally protected contraception rights, leavened by other attacks on abortion, and supported with her work defending David Daleiden—the author of a vicious smear campaign against Planned Parenthood, based on fake videos of Planned Parenthood officials appearing to negotiate the sale of aborted fetal body parts.”

Anne Nelson, Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right. Bloomsbury, Oct 2019. “In 1981, emboldened by Ronald Reagan's election, a group of some fifty Republican operatives, evangelicals, oil barons, and gun lobbyists met in a Washington suburb to coordinate their attack on civil liberties and the social safety net. These men and women called their coalition the Council for National Policy.” 

Lucia Graves, North Carolina's Rape Law Loophole Was Only Closed Because the Women It Harmed Spoke Out. NBC News, Nov 5, 2019. “Another held that it was perfectly permissible to have sex with an incapacitated person, if that person can be said to be responsible for their own state of incapacitation… Behind the scenes, the consensus is that resistance to change came from the evangelical community, which has a strong hold on North Carolina's politics. An evangelical pastor I spoke to in the state, who asked not to be named, told me that it wouldn't shock him to learn that religious conservatives were simply supporting the perceived party line. But the larger reason he believes the loopholes persisted was because of a hesitation within the faith community to talk about the reality of consent because "it's during a sex act. If you repress that and call it something secret and shameful, to talk about it with any kind of specificity is just kind of taboo."”

Henry George, The Thinker Who Influenced Ben Shapiro’s View of Western Civilization. Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Nov 5, 2019. “Shapiro adopts a vision of Western history influenced by the ideas of the philosopher Leo Strauss (1899–1973), arguing that Western civilization owes its birth and vitality to the conflict between Athens and Jerusalem, two mutually exclusive symbols of knowing that could never be reconciled…The result, as Claes G. Ryn argues, is that Strauss and Shapiro reductively assume that respect for tradition undermines reason and universality. Edmund Burke’s historical sense is key to apprehending the universal; Strauss’s criticism of Burke’s appreciation and adherence to prescription for its lack of a universal foundation ignores the possibility that individuals can grasp the universal through the particular. As Jaroslav Pelikan puts it, it is “a mark of an authentic and living tradition that it points us beyond itself.” There is truth to this. But the Athens/Jerusalem paradigm for understanding Western Europe is in error. And when are people finished developing a tradition? What prevents people from enclosing their tradition rather than continuing to engage others? And from a Christian standpoint, if Christian faith has a legitimate range of expression across different cultural contexts, how might one of those expressions be enlarged?

Chase Padusniak, Evangelical Christianity: The American Imperial Church? Jappers and Janglers | Patheos, Nov 14, 2019. “The relationship between elites, highly Americanized pastors, and the contemporary rise of right-leaning politics in the Global South is no accident. It has definite historical origins that have affected both the rise of Jair Bolsonaro and the recent regime change in Bolivia.”

Matthew Sheffield, The Conservative Establishment’s Nightmare Is Only Just Beginning. Washington Monthly, Nov 22, 2019. “How a 21-year-old YouTube pundit is leading a far-right resurgence.” Re: Nick Fuentes, who “serves up a steady diet of Christian nationalism and hatred of immigrants, secular people, and Muslims.” The article connects the dots from conspiracy promoter Fred Koch (father of the Koch brothers) and the tactics of Christian nationalists.

Alex Morris, False Idol - Why the Christian Right Worships Donald Trump. Rolling Stone, Dec 2, 2019. Morris details a conversation in September 2016 between Trump and notable white evangelicals: Robert Jeffress, Wayne Grudem, Eric Metaxas, Ryan Anderson, Jay Richards. They pressed Trump to adopt policy views and language meant to appeal to white evangelicals.

Peter Wehner, Christian Doomsayers Have Lost It. New York Times, Dec 6, 2019. White evangelicals like Eric Metaxas and Catholics like Sohrab Ahmari believe Trump is the only thing that stands between Christians and doom. Even though if Trump is removed, then white evangelical Mike Pence would be sworn in, federal judges would still be appointed from the same list, white Christians would have to reckon with the fact that “political correctness” is the result of the black church’s Civil Rights Movement, etc. Trump is the only thing standing between Christians and more Christianity. See also Sean Illing, A Former Republican Congress Member Explains What Happened to His Party. Vox, Dec 6, 2019.

Anne Applebaum, The False Romance of Russia. The Atlantic, Dec 12, 2019. “American conservatives who find themselves identifying with Putin’s regime refuse to see the country for what it actually is.”  This is an excellent and much-needed article. See also Marc Bennetts, Why Orthodox Christians Are Losing Faith in Putin. Politico, Dec 24, 2019. “Priests and churchgoers are standing up to the government”

Kristin Du Mez, Jesus & John Wayne Book Talk. Calvin University, November 18, 2020. Question:  “Do you think the white evangelical culture of which you write is essentially a smokescreen for acceptable racism?” Du Mez:  “It’s not just a smokescreen.  That suggests some kind of intentional cover.  It is deeply… The white evangelical culture and values that I trace are deeply racialized.  They are intimately linked to whiteness.  Just a quick example is Christian nationalism.  The idea that America was founded as a Christian nation, and everything was great and wholesome until things got really bad in the 1960s?  That only makes sense if you are white.  That makes no sense whatsoever if you are black.  However, people who are spouting this Christian nationalism – and many, many, many evangelicals do; it’s close to their hearts, and their identities; it’s at their faith identity; it’s at their core – don’t think about it explicitly as a racial identity.  Not at all.  So when confronted with the fact that there’s some white supremacy, frankly, baked into this – certainly white privilege if you want a slightly softer word – that will bring out a lot of defensiveness because they don’t think in those terms.  They don’t speak in those terms, and have not analyzed that historically in fact this is absolutely a white ideal, and a white Christian belief.  So that’s how that works.  So is it a smokescreen?  It can be, but No, it’s deeper than that.  It’s much more difficult to uproot because of that.  Because the people who are holding these ideals may absolutely believe – and maybe rightly so – that they have nothing against the person who has darker skin who is sitting next to them, without being able to examine how their very values have been forged and perpetuate white supremacy, frankly.”  “As the moderates leave [evangelical circles], that actually radicalizes those who remain, and there is interesting social scientific data on that.”

Jim Garlow, When the CT Editor’s Feelings Trump Facts. Charisma News, Dec 19, 2019. Garlow gives an unconvincing critique of Mark Galli and the editorial board of Christianity Today.

Sarah Posner, The Army Of Prayer Warriors Fighting Trump’s Impeachment. Huffington Post, Dec 19, 2019. “As the Senate takes up his impeachment trial, white Christian evangelicals remain firmly in the president’s corner.”

Jane Coaston, Christianity Today Called for Trump’s Removal. Here’s Why That Doesn’t Matter. Vox, Dec 20, 2019. “Trump-supportive evangelicals aren’t likely to change their minds.”

Carl R. Trueman, Evangelical Elites Are Out of Touch. First Things, Dec 20, 2019. strangely overlooks VP Mike Pence and invokes fears of losing the culture war, saying, “we are really looking at Biden, Warren, or Sanders. I can’t speak to the personal moral qualities of these people, but would voting for them or their policies give Christians any more credibility? Given the role of abortion and LGBTQ rights in their respective campaigns, this is surely something any Christian has to address.”

Associated Press, Washington State Lawmaker Engaged in 'Domestic Terrorism,' Report Says. NBC News, Dec 20, 2019. “It also found that Republican Rep. Matt Shea trained young people to fight a “holy war" and condoned intimidating opponents”

Michael Luo, What Would It Take for Evangelicals to Turn on President Trump. The New Yorker, Dec 23, 2019. “Through extensive survey work, they discover that an amalgam of cultural beliefs—fusing Christianity with American identity and centered on the belief that America is, and should be, a Christian nation—is a better predictor of support for Trump than economic dissatisfaction, political party, ideology, religion, or a host of other possible determining factors. Whitehead and Perry call this framework “Christian nationalism” and argue that the popularity of these beliefs among white evangelicals explains their support for Trump.

Sarah Pulliam Bailey, Journalist Leaves Christian Post Amid its Plans to Attack Christianity Today. Washington Post, Dec 23, 2019. “Journalist Napp Nazworth… who sits on the editorial board as politics editor, said the website has sought to represent both sides and published both pro- and anti-Trump stories… “I said, if you post this, you’re saying, you’re now on team Trump,” he said. He said he was told that’s what the news outlet wanted to do… Richard Land, Christian Post’s executive editor who was one of the co-authors of the editorial published Tuesday, did not return requests for comment on Tuesday.” 

Father Stephen Freeman, Have a Dickens of a Christmas. Glory to God for All Things blog | Ancient Faith Ministries, Dec 24, 2019. how Puritan American Christians despised “celebrating” Christmas, and how the modern observance of Christmas as a holiday was manufactured by popular literature, not historical rootedness and continuation of living Christian tradition. This is a helpful perspective to have in the “war on Christmas” that evangelical Christians believe is being waged by secularists or Muslims. See also Addison Del Mastro, Defending the Secular Vision of Christmas. The American Conservative, Dec 23, 2019. “We forget how religious observances and jolly celebration once complemented each other, that is, before it became political.”

Emma Green, Evangelicalism’s Silent Majority. The Atlantic, Dec 25, 2019. “Leith Anderson, who heads one of the largest evangelical groups in the country, has stayed quiet about politics in the Trump era. Has he helped create a lopsided image of his faith?”

Nicole Narea, One Surprisingly Simple Reason Evangelicals Love Trump. Vox, Dec 27, 2019. his hard-line immigration policy, driven by a white Protestant “chosen people” vision, which is ironic because immigration is what has led to growth in evangelism

Chris Hedges, Onward, Christian Fascists. TruthDig, Dec 30, 2019.

John Iadarola, Secret Organization Pulls Congressional Strings. The Damage Report, Dec 31, 2019. “The Family” - the secretive now conservative Christian organization that organizes the National Prayer Breakfast, invites Russians to influence politicians

Susan B. Ridgely, Conservative Christianity and the Creation of Alternative News: An Analysis of Focus on the Family's Multimedia Empire. Journal of Religion and American Culture, Winter 2020.

Heather Digby Parton, Bill Barr, Warrior for Theocracy: Why Didn’t We Know This Until Now? Salon, Jan 3, 2020.

The Lincoln Project, MAGA Church. The Lincoln Project, Jan 9, 2020.

Relevant Magazine, Liberty’s Falkirk Center Has an Extremely Concerning Mission Statement. Relevant Magazine, Jan 15, 2020.

Jim Wallis, International Bonhoeffer Society Calls for ‘Ending Donald Trump’s Presidency’ in ‘Statement of Concern’. Sojourners, Jan 16, 2020.

Aaron Blake, A Sizable Chunk of Trump’s Base Thinks He Has Broken the Law. Many of Those People Remain in His Corner. Washington Post, Jan 22, 2020. white evangelicals are largely in this category

Stephanie Mencimer, Evangelicals Love Donald Trump for Many Reasons, But One of Them Is Especially Terrifying. Mother Jones, Jan 23, 2020. end times theology

Peter Wehner, There Is No Christian Case for Trump. The Atlantic, Jan 30, 2020. dissects the case put forward by Wayne Grudem, who supported Trump

Melissa De Witte, Who People Believe Rules in Heaven Influences Their Beliefs About Who Rules on Earth, Stanford Scholars Find. Stanford University, Jan 31, 2020. “Stanford psychologist Steven O. Roberts found that the characteristics U.S. Christians assign to God – e.g., male, female, black, white, old, young – are the same identities they attribute to a boss.”

Joe Scarborough, Joe Reads Bible To Critique Trump’s Prayer Breakfast Speech. Morning Joe | MSNBC, Feb 7, 2020. “Nobody stood up to defend the words of Jesus Christ” to love your enemies, including your political enemies.

Jeffrey Ostler, The Shameful Final Grievance of the Declaration of Independence. The Atlantic, Feb 8, 2020. “The revolution wasn’t only an effort to establish independence from the British—it was also a push to preserve slavery and suppress Native American resistance.”

David French, The Church’s Real Political Correctness Problem. The Dispatch, Feb 23, 2020. “The religious right has created a mirror image PC complete with cancel culture and performative anger.” French cites very important, poignant, and painful anecdotes.

Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism. Amazon book, Mar 2020. “today's Christian nationalism is the fruit of a longstanding antidemocratic, reactionary strain of American thought that draws on some of the most troubling episodes in America's past. It forms common cause with a globe-spanning movement that seeks to destroy liberal democracy and replace it with nationalist, theocratic and autocratic forms of government around the world. Religious nationalism is far more organized and better funded than most people realize.” See also review by Amanda Marcott, Trump's Christian Right Worships Power More Than They Worship God. Salon, Mar 3, 2020. “They say that the Bible favors minimal government or no government. The Bible is against regulation, against the social safety net. Unless the social safety net is managed by the church. Someone like Ralph Drollinger — who targets political leaders at the top levels of government — he's got this Bible study group in the Capitol that's been attended by at least 11 members of Trump's cabinet, including Mike Pence. He also has Bible study groups targeting the Senate and House of Representatives, and they're very well-attended. So he's arguably one of the most politically influential pastors in America.”

Noah Higgins-Dunn, FDA Warns Televangelist Jim Bakker and Six Others to Stop Selling Fraudulent Coronavirus Products. CNBC, Mar 9, 2020. and Farron Cousins, Government Smacks Down Right Wing Evangelicals Selling Bogus Coronavirus Cures. The Ring of Fire, Mar 14, 2020. Considering the apparently large size of Bakker’s supporters despite Bakker’s racist statements, this is evidence of the rot deep within white evangelicalism. White evangelicalism is a predatory business, as illustrated by: Michael Greshko, Dead Sea Scrolls at the Museum of the Bible Are Forgeries. National Geographic, Mar 2020.

Tom Gjelten, Survey: White Evangelicals See Trump As 'Honest' And 'Morally Upstanding'. NPR, Mar 12, 2020. “More than 90% say they want their president to stand up not only for religious beliefs in general, but for their religious beliefs in particular, including biblical teaching.”

Grace Panetta, During ‘Fox & Friends’ Interview, Jerry Falwell Jr. Suggests the Coronavirus is a Plot to Hurt Trump and Says Liberty University Will Continue to Hold In-person Classes. Business Insider, Mar 13, 2020. during the COVID-19 pandemic, Jerry Falwell Jr. seeks to follow (outdo?) Trump, and makes conspiratorial remarks about North Korea and China making the virus. See also Alec MacGillis, What’s It Like on One of the Only University Campuses Still Open in the U.S.? ProPublica, Mar 26, 2020. See also Brian Tyler Cohen, Virginia Governor Calls Out Trump-Ally Liberty University President for Opening College. Brian Tyler Cohen, Mar 25, 2020. Update by Elizabeth Williamson, Liberty University Brings Back Its Students, and Coronavirus, Too. New York Times, Mar 29, 2020. “As of Friday, Dr. Eppes said, nearly a dozen Liberty students were sick with symptoms that suggest Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. Three were referred to local hospital centers for testing. Another eight were told to self-isolate… After initial publication of this article, the university said it has asked four students who returned from the New York area and two of their roommates to self-quarantine, but none of them were referred for testing and none have symptoms. One student who returned from a county with a high number of cases was running a fever and had a cough. He was tested and elected to go home pending the results rather than self-quarantine, the university said. Of the 1,900 students who initially returned last week to campus, Mr. Falwell said more than 800 had left.”

Pew Research Center, White Evangelicals See Trump as Fighting for Their Beliefs, Though Many Have Mixed Feelings About His Personal Conduct. Pew Research Center, Mar 20, 2020.

Casey Cep, How Joseph Smith and the Early Mormons Challenged American Democracy. The New Yorker, Mar 23, 2020. “In Nauvoo, Illinois, Smith established a theocracy, ran for President, and tested the limits of religious freedom.”

Katherine Stewart, The Road to Coronavirus Hell Was Paved by Evangelicals. New York Times, Mar 27, 2020. “Trump’s response to the pandemic has been haunted by the science denialism of his ultraconservative religious allies.” The anti-science bent of many white evangelicals is enmeshed with the desire to defend the prior heresy of chattel slavery. One common root was the “Scottish school of common sense” and anti-intellectualism/clericalism which resulted in evangelicals embracing chattel slavery and young earth creationism. White fundamentalists believed that “liberals” were pulling America “away from God” since abolition, Reconstruction, and the rise of science, because they associated “science” with deconstruction of the Bible. For reference, David B. Rivkin Jr. and Charles Stimson, A Constitutional Guide to Emergency Powers. Wall Street Journal, Mar 19, 2020. ““The Constitution,” Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote for a 7-2 majority, “does not import an absolute right in each person to be, at all times and in all circumstances, wholly freed from restraint.” Instead, “a community has the right to protect itself against an epidemic.” Its members “may at times, under the pressure of great dangers, be subjected to such restraint, to be enforced by reasonable regulations, as the safety of the general public may demand.” States also have the power, beyond criminal law enforcement, to make quarantine and isolation effective. If presented with widespread noncompliance, governors may call National Guard units to put their orders into force, to safeguard state property and infrastructure, and to maintain the peace. In some states, individuals who violate emergency orders can be detained without charge and held in isolation.” See also Colin Wolf, Tampa Pastor Who Chose to Hold Services During Coronavirus Outbreak Says He 'Had No Option'. Orlando Weekly, Mar 31, 2020. re: Rodney Howard-Browne; followed by Cleve R. Woodson, Tampa Pastor Live-Streams Sermon as Coronavirus Forces Americans to Worship Differently on Easter Sunday. Washington Post, Apr 12, 2020. “Howard-Browne used the opening moments of the unusual sermon — taped from his home studio with an American flag backdrop and a picture of him laying hands on President Trump — to rail against government tyranny. “This is not about a virus. This is about shutting down the gospel of Jesus Christ,” he preached. “And all these pastors that say, ‘Well, we should just roll over and comply,’ you don’t understand.” See also Mick Zawislak, Pastor: At Least 10 Who Attended Glenview Church Service Get Coronavirus. Daily Herald, Chicago, Mar 26, 2020. service held Mar 15 drew 80 people; 43 had symptoms; 10 were tested and tested positive; also ABC7 News. See also Ian Milhiser, Texas Pastors Demand a “Religious Liberty” Exemption to Coronavirus Stay-At-Home Orders . Vox, Apr 1, 2020. re: the Hotze case, in the Texas Supreme Court. See also Hemant Mehta, Preacher: God Will Save Us from COVID-19 by Turning Off Our Virus Receptors. Friendly Atheist | Patheos, Apr 2, 2020. re: Colorado pastor Andrew Wommack. See Aris Folley, Pennsylvania Pastor Announces 'Outdoor Easter Blowout Service' Despite Social Distancing Guidelines. The Hill, Apr 1, 2020. re: Jonathan Shuttlesworth with a long video; see The Young Turks, The Real Reason Churches Are Holding Services During Quarantine. The Young Turks, Apr 2, 2020. for short video clips of Jonathan Shuttlesworth and Kenneth Copeland. Mike Baker, A ‘Liberty’ Rebellion in Idaho Threatens to Undermine Coronavirus Orders. New York Times, Apr 7, 2020. discusses pastor Tim Remington’s call for an Easter gathering of 1,000, and the culture of anti-government in pockets of Idaho. See Peter Sblendorio, Louisiana Pastor Who Keeps Holding Services Despite Coronavirus Says True Christians ‘Do Not Mind Dying’. NY Daily News, Apr 8, 2020. See Kirk Siegler, In Idaho, Far-Right Republicans Defy Coronavirus Health Restrictions. NPR, Apr 13, 2020. which features some white evangelicals. See also Victor Blackwell, Pastor Defends Asking Congregants to Donate Stimulus Checks. CNN, Apr 20, 2020. re: Tony Spell at Life Tabernacle Church in Florida.

Matthew Sitman, Trump’s Intellectuals and the Great Moving Right Show. The Bias Magazine, Mar 2020. a critique of R.R. Reno

Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry, Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States. Amazon book, Mar 2020. significantly overlaps with white evangelicalism but obviously not completely; encouragingly, sometimes the more frequently people attend church or read Scripture, the less they are a Christian nationalist. They find that white and black evangelicals differ dramatically on issues. They also find that for white evangelicals, “Christian” or “Christian nation” function as racial dog-whistles.

Ewan Palmer, Virginia Pastor Dies From Coronavirus After Previously Saying 'Media Is Pumping Out Fear' About Pandemic. Newsweek, Mar 27, 2020. “Landon Spradlin, 66, a pastor and traveling musician, died on Wednesday, March 25, at a hospital in North Carolina after testing positive for COVID-19. As first reported by Patch, nearly two weeks before his death Spradlin shared a meme on his Facebook page suggesting the media “can manipulate your life.””

Molly Hennesey-Fiske, Louisiana Church Defies COVID-19 Order, Holds Sunday Services. Los Angeles Times, Mar 29, 2020. “Pentecostal preacher Tony Spell didn’t just stand before his congregation on Sunday in defiance of the governor’s order to stay home: He leaped into the pews, paraded, hugged and laid hands on worshipers’ foreheads in prayer. “We’re free people. We’re not going to be intimidated. We’re not going to cower,” the Rev. Spell said from the pulpit of Life Tabernacle Church in a suburb of Baton Rouge. “We’re not breaking any laws.”” See also Peter Sblendorio, Louisiana Pastor Who Keeps Holding Services Despite Coronavirus Says True Christians ‘Do Not Mind Dying’. New York Daily News, Apr 8, 2020. “Tony Spell of Baton Rouge’s Life Tabernacle Church”

Daniel Burke, Police Arrest Florida Pastor for Holding Church Services Despite Stay-at-home Order. CNN, Mar 30, 2020. “Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne said he wouldn't close the doors of his Tampa, Florida, megachurch”

Brandy Zadrozny and Ben Collins, Conservative Activist Family Behind 'Grassroots' Anti-Quarantine Facebook Events. NBC News, Apr 20, 2020. “A family-run network of pro-gun groups is behind five of the largest Facebook groups dedicated to protesting shelter-in-place restrictions.”

Joe Jurado, Pro-Life Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick Says 'There Are More Important Things Than Living' When It Comes to Coronavirus. The Root, Apr 21, 2020.

Adam Serwer, The Coronavirus Was an Emergency Until Trump Found Out Who Was Dying . The Atlantic, May 8, 2020.

Walter Einenkel, Hobby Lobby Founder Tells Workers That God Spoke to His Wife and Forgot to Mention Paid Sick Leave. Daily Kos, Mar 23, 2020. to see the actual letter, says “tighten your belts” instead; an example that white evangelicalism is predatory economically, as it started that way in colonialism. Andrew Naughtie, Coronavirus: Hobby Lobby Billionaire Keeps Stores Open After ‘God Spoke to Him’ – But Won’t Pay Sick Leave . UK Independent, Mar 25, 2020. Jack Jenkins, Hobby Lobby Clarifies Coronavirus Sick Leave Policy Amid Accusations. Religion News Service, Mar 31, 2020. reports Hobby Lobby later claims to offer paid sick leave.

Kristin Kobes du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. W.W. Norton & Company | Amazon page, Jun 2020. very important history on how images of, and teaching about, masculinity in white evangelical circles led to an alliance between evangelicals and Republican anti-communism, male pastors abusing their power without accountability, Trumpism, etc. See review by Scot McKnight, Manning-Up America's Evangelicalism. Christianity Today, Jul 2020.

Mark Woods, The Bible and the President. Bible Society, Jun 2, 2020. “A picture of the Bible has flashed all around the world. It’s on every news channel and in every newspaper.”

Tom Gjelten, Evangelical Christians Grapple With Racism As Sin. NPR, Jun 6, 2020.

Anand Ghiridharadas, MLK™: How White Moderates Have Co-Opted the Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. Seat at the Table | Vice, Jun 10, 2020. brilliant, devastating history of the use of MLK by white conservatives and moderates

Eric Black, Hugh Hewitt Stands Up for Two of the Most Undemocratic Provisions in the Constitution. Minnesota Post, Jun 11, 2020. the Electoral College and the distribution of Senators

Rob Schenck, What Evangelicals Say Privately About Trump CNN, Jun 16, 2020. another admission that white evangelicals made a Faustian bargain with Trump, in his own words; meanwhile young people are turning away from evangelical churches in droves, and the Southern Baptist Church posted its thirteenth straight year of declines in numbers.

The Young Turks, Pastor Louie Giglio: Slavery’s Legacy is “White Blessing”. The Young Turks, Jun 16, 2020. Giglio of Passion Church talks to Lecrae and Dan Cathy (CEO of Chik-Fil-A). Michael Stone, Atlanta Megachurch Pastor Calls Slavery ‘Blessing’ – Divine Gift For White People. Patheos, Jun 16, 2020. in fairness, Louie Giglio apologized, but calling past injustice a “blessing” for white people shows that white evangelicals simply cannot accept the emotions of grief, limited and appropriate guilt, and owing a debt as motivation for Christian obedience. Penal substitutionary atonement simply does not allow for those motivations, despite 2 Corinthians 7.

Isaac Chotiner, How the Head of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Came Around to Trump. The New Yorker, Jun 22, 2020. re: Al Mohler, who noticeably avoided the question of impeachment and why white evangelicals still supported Trump

Ray Stern, Phoenix Megachurch Hosting Trump Rally Says It Has Special Coronavirus-Killing Air System. Phoenix New Times, Jun 22, 2020. an outrageous claim by Dream City Church, Phoenix: “A new air-purification system that kills 99.9 percent of the coronavirus. The technology, they say, was developed by members of the church.”

Darrell Lackey, Evangelicals Are Attracted to Conspiracy Theories—Why? Divergence | Patheos, Jun 22, 2020. end-times theories and the book of Revelation

Robert Mackay, Trump Made a Racist Joke in a Phoenix Megachurch and the Crowd Went Wild. The Intercept, Jun 24, 2020.

Nicholas Wu, Facebook Removes Trump Campaign Ads with Symbol Once Used by Nazis. USA Today, Jun 18, 2020. and Claire Goforth, Trump Campaign Accused of Using a Nazi Symbol in Facebook Ad. Daily Dot, Jun 18, 2020. for historical background in the concentration camps

Clare Malone, The Republican Choice: How a Party Spent Decades Making Itself White. FiveThirtyEight, Jun 24, 2020.

Jessica Mouser, Pastor Forced to Leave MS Church for Speaking Out on Racial Issues. Church Leaders, Jun 26, 2020. Scott Volland left The Heights Church from Columbus, Missouri

Farron Cousins, Trump Retweets Video Of Elderly Supporter Yelling “White Power”. Ring of Fire, Jun 28, 2020. and Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzenzinski, Rev. Al Sharpton: His Retweeting This Is Intentional. Morning Joe | MSNBC, Jun 29, 2020.

John Iadarola, Neo-Nazi Plot Inside US Military Stopped. The Damage Report, Jun 28, 2020.

Kaitlin Lange, Carmel Church Pastor Calls Black Lives Matter Organizers 'Maggots and Parasites'. IndyStar, Jun 30, 2020. a Catholic priest

David A. Graham, Jeff Sessions Explains Why Christians Support Trump. The Atlantic, Jun 30, 2020. “The former attorney general compared the president to a Middle Eastern strongman.”

Tom Gjelten, White Supremacist Ideas Have Historical Roots In U.S. Christianity. NPR, Jul 1, 2020. white Southern evangelicalism, examples like James Henry Thornwell, Presbyterian minister in pre-Civil War First Presbyterian Church in Columbia, SC

Carol Kuruvilla, Despite Some Disapproval, White Evangelicals Haven’t Budged On Voting For Trump: Survey. Huffington Post, Jul 1, 2020. meanwhile David A. Graham, White Voters Are Abandoning Trump. The Atlantic, Jun 30, 2020. over his racism, suggesting that the far-right and the evangelical right are the last partners, though perhaps the libertarians are also still aligned

Tom Gjelten, White Supremacist Ideas Have Historical Roots In U.S. Christianity. NPR, Jul 1, 2020.

Khyati Y. Joshi, White Christian Privilege: The Illusion of Religious Equality in America. Amazon book, Jul 7, 2020. and review by Adam Shields, White Christian Privilege: The Illusion of Religious Equality in America by Khyati Joshi. Bookwise, Jul 28, 2020.

John Iadarola and Jayar Jackson, Trump Staffer Flaunts Racist Stance. The Damage Report, Jul 11, 2020. Peter Navarro said he lives in California, a race-blind world. Tucker Carlson says “we” need to fight for our country from Ilhan Omar and Tammy Duckworth.

Ellie Hall, A Medically Vulnerable 17-Year-Old Attended A Church Event With 100 People — Then Died Of The Coronavirus. BuzzFeed News, Jul 7, 2020. tragic example of white evangelical-Pentecostal carelessness with regard to science

Corey Evan Leak, How Bethel Church Continues To Hinder Black Salvation. Medium, Jul 14, 2020.

Anne Applebaum, Laura Ingraham’s Descent Into Despair. The Atlantic, Jul 16, 2020. “At some point, her Reaganite optimism slowly hardened into something better described as a form of apocalyptic pessimism.” An example of theocratic-cultural aspirations being tied to the nation-state

Scott Clement and Dan Balz, Trump Faces Rising Disapproval and Widespread Distrust on Coronavirus, Post-ABC Poll Finds. Washington Post, Jul 17, 2020. “Trump’s ratings for handling the coronavirus have dropped by 16 percentage points among white evangelical Protestants to 68 percent today.” This reflects an anti-science bent, and means 84 percent of white evangelicals approved of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus back in May.

Eric Levitz, David Shor’s Unified Theory of American Politics. New York Magazine, Jul 17, 2020. highlights the white grievance - white supremacist contingent of Trump’s constituency from 2016, which was detectable and differentiable from the economic populism

David French, Coronavirus, Conspiracy Theories, and the Ninth Commandment . The Dispatch | French Press, Jul 19, 2020. “A better political theology can make us less vulnerable to lies.” “white Evangelical voters went from the community least tolerant of unethical politicians to the community most tolerant, and they did so in five short years”

J.J. McCullough, How Evangelicals Became Republicans. J.J. McCullough, Jul 19, 2020. a 32 minute video with helpful clips from prominent evangelical leaders and politicians

Scott Kisker, Segregationism and the Corruption of Methodist Discipline (or How Twentieth-Century Methodists Broke Methodism. Firebrand, Jul 20, 2020.

Sarah Stankorb, These Evangelical Women Are Abandoning Trump and the Church. Medium, Jul 23, 2020. stories of sexism and Christian nationalism/fascism

Associated Press, Over 40 Infected With COVID-19 After Revival Event At Alabama Baptist Church: Pastor. Huffington Post, Jul 27, 2020. “Masks were not required during the multi-day event at Warrior Creek Missionary Baptist Church, according to Pastor Daryl Ross.”

Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity. Amazon book, Jul 2020. reviewed by Carol Kuruvilla, White Supremacy Shaped American Christianity, Researcher Says. Huffington Post, Jul 26, 2020. “Racist theology is deeply embedded in the DNA of white Christian churches, influencing even their theology on salvation, PRRI founder Robert Jones argues in a new book.” See also Robert P. Jones, Racism Among White Christians Is Higher Than Among the Nonreligious. That's No Coincidence. NBC News, Jul 27, 2020. “For most of American history, the light-skinned Jesus conjured up by white congregations demanded the preservation of inequality as part of the divine order.” Leonardo Blair, White Christians More Racist Than Secular Whites, Researcher Robert P. Jones Reveals. Christian Post, Jul 29, 2020. “This disparity in attitudes about systemic racism between white Christians and whites who claim no religious affiliation is important evidence that the common — and catalyzing — denominator here is religious identity… Even when controls are introduced in a statistical model for a range of demographic characteristics, such as partisanship, education levels and region, the connection between holding racist attitudes and white Christian identity remains stubbornly robust.” Jennifer Rubin, How White Supremacy Infected Christianity and the Republican Party. Washington Post, Aug 3, 2020.

Mark P. Shea, Qatholic vs. Catholic. Stumbling Towards Heaven blog, Jul 28, 2020. a Catholic critique of white Catholic support for Trumpism. See also Elizabeth Bruenig, ‘Racism Makes a Liar of God’. New York Times, Aug 7, 2020. “How the American Catholic Church is wrestling with the Black Lives Matter movement.”

Yonat Shimron, Alabama Southern Baptist Pastor Resigns After Speaking at Party for a KKK Leader. Religion News Service, Jul 30, 2020.

Meidas Touch, Vote Out Racism. Meidas Touch, Aug 7, 2020. a 2 minute anti-Trump campaign ad that highlights his history of racism

Benjamin Fearnow, Religious Organizations Receive $7.3 Billion in PPP Loans, Megachurches Amass Millions. Newsweek, Jul 7, 2020. troubling given the rise of white suburban megachurches

Ryan P. Burge, For White Evangelical Republicans, Approval of Trump is About Immigration More Than Abortion. Religion in Public, Aug 27, 2020. which itself raises the related perception that immigrants will raise taxes on white Americans because they come from countries that do. See David Brooks, How the Democrats Won the War of Ideas. New York Times, Oct 24, 2020. and response by Jared Peterson, David Brooks Gets It Wrong. American Thinker, Oct 24, 2020. who faults immigration for admitting people who are much more open to expansive government.

Jake Thomas, Christian Crowdfunding Site Hosts Drive For Alleged Kenosha Gunman. The Intellectualist, Aug 28, 2020. noteworthy, although in Kyle Rittenhouse’s defense, at times the legality of who is the aggressor and what is self-defense might work in his favor. See Colion Noir. Kyle Rittenhouse: Let’s Talk Facts in the Kenosha, Wisconsin Shooting from a Lawyer’s Standpoint. Colion Noir, Aug 28, 2020.

Rod Dreher, Christian Dandy Throws A Punch. The American Conservative, Aug 28, 2020. re: Eric Metaxas

Hemant Mehta, Sheriff Resigns After Defending His Use of Racist Slurs: “I’m a Christian Man”. The Friendly Atheist | Patheos, Sep 3, 2020. “Arkansas County Sheriff Todd Wright recently resigned after pressure from the county’s Quorum Court, but not before one final pathetic attempt at salvaging his reputation. The incident leading up to this involved a conversation Wright had with Desiree Middlebrooks, the mother of his child. They were at a local grocery store when Wright saw Middlebrooks in a pleasant exchange with a Black employee. That, apparently, set him off. She secretly recorded Wright as he expressed his rage, referring to [the employee] as a dread head n***** and calling the mother of his child a n***** lover.” In court, “With his body language slouched in his chair, he addressed the room stating what was done was in the privacy of his own home. Blaming his actions on the devil, Wright said the video was recorded because he was mad at Middlebrooks because he missed a funeral of his friend, who was black, trying to locate her. “I’m a Christian man. I read my bible everyday,” said Wright. “I am by no means a racist. That video does not show the true picture of me.””

Michael Rea, How the Evangelical Movement Became Trump’s “Bitch” — And Yes, I Know What That Word Signifies. Salon, Sep 9, 2020.

Matt Kappadakunnel, Black Catholic Priest Accuses U.S. Bishops of Complicity in White Privilege. Novena, Sep 7, 2020.

Paul Louis Metzger, Post 9/11: Christian Nationalism, the Global Church & Jesus’ Kingdom. Uncommon God, Common Good | Patheos, Sep 11, 2020.

Peter Wehner, Why Trump Supporters Can’t Admit Who He Really Is. The Atlantic, Sep 4, 2020. “Nothing bonds a group more tightly than a common enemy that is perceived as a mortal threat.”

Brian Kaylor, Baptist Calvinists Defend Slavery of Southern Seminary Founders. Baptist News, Sep 9, 2020. and see commentary via Twitter of Dr. Anthony Bradley. Sep 15, 2020.

Charlotte Alter, How Conspiracy Theories Are Shaping the 2020 Election—and Shaking the Foundation of American Democracy. Times, Sep 10, 2020. relevant to white evangelicals because QAnon is listed as a “domestic terrorist organization” by the FBI and 56% of Republicans believe it is partly or mostly true. Many of those Republicans are Christians. Thus, many Christians in the United States get their beliefs from a domestic terrorist organization.

Randal Rauser, The Ravi Zacharias Sex Scandal: A New Personal Statement. Patheos, Sep 13, 2020. white evangelicalism is structured in a way around charismatic men who can easily become financial and/or sexual predators and emotionally abusive. See also Jonathan, The Shattered Face of Ravi Zacharias. Medium, Sep 15, 2020. See also Daniel Silliman, Ravi Zacharias’s Ministry Investigates Claims of Sexual Misconduct at Spas. Christianity Today, Sep 29, 2020. “Three women have come forward with additional allegations against the late Christian apologist.” Daniel Silliman, RZIM Confirms Ravi Zacharias’s Sexual Misconduct. Christianity Today, Dec 23, 2020.

Jason Lemon, Evangelical Pastor Urges Christians to 'Mobilize' to Fight Civil War Against Left-Wing Activists. Newsweek, Sep 14, 2020. “Rick Joyner, who recently described Black Lives Matter protesters as the "KKK of this time," discussed his concerns about a civil war in the U.S. during an appearance on the conservative Christian program The Jim Bakker Show. Right Wing Watch first reported his remarks on Monday.”

Adelle M. Banks, No Race Problem Here: Despite Summer of Protests, Many Practicing Christians Remain Ambivalent. Religion News Service, Sep 15, 2020. From Barna, “Thirty percent of practicing Christians — people who identify themselves as Christians, have attended worship in the past month and claim to strongly prioritize their faith — say they are not motivated to engage in matters of racial injustice (12% unmotivated, 18% not at all motivated). That's an increase from 2019, when 17% said they were not motivated (9% unmotivated, 8% not at all motivated).”

Donald J. Trump, Executive Order on Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping. White House, Sep 22, 2020. response to the 1619 Project

Ed Stetzer, Pandemic Denial Sows Division and Endangers Others. Christianity Today, Sep 23, 2020. provides an indications of evangelical ministers who allow their “culture war” attitudes to override interest in science, fair journalism, and willingness to hold the Trump administration accountable for its lies.

Hugh Hewitt, Twitter, Sep 23, 2020. tweets a complete falsehood, “Democrats and Blue Bubble media have begun to voice their anti-Catholic bias. That anti-Catholic bias is deep and enduring. That "dogma lives deeply within" the Democrats, and every Catholic in America should know it.” The fact-based responses are thoroughly entertaining.

Brian Tyler Cohen, Sarah Huckabee Sanders Humiliated in Brutal Interview with Australian Reporter. Brian Tyler Cohen, Sep 24, 2020.

John Fea, Evangelical Theologian Wayne Grudem Believes that Trump Does Not Tell Lies. Also, Anyone Who Believes Trump is Trying to “Divide Us” is “Bearing False Witness”. The Way of Improvement Leads Home, Sep 25, 2020.

Timothy I. Cho, When Church Leaders Sided With White Supremacists. Faithfully, Sep 25, 2020. “Rev. Craig Bulkeley, pastor of Friendship Presbyterian Church in Black Mountain, North Carolina… revealed that he had asked one of his church elders to step down due to racist statements this elder had been making publicly. This elder, Neill Payne, and his brother-in-law, Kirk Lyons, had both moved to the Black Mountain area after a long history of deep involvement with white supremacist organizations in Idaho and Texas… Yet, in response to Bulkeley’s request for Payne to step down as an elder, the man and his brother-in-law quickly put a retaliatory petition before the small, family church to instead strip Bulkeley of his role as pastor. By the skin of his teeth⁠—just one vote—Bulkeley was able to keep his position. In a surprising turn of events, the congregation instead voted to remove all three elders—including Payne—from their positions. Due to the nature of Presbyterian polity, particular church congregations are able to request assistance from higher courts composed of elders and ministers within the denomination. The Western Carolina Presbytery (the church’s governing body) appointed a commission of six pastors and elders to assess whether there was justification for the men’s removal… the presbytery made its fateful, vile, and wicked decisions to defend the white supremacists… The committee ultimately decided that the real cause of conflict was not Payne’s white supremacist views, but that Bulkeley had made his disagreements with Payne public. As recorded in the minutes of the presbytery meeting, the committee believed that Payne had not sinned by virtue of the views he held but only by the manner with which he held these views. He was simply too argumentative and pushy, they claimed. Lastly, easily the worst of the recommendations, the committee argued that Payne was free to believe and propagate his white supremacist views because the Bible did not clearly refute the idea that Black people were created inferior to White people.”

Doug Pagitt, Election 2020: Trump's Support from Catholics and Evangelicals is Dropping. They Fault His Unkindness. NBC News, Sep 25, 2020. slight movement, focused on Trump’s personal demeanor, temperament, and rhetoric. But one must question perceptions of virtue: “Across all the virtues measured — kindness, generosity, humility, chastity, modesty, diligence and patience — on average, 50 percent of respondents rated Biden as more virtuous than Trump, and 39 percent rated Trump as more virtuous than Biden, with the largest gaps emerging around the virtues of humility and modesty (28 points and 22 points in Biden's favor, respectively). Across the seven sins — lust, sloth, greed, wrath, gluttony, envy and pride — on average, 51 percent of respondents rated Trump as more sinful than Biden, and 37 percent rated Biden as more sinful than Trump, with the largest gaps emerging around the sins of pride and anger (29 points and 26 points in Biden's favor, respectively).”

Liz Theoharis, How Christian Nationalism in the US Legislates Evil and Punishes the Poor. Common Dreams, Sep 28, 2020.

Korie Little Edwards, Multiracial Churches Don't Challenge Racism Until They Challenge White Supremacy. Faith & Leadership, Sep 29, 2020. See also Tom Gjelten, Multiracial Congregations May Not Bridge Racial Divide. NPR, Jul 17, 2020. who interviews Korie Little Edwards

A.B. Stoddard, The Transformation of Mike Pompeo. The Dispatch, Oct 5, 2020. “From his schmoozefests to his scandals, it’s clear the secretary of state wants to get out in front of the 2024 field.” Pompeo is a white evangelical.

Michael D. Shear, Katie Benner, and Michael S. Schmidt, ‘We Need to Take Away Children,’ Jeff Sessions Said. New York Times, Oct 6, 2020. note that Jeff Sessions is a United Methodist, manipulated Romans 13, and was rebuked by other Methodist ministers.

Emma Vigeland, Pete Buttigieg Goes Viral By Turning The Tables On Fox News. Rebel HQ, Oct 8, 2020. turns the tables on Fox News hosts by asking why evangelical Mike Pence can serve as VP to Trump. Cites McKay Coppins, God’s Plan for Mike Pence. The Atlantic, Jan-Feb 2018. which features a biography of Pence and also the white evangelicalism and, to some degree, a white Catholicism, he represents. See Mike Pence on Immigration to see Pence’s flip-flops on the unconstitutionality of candidate Trump’s immigration Muslim ban proposal.

Jonathan Chait, Republican Senator Blurts Out That He Hates Democracy. New York Magazine, Oct 8, 2020. Utah Senator Mike Lee tweeted, “We are not a democracy.” “Lee is articulating a view that has long been in vogue on the American right but which Republican politicians were generally hesitant to express openly. The premise is that liberty is a higher value than democracy, and they define liberty to mean a right to property that precludes redistribution. That is to say, the far right does not merely view progressive taxation, regulation and the welfare state as impediments to growth, but as fundamentally oppressive. A political system that truly secured freedom would not allow the majority to gang up on the minority and redistribute their income for themselves.”

Jonny Morrison, The Colonization of Christian Leadership. Missio Alliance, Oct 9, 2020.

Charles Bethea, How the “QAnon Candidate” Marjorie Taylor Greene Reached the Doorstep of Congress. The New Yorker Magazine, Oct 9, 2020. “There’s nothing she can do to lose my vote, unless she murdered a baby or something,” a local Republican official said. “Nothing.” “Greene, who was baptized at an evangelical church in a suburb just north of Atlanta, in 2011, and speaks frequently about being Christian, has said that she wants to bring “my faith and my family values to Washington.”) I spoke to one of the men with whom Greene allegedly had an affair. He asked not to be named and told me that he, too, was bothered by Greene’s hypocrisy. He provided me with a screenshot of a text exchange in which Greene acknowledged sleeping with him. “She never talked about politics,” he said. He told me he later learned that she was also sleeping with another man who was not her husband, “while the whole time being ‘super Christian.’ ” He added, “She’s not the pro-family, pro-Christian, strong-business woman she touts herself to be.” See also John Iadarola and Brett Ehrlich, Republican Says Parkland Shooting Was 'False Flag' Event. The Damage Report, Jan 24, 2021. on Greene attempting to spin a school mass shooting.

Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Trump Pick Amy Coney Barrett's Christian ‘Handmaid' History Matters. NBC News, Oct 10, 2020. “Conservatives may disagree, but how Barrett's spiritual beliefs shape her judicial philosophy and how they align with democratic norms are legitimate questions.”

Phil Vischer, Why Do White Christians Vote Republican, and Black Christians Vote Democrat? Phil Vischer, Oct 11, 2020. a helpful 15 minute video

Kate Shellnut, White Evangelicals Are Actually for Trump in 2020, Not Just Against His Opponent. Christianity Today, Oct 14, 2020.

Peter Wehner, Evangelicals Made a Bad Bargain With Trump. The Atlantic, Oct 18, 2020. “People of faith should embody moral and intellectual integrity.”

Bob Moser, Sin and Scandal at Liberty University. Rolling Stone, Oct 18, 2020. and Maggie Severns, Brandon Ambrosino, and Michael Stratford, ‘They All Got Careless’: How Falwell Kept His Grip on Liberty Amid Sexual ‘Games,’ Self-Dealing. Politico, Nov 1, 2020. The deposed university president secured backing by ousting critics and hiring the family members and businesses of loyalists.

Hugh Muir, Cornel West: 'George Floyd's Public Lynching Pulled the Cover Off Who We Really Are'. The Guardian, Oct 19, 2020. “As the US philosopher and civil rights activist looks ahead to the presidential election, he discusses Joe Biden, Black Lives Matter and why Barack Obama was more Kenny G than John Coltrane”

Madeline Peltz and Justin Horowitz, Laura Ingraham and Her Guests Have Promoted At Least & Unproven Treatments for COVID-19. Media Matters, Oct 20, 2020. “for Ingraham, a prolific COVID-19 misinformer who reportedly advised President Donald Trump on hydroxychloroquine back in April, one unproven cure has not been enough.”

Joel Haldorff, A Tale of Two Evangelicalisms. Breaking Ground, Oct 21, 2020. compares evangelicalism in Sweden vs. U.S. Swedish evangelicalism is much more akin to the Black Church in the US, pushing for democratic reform and broad economic justice. White American evangelicalism was on the side of property rights rather than civil rights and human rights, from the US founding through to the Civil War and Reconstruction. (They long nursed the wound of believing that chattel slavery was "biblical" and that the country was moving away from God because of abolition and social justice.) White American evangelicals accepted massive corporate power as something of an extension. Is it significant that a major leader in Swedish evangelicalism was Peter Paul Waldenstrom, who argued against penal substitutionary atonement?

Kristen West Savali, Mississippi Health Official: Maskless White People Are Responsible For Spike In COVID-19 Cases. Essence, Oct 24, 2020. “Maskless white people in Mississippi are responsible for the spike in COVID-19 cases, according to Dr. Thomas Dobbs, a State Health Officer.”

John Fea, If You Want to Get a Sense of the Current State of Evangelical Trumpism Read the Reactions to John Piper’s Recent Anti-Trump Post. The Way of Improvement, Oct 24, 2020.

Sarah Pulliam Bailey, Seeking Power in Jesus’ Name: Trump Sparks a Rise of ‘Patriot Churches’. Washington Post, Oct 26, 2020. “He prays that “communism and socialism and transgenderism and homosexuality and abortion will not have their way in this land.”… He prays that the nation’s “Christian roots” will remain, that the church of Jesus Christ will be a “restraining power.” “God, this nation is a miracle for you,” Peters continues. “You rescued us, and you gave us our independence for a purpose.””

R. Albert Mohler, Christians, Conscience, and the Looming 2020 Election. Albert Mohler, Oct 26, 2020.

Friendly Atheist, Conservative Christians Are Warning Voters About GOP Candidate Madison Cawthorn. Friendly Atheist, Oct 28, 2020.

Timothy Troutner, The New Integralists. Commonweal, Oct 28, 2020. “What they get wrong, and why we can’t ignore them” examines those Catholics who believe that Catholicism and democracy are intrinsically at odds, so Catholics must return to a monarchical, authoritarian and pre-democratic state. This Catholic strain is important to understand because white evangelicals have made some common cause with them. See also Kathryn Joyce, Deep State, Deep Church: How QAnon and Trumpism Have Infected the Catholic Church. Vanity Fair, Oct 30, 2020. “Catholicism’s increasingly powerful political right reflects fringe America, fueled by paranoia, conspiracy, racism, and the threat of apocalypse.”

Rev. Jonathan David Faulkner, The Heresy of Christian Nationalism. God’s Heart for Those, Oct 28, 2020. “The Christendom model that is now dying here in America was a later aberration that has also been the victim of much triumphalist revisionism over the centuries starting with the Roman Catholic Church and continuing with the Protestant Church today. It actually bears little to no resemblance to what actually happened. Christendom presided over some of the deadliest wars in modern history and some of the worst atrocities, like the Holocaust, we committed under its watchful eye. Christendom, Christian Nationalism, Dominion Theology, they are all pieces of the same heretical puzzle that tries to make the kingdoms of man into the kingdom of God.”

Ana Kasparian, Kayleigh McEnany Praises Biden And ROASTS Trump. The Young Turks, Oct 31, 2020. collects video clips from 2015 - 16 when McEnany criticized Trump; she is an evangelical and now serves as White House Press Secretary. Sam Seder, Kayleigh McEnany Is Falling Apart. The Majority Report, Nov 12, 2020. where she told Fox News that they would have to talk to the White House. And Anderson Cooper, McEnany's Answer Stuns Cooper: That's Next Level Stuff. CNN, Nov 12, 2020. about what the Trump White House is doing to deny the 2020 election results.

Roger E. Olson, Are “Patriot Churches” Real Churches? . Roger E. Olson | Patheos, Oct 31, 2020. argues they are parachurch organizations at best

Caleb Parke, California Pastor Explains Trump Vote with 'Clear Conscience'. Fox News, Oct 31, 2020. “The mainstream media has falsely portrayed Trump as a 'racist, misogynist, and xenophobe,' Bill Johnson says” See also Hailey Branson-Potts and Anita Chabria, God, Masks and Trump: What a Coronavirus Outbreak at a California Church Says About the Election. Los Angeles Times, Nov 1, 2020. re: Bethel Church and pastor Bill Johnson.

Paul D. Miller, Politics Is More Than Abortion vs Character. Mere Orthodoxy, Nov 2, 2020. shifts the conundrum to nationalism vs. progressivism. I would have preferred individualism as the label of the “progressivism” he describes, because he is describing cultural, but not economic, progressivism.

Now This News, Donald Trump’s Faith Advisor Leads Viral Sermon After Election Day. Now This News, Nov 5, 2020. re: Paula White, who said demons are interfering against Trump, and who said angels from Africa and South America are coming to the U.S. to help elect him. The framing involves the view that strong angels are needed in those continents to fight non-Christian beliefs. The U.S., supposedly, is already a Christian nation and didn’t have that need until Trump needed them.

Caitlin McFall, Televangelist Who Blamed COVID-19 on Premarital Sex Dies from Virus. Fox News, Nov 7, 2020.

Paul A. Djupe and Ryan P. Burge, A Conspiracy at the Heart of It: Religion and Q. Religion in Public, Nov 6, 2020. more than half of Republicans surveyed express support for Q, and about 45% of evangelicals do. “Arguably the more dangerous association is with Christian nationalism, which marks off the purpose of the US to serve Christians and advance Christianity. Put together with the religious beliefs in evil, Christian nationalists could be susceptible to the idea that a vast conspiracy has taken root opposed to God’s anointed champion of their cause – Donald Trump – a belief that has been growing through his term in office.”

Ezra Klein, The Crisis Isn’t Trump. It’s the Republican Party. Vox, Nov 13, 2020. interviews Anne Applebaum, a journalist who has studied fascism internationally, who says, “I’m afraid that I think it’s a little bit more sinister than that. I think that — certainly on Trump’s part, and other Republicans are probably coming to see this the same way as well — this is an attempt to create a new kind of base: an enraged receiving base, which will always think that the election was stolen and which will always assume that something went wrong and will always feel that they were deprived of something. And this base will then have uses in the future… This will be a base that not only dislikes the Democratic Party or disagrees with them, it will think that the Democratic Party is evil and anti-democratic — that they have stolen the election.”

David French, The Cultural Consequences of Very, Very Republican Christianity. The French Press | The Dispatch, Nov 15, 2020.

Michael Harriot, Raphael Warnock, Truth and the 'Radical' Enemies of White Supremacy. The Root, Nov 19, 2020. starts with the conspiracy by Senator Strom Thurmond to enlist the FBI to call MLK a “communist”, and how Kelly Loeffler and the National Review could accuse Rev. Rafael Warnock of being a “radical” but not criticize Donald Trump.

Robert Chao Romero, Whiteness, Social Identity, and American Evangelicalism: An Analysis of the 2020 Presidential Election. Missio Alliance, Nov 20, 2020.

John Fea, A Trump Supporter is the New President of the Evangelical Theological Society. The Way of Improvement Leads Home, Nov 21, 2020. re: Albert Mohler of the SBC

Briana Keilar, Keilar Calls Out Marco Rubio for Attacking Biden’s Cabinet Over Their Education. CNN, Nov 25, 2020. an example of Rubio, who is an evangelical, confusing education and expertise with an elitist orientation on policy, and the hypocrisy. Notable because Christian faith was responsible for universities, scientific development, and respect for knowledge.

Jack Jenkins, Citing Rise of ‘Christian Nationalism,’ Secular Democrats Unveil Sweeping Recommendations for Biden. Religion News Service, Nov 30, 2020. presents a set of proposals limiting the Department of Education granting taxpayer dollars to private religious schools, applying nondiscrimination policies to some religious organizations like Hobby Lobby, and repealing non-medical religious exemptions to vaccinating children in schools and daycare facilities.

Samuel Perry, Andrew Whitehead, and Joshua B. Grubbs, Prejudice and Pandemic in the Promised Land: How White Christian Nationalism Shapes Americans’ Racist and Xenophobic Views of COVID-19. Ethnic and Racial Studies, Nov 2020. “During the COVID-19 crisis in March/April of 2020, far-right American political leaders and pundits proffered xenophobic explanations for the pandemic while ignoring that poorer, Black Americans and prison populations were being disproportionately infected. We propose such xenophobic and racist evaluations of COVID-19 drew from and appealed to a pervasive and politically strategic ethnoreligious ideology—white Christian nationalism.” They predict that in the future, white Christian nationalism will outpace other conservative participation in racist and xenophobic views.

Ed Kilgore, Doug Collins’s Sacrilegious Attack on Raphael Warnock. NY Magazine, Dec 2, 2020. for being pro-choice

Gregory Thompson, The Return of the Cold Warrior: Reflections on Rod Dreher’s Live Not by Lies. Cardus Canada, Dec 3, 2020. every word of this is gold

Ryan Grim, A Political History of Georgia. The Intercept, Dec 4, 2020. “Next month’s Senate runoff elections in Georgia have made the state the center of attention for national media.” Grim does not emphasize the white evangelical activity in Georgia, but it is not far behind.

Sarah Jones, White Evangelicals Made a Deal With the Devil. Now What? New York Magazine, Dec 6, 2020.

David French, The Crisis of Christian Celebrity. The French Press | The Dispatch, Dec 6, 2020. Hillsong pastor Carl Lentz, fundamentalist homeschooler Bill Gothard, Southern Baptist Jerry Falwell Jr., CMA apologist and intellectual Ravi Zacharias, and a great quote from Ta-Nehisi Coates, Violence and the Social Compact. The Atlantic, Dec 20, 2012. “Power changes people.”

David Doel, Michele Bachmann Asks God To Overturn The Election. The Rational National, Dec 7, 2020.

Edie Wilder, My White Privilege Didn’t Save Me. But God Did. Quilette, Dec 7, 2020.

Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons, Georgia's Loeffler-Warnock Debate Highlighted the GOP's Anti-Christian Hypocrisy. NBC News, Dec 7, 2020. “It's clear that Rev. Warnock is informed by the Gospel. But for all of her talk of God, Sen. Loeffler seems more motivated by the desire to score cheap political points.”

Rod Dreher, Donald Trump Is Not The Messiah. The American Conservative, Dec 8, 2020. on Obama’s culture war from the Left, Biden’s pick of Xavier Beccera, but how the Jericho March is problematic.

Namita Singh, Trump-Supporting Pastor Tells Followers COVID Vaccine is ‘Preparing Structure for the Antichrist’. UK Independent, Dec 8, 2020. “Guillermo Maldonado, a Trump-supporting pastor and a self-declared apostle, also said that the coronavirus vaccine will “alter your DNA”.”

Sarah Coakley, Racism and Religion in America. 10-Minute Talks | The British Academy, Dec 9, 2020.

Phil Vischer, What is an “Evangelical”? Phil Vischer, Dec 11, 2020. a history involving some anti-science fundamentalists, an attempt at intellectualism by evangelicals, and white supremacy

Emily Davies, Rachel Weiner, Clarence Williams, Marissa J. Lang, and Jessica Contrera, Multiple People Stabbed After Thousands Gather for Pro-Trump Demonstrations in Washington. Washington Post, Dec 12, 2020. “At least four people were stabbed near Harry’s Bar at 11th and F streets NW, a gathering point for the Proud Boys, a male-chauvinist organization with ties to white nationalism… D.C. police said that as of 9 p.m., 23 people were arrested Saturday, including 10 who were charged with misdemeanor assaults, six with assaulting police officers and four with rioting. Police said one person had an illegal Taser.” See also Rod Dreher, What I Saw At The Jericho March. The American Conservative, Dec 12, 2020. “It was a Trump rally by Christians (and sympathetic Jews) designed to mimic the Biblical story of the Israelite army ritually marching around the walled city of Jericho, blowing the shofar, and watching as God demolished the city’s defenses, so the Israelites could conquer. The idea of the Jericho March is that the true believers would circle the corrupt institutions of the US Government, the ones promulgating the hoax that Trump lost the election. I watched because I wanted to see how far the Christian Right — for the record, I am an Orthodox Christian, and a conservative — would go to conflate Trump politics and religion. Pretty far, as it turns out. Right over the cliff. You had to see it to believe it.” Jessica Corbett, Four People Stabbed After Pro-Trump Rally Attended by Far Right Groups in DC . Truthout, Dec 13, 2020. “Singing “Jingle Bells” and chanting vulgar slogans, “a group of about 50 men in the Proud Boys’ black and yellow circled the perimeter of Black Lives Matter Plaza, where about 200 anti-Trump demonstrators were rallying,” according to the Associated Press. Following the daytime rallying, “downtown Washington quickly devolved into crowds of hundreds of Proud Boys and combined forces of antifa and local Black activists—both sides seeking a confrontation in an area flooded with police officers.” Trump tweeted Saturday: “Wow! Thousands of people forming in Washington (D.C.) for Stop the Steal. Didn’t know about this, but I’ll be seeing them! #MAGA.” David French, The Dangerous Idolatry of Christian Trumpism. The French Press | The Dispatch, Dec 13, 2020. “I’m going to be as blunt as possible: Language like Metaxas’s, like the Texas GOP’s, and like some of the statements you’ll read below embody a form of fanaticism that can lead to deadly violence. There isn’t a theological defense for it. Indeed, its fury and slander directly contradict biblical commands. When core biblical values are contingent, but support for Donald Trump is not, then idolatry is the result.”

Neil Carter, Trump Laid Bare the Gullibility of the Church. Godless in Dixie | Patheos, Dec 13, 2020. “As a Southerner, I could point to dozens of neighbors and family members who sincerely believe he is a man of deep faith who never lies and is driven by love of his country in everything he does. It’s like they’ve forgotten everything we’ve seen from him since he first started showing off his extravagant lifestyle back in the 1980s… This is what you get when you raise people to see the whole world as against them, teaching them to distrust their own critical thinking skills whenever they contradict a belief they were told must be held no matter what appearances may suggest.”

Allison Klein, Historic D.C. Black Churches Attacked During Pro-Trump Rallies Saturday. Washington Post, Dec 13, 2020. “The banner was taken from Asbury United Methodist Church, one of the oldest Black churches in the city. Asbury United has stood at the corner of 11th and K streets NW since 1836. “Last night demonstrators who were part of the MAGA gatherings tore down our Black Lives Matter sign and literally burned it in the street,” the Rev. Ianther M. Mills, the church’s senior pastor, said in a statement. “It pained me especially to see our name, Asbury, in flames. For me it was reminiscent of cross burnings.”” White evangelicals maintain that they are being “persecuted” by “the left” when in fact they have persecuted Christians of color.

Dominick Mastrangelo, Falwell Used Liberty University Money to Fund Pro-Trump Efforts: Report. The Hill, Dec 14, 2020.

Michael Gerson, The Moral Hypocrisy of Conservative Leaders is Stunning. Washington Post, Dec 14, 2020. “Conservatism is supposed to produce the best of citizens — lawful, loyal and respectful of the Constitution. In some quarters, it is now producing the worst — fractious, resentful and cynical. A large portion of the responsibility rests on conservative leaders, who have sold their convictions cheap.”

Jefferson Cowie, Cowboy Confederates. Dissent, Fall 2020. “The ideals of the Confederate South found new force in the bloody plains of the American West.” A review of How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America by Heather Cox Richardson and The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States by Walter Johnson.

Andrew L. Seidel, Inevitable Megachurch Abuse of PPP Funds Is Coming to Light — Private Jet Included. Religion Dispatches, Dec 15, 2020.

Mark Winfield, SBC Seminary Presidents Are ‘Complicit With Evil,’ Revered California Pastor Says. Baptist News Global, Dec 15, 2020. after the declaration about Critical Race Theory being incompatible with the SBC statement of faith. See Miguel A. De La Torre, I Agree: Critical Race Theory Is Indeed Incompatible With Southern Baptist Convention’s Faith and Message. Religion Dispatches, Dec 14, 2020.

Michael Horton, The Cult of Christian Trumpism. The Gospel Coalition, Dec 16, 2020. “Internally, it turns the saving gospel into worldly power; externally, the hypocrisy of some evangelicals has been exposed to a cynical and watching world. Christian Americanism is the narrative that God specially called the United States into being as an extraordinary—verging on miraculous—providence. Passages from the election of Israel in the old covenant are lifted out of context and applied to America.” Also includes End-Times Conspiracy, Prosperity Gospel.

Janet Adamy, Abortion, Guns and Trump: A Church Group Tries to Navigate America’s Divisions. Wall Street Journal, Dec 18, 2020. “Calvary Christian Reformed in suburban Michigan seeks understanding through dialogue; ‘my soul is hurting’”

Mili Godio, Texas Baptist Minister, a Lifelong Republican, Loses License After Endorsing Biden. Newsweek, Dec 18, 2020. “Southern Baptist minister was told his license to the gospel ministry would "not be renewed" at a Texas church following a Facebook post endorsing Joe Biden for president in September, according to the Baptist Standard. David Bumgardner, a 21-year-old Fort Worth student at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary's Scarborough College, completed a year-long pastoral internship at Faith Memorial Baptist Church in Archer City, Texas. The congregation, which is aligned with the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, licensed Bumgardner to the gospel ministry on July 19, a private agreement between himself and the church pastor, Avery Sprey.”

Phil Vischer and Skye Jethani, Episode 438: The Year that Unveiled Evangelicalism with John Fea. Holy Post, Jan 6, 2021. Fea looks at white evangelicals in the post-Trump era. Fea revisits the Second Great Awakening and the individualistic groundwork it laid. Fea discusses institutions and leaders like Jerry Falwell Sr., James Dobson, Francis Schaeffer, C. Everett Koop, and Phyllis Schlafly.

Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, Panel: Will Hawley, Cruz PAY For Their Election Certification Gambit?. Rising | The Hill, Jan 7, 2021. Don Calloway and Marshall Kosloff gives unique personal perspectives on Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, and Tom Cotton (all evangelicals).

Adam Serwer, The Capitol Riot Was an Attack on Multiracial Democracy. The Atlantic, Jan 7, 2021. “True democracy in America is a young, fragile experiment that must be defended if it is to endure.” True American democracy started in 1965 with the end of Jim Crow.

Chris Hayes, Must-See New Video Shows Capitol Riot Was Way Worse Than We Thought. All In | MSNBC, Jan 8, 2021. shows important video footage of plastic handcuffs intended for Pence, Schumer, and other leaders.

John Fea, The U.S. Senators Who Objected to the Electoral College Results Were Almost All Evangelicals. The Way of Improvement Leads Home, Jan 7, 2021. is an evangelical and a historian. He observes that the US Senators who objected to the Electoral College count were almost all white evangelicals. Not to mention the "Jesus Saves" signs waving among the insurrectionists. The questions are theological and institutional: What makes white evangelicals more vulnerable to political grifting, conspiracy theories, demagoguery, and attempting to violently overthrow the government? The questions are not simply personal, although these Senators need to be questioned by their fellow Christians and fellow citizens. Keep in mind that if the Senate rejected the Electoral College count, the issue would have just went over to the House of Reps, the domain of Pelosi and the Dems. So was their Senate move just a fundraising stunt?

Robert P. Jones, Taking the White Christian Nationalist Symbols at the Capitol Riot Seriously. Religion News Service, Jan 7, 2021. “The attack exposed the comfortable juxtaposition of Christianity and white supremacy.”

Michael Gerson, Trump’s Evangelicals Were Complicit in the Desecration of our Democracy. Washington Post, Jan 7, 2021.

Molly Olmstead, God Have Mercy On Us All: How Prominent Evangelicals Reacted to the Storming of the Capitol. Slate, Jan 7, 2021.

Esau McCauley, Truth Over Power: It Is Past Time for the Church to Speak Plainly About the Election. Religion News Service, Jan 8, 2021. “The ongoing protest of the election is not about a search for truth; it is an attempt to shape truth to suit the desires of the powerful.”

Mark Joseph Stern, Ginni Thomas, Wife of Clarence, Cheered On the Rally That Turned Into the Capitol Riot. Slate, Jan 8, 2021. Ginni Thomas tweeted, “God Bless…” “Thomas, a conservative lobbyist and zealous supporter of Donald Trump, has fervently defended the president over the last four years. On her Facebook page, she frequently promotes baseless conspiracy theories about a “coup” against Trump led by Jewish philanthropist George Soros, a frequent target of anti-Semitic hate. Thomas draws many of these theories from fringe corners of the internet, including an anti-vax Facebook group that claimed Bill Gates would use the COVID vaccine to kill people. In recent months, she also amplified unsubstantiated corruption claims against Joe Biden while insisting, falsely, that the Obama administration illegally spied on Trump’s 2016 campaign, then tried to rig the election against him.”

Emma Green, A Christian Insurrection. The Atlantic, Jan 8, 2021. “The Jericho March is evidence that Donald Trump has bent elements of American Christianity to his will, and that many Christians have obligingly remade their faith in his image. Defiant masses literally broke down the walls of government, some believing they were marching under Jesus’s banner to implement God’s will to keep Trump in the White House. The group’s co-founders are essentially unknown in the organized Christian world. Robert Weaver, an evangelical Oklahoma insurance salesman, was nominated by Trump to lead the Indian Health Service but withdrew after The Wall Street Journal reported that he misrepresented his qualifications. Arina Grossu, who is Catholic, recently worked as a contract communications adviser at the Department of Health and Human Services. (Weaver and Grossu declined to comment. “Jericho March denounces any and all acts of violence and destruction, including any that took place at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021,” a PR spokesperson for the March wrote to me in an email after the publication of this article.) Still, they will have far more influence in shaping the reputation of Christianity for the outside world than many denominational giants: They helped stage a stunning effort to circumvent the 2020 election, all in the name of their faith. White evangelicals, in particular, overwhelmingly supported Trump in 2016 and 2020. Some of these supporters participated in the attack on the Capitol on Wednesday. But many in the country hold all Trump voters responsible—especially those who lent him the moral authority of their faith.”

David French, Only the Church Can Truly Defeat a Christian Insurrection. The French Press | The Dispatch, Jan 10, 2021. “It’s time to combat the right’s enabling lies.”

Katherine Stewart, The Roots of Josh Hawley’s Rage. New York Times, Jan 11, 2021. a white evangelical narrative that places “Pelagian free will” at the root of Western malaise. See also Joshua Hawley, The Age of Pelagius . Christianity Today, Jun 4, 2019.

Elisabeth Dias and Ruth Graham, How White Evangelical Christians Fused With Trump Extremism. New York Times, Jan 11, 2021. “A potent mix of grievance and religious fervor has turbocharged the support among Trump loyalists, many of whom describe themselves as participants in a kind of holy war.”

Leonardo Blair, Jeremiah Johnson Gets Threats After Trump Prophesy Apology; Slams Some in Prophetic Movement. Christian Post, Jan 11, 2021. “To my great heartache, I’m convinced parts of the prophetic/charismatic movement are far SICKER than I could have ever dreamed of”

Julia Duin, Charismatics Are At War With Each Other Over Failed Prophecies Of Trump Victory. Religion Unplugged, Jan 12, 2021.

Rick Jervis, Marc Ramirez and Romina Ruiz-Goiriena, ‘No Regrets': Evangelicals and Other Faith Leaders Still Support Trump After Deadly US Capitol Attack. USA Today, Jan 13, 2021.

Morgan Lee, Christian Nationalism Is Worse Than You Think. Christianity Today, Jan 13, 2021. “Millions of Americans believe in this political ideology. What church leaders need to know—and how they can help those under its influence.”

Casey Wallace, White American Christianity Needs to Be Honest About Its History of White Supremacy . Time, Jan 14, 2021. a good survey of the absolutely damning historical record from colonial times, although Roger Williams stands out positively, thank God.

Michelle Boorstein, For Some Christians, the Capitol Riot Won’t Change the Prophecy: Trump Will Be President. Washington Post, Jan 14, 2021. charismatic “prophets” lead Christians astray

Kristin du Mez, Josh Hawley, Betsy DeVos, and Abraham Kuyper: A Reckoning. Anxious Bench | Patheos, Jan 14, 2021. “At Dordt College, our neo-Kuyperian professors educated us on the value of a “Reformed worldview” in which there is no divide between sacred and secular or nature and grace, and in which every domain of life is to be brought under the “lordship” of Jesus. A famous line from Kuyper’s speech to open the Free University in 1880, which he founded as an expression of this philosophy, was often quoted at Dordt: “There’s not a square inch in the whole domain of human existence over which Christ, who is Lord over all, does not exclaim, ‘Mine’!” Our professors contended that Kuyper provided a road map for Christians living in a pluralistic context. Christians should build distinctly Christian institutions and systems to promote the “kingdom of God,” while also working to support the common good.” An exploration of Betsy DeVos and Josh Hawley — their attempts to use Kuyper’s political theology. However, see also David Koyzis, Misreading Kuyper? Stewart, Hawley, and the New York Times. Kuyperian, Jan 26, 2021. who offers important points but concedes that “the lordship of Christ” should be thought of in Kuyper’s territorial terms, “every square inch of creation,” which does not give enough space to non-Christians and a principled pluralism. It is too easily translated into monolithic terms which nation-states prefer.

Hunter Baker, When Pragmatic Politics Goes Bad: An Apology to the Never-Trumpers. Public Discourse, Witherspoon Institute, Jan 15, 2021. See also David French, An Important Apology Shows the Path Past Christian Trumpism. The French Press | The Dispatch, Jan 24, 2021. Baker and French focus on the character of a leader.

Carol Kuruvilla, Evangelist Compares Republicans Who Voted For Trump’s Impeachment To Judas. Huffington Post, Jan 15, 2021. “After all that he has done for our country, you would turn your back and betray him so quickly?” Franklin Graham wrote, saying Trump wasn’t “a perfect person.”

Lauren R. Kirby, White Christian Nationalists Want More Than Just Political Power. The Atlantic, Jan 15, 2021. DC is polluted and must be cleansed; laws are pagan and must become conservative Christian again; etc.

Emily Peck, Trump Supporters’ Main Problem Was Never The Economy. Huffington Post, Jan 15, 2021. “The Capitol riot has ended the notion that the president’s hardcore base was motivated by economic anxiety. It has always been about race.”

Rebecca Klein, These Textbooks In Thousands Of K-12 Schools Echo Trump’s Talking Points. Huffington Post, Jan 15, 2021. “Their religion-centered, anti-Democrat, anti-science, anti-multicultural message mirrors the Christian nationalism seen at the U.S. Capitol riot.”

Dan Simon, Who Voted for Hitler? The Nation, Jan 15, 2021. “The rural groundswell for Hitler included people of all classes and income levels. And the more it was a question of Protestant communities, the better Hitler did.” “…the Nazis were a party that organized people, especially in rural communities; that it was largely a Protestant phenomenon; and that it coincided with an inability and disinterest on the part of the major parties of the left to organize…” “…the establishment parties felt they could control Hitler, make sure he worked for them, and use him as their attack dog who, despite his violent ways (or possibly because of them), was still essentially supportive of the same German Protestant conservative values that they themselves espoused…” “There were pockets of rabid support for the Nazis in rural areas. But what we see repeated in chapter after chapter of Who Voted for Hitler? is the disproportionate support for Hitler from the well-heeled districts, motivated by their sense that Hitler would be their weapon against Communism; and because the Nazis had also successfully nurtured a covert anti-Semitism among the upper classes. Working class-neighborhoods were split more evenly, drawn to the Communists or Social Democrats, not strongly anti-Semitic, though susceptible certainly to the Nazi’s organizing exertions.” “And then, one after another, the traditional conservative parties—including the Center Party, which had kept itself aloof from any sign of support for Hitler and his National Socialists for over a decade—began in the late 1920s and early ’30s, as the worldwide economic depression took its toll, to form alliances with the Nazis.” “And so it was that the Center Party finally capitulated to an alliance with the Nazis in March of 1933, an alliance of Catholics with Protestants, giving Hitler his first majority, which in turn allowed him to assume dictatorial powers.” “Yes, the party largely dominated the Protestant countryside. But it prevailed not because of upper-middle-class voters there, or because of lower-middle-class voters anywhere, but rather because of support from all types of voters (other than Catholics and Jews).” “A pithy and breathtaking comparison might be drawn here with the decommissioning of the rebel army at the end of the only other protracted war of the prior century, which was America’s Civil War, and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and other vigilante groups that followed it. As I read Hamilton, I found myself wondering how committed Americans really are to our democratic institutions and traditions.”

Michael J. Mooney, The Boogaloo Bois Prepare for Civil War. The Atlantic, Jan 15, 2021. “As the FBI warns of violence, anti-government extremists are ready to get in on the chaos.” “The riot at the Capitol last Wednesday featured partisans of the long-gone country of South Vietnam, Falun Gong adherents, end-times Christians, neo-Nazis, QAnon believers, a handful of Orthodox Jews, and Daniel Boone impersonators.”

David French, Where Does the South End and Christianity Begin? . The Dispatch | French Press, Jan 17, 2021. an excellent reflection on Southern honor-shame culture, with examples, including helpful links

Katie Benner, Trump and Justice Dept. Lawyer Said to Have Plotted to Oust Acting Attorney General. New York Times, Jan 22, 2021. “Trying to find another avenue to push his baseless election claims, Donald Trump considered installing a loyalist” about Jeffrey Bossert Clark. Emptywheel, Now We Know Why Jeffrey Rosen Has Been Silent, How About Chris Wray? Emptywheel, Jan 23, 2021. discusses Jeffrey Clark’s official statements since this went public. Note that Jeffrey Bossert Clark, Can the EPA Rely on UN Science? PJ Media, Apr 28, 2010. characterized environmental regulation of greenhouse gasses as “a Leninist program from the 1920s to seize control of the commanding heights of the economy.” PJ Media is part of Salem Media Group, which very much targets Christian audiences. It is not clear if Clark is a Christian, although he appears to be as he presents himself in this article: Jeffrey Bossert Clark, Remaking Man by Choice and Decree. Law & Liberty, Mar 16, 2012. His appeal to Christian audiences and scare-tactics of crying communism was well-placed, however, and shows the network of institutional relationships by which white evangelicals can be manipulated into fearing “communism.”

Laura Smith, Lone Wolves Connected Online: A History of Modern White Supremacy. New York Times, Jan 26, 2021. “Forty years ago, Louis Beam had the idea of using the internet to drive a movement. Today, his vision is disturbingly prevalent.” “In 1982, Louis Beam drove 500 miles from a rugged patch of Texas land near the Gulf of Mexico to another rugged patch of land in the Arkansas Ozarks. He was headed to “the Farm,” a remote 250-acre commune of white supremacists calling themselves the Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord. The C.S.A. was stockpiling weapons and training in guerrilla tactics to prepare for an imminent race war….“Imagine, if you will, all the great minds of the patriotic Christian movement linked together and joined into one computer,” Mr. Beam wrote in one of his early online essays. “Imagine any patriot in the country being able to call up and access these minds.””

Philip Gorski, Trump’s Rise and Fall Unified the Two Most Pernicious, Racist Myths About America. NBC News, Jan 29, 2021. “White Christian nationalism and the "Lost Cause" myth used to exist in opposition to each other. But now they're a singular danger to our democracy.” Fascinating.

Robert A. Pape and Kevin Ruby, The Capitol Rioters Aren’t Like Other Extremists. The Atlantic, Feb 2, 2021. notes average age is 40 from not deep-red political districts but instead mixed areas won by Biden. They are likely white evangelicals, but we’ll see.

Paul D. Miller, What Is Christian Nationalism? Christianity Today, Feb 3, 2021.

John Fea, It Appears We Have a Direct Connection Between Seven Mountain Dominionism and the Insurrection on the U.S. Capitol. The Way of Improvement Leads Home, Feb 7, 2021. The Seven Mountain Mandate is a manifesto for evangelical Christians to “conquer” what proponents see as the seven key facets of life: education, religion, family, business, government, entertainment, and media. See Elle Hardy, The “Modern Apostles” Who Want to Reshape America Ahead of the End Times . The Outline, Mar 19, 2020.

Elisabeth Dias, A Century Ago, White Protestant Extremism Marched on Washington. New York Times, Feb 7, 2021. “Kelly J. Baker is a writer and scholar of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. She sees frightening similarities between that culture and the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6.”

Julia Duin, The Christian Prophets Who Say Trump Is Coming Again. Politico, Feb 18, 2021. “In the growing community of charismatic Christian prophecy, faith in Donald Trump’s imminent return to the White House is a new dividing line.” Charismatics and Pentecostals in particular.

Owen Strachan, Christian Preaching and “Public Health”: On Faithful Puritans & Our Fiery Trial. Reformanda, Feb 18, 2021. Strachan provides an interesting historical touchpoint to the Puritans and the plague of London in the 1660s to parallel Christians and COVID-19. The Puritans defied the civil government to meet and preacher.

Peter Manseau, His Pastors Tried to Steer Him Away from Social Media Rage. He Stormed the Capitol Anyway. Washington Post, Feb 19, 2020. “This account of one alleged rioter’s path to the Jan. 6 insurrection is based on his extensive Facebook posts, court documents, and the recollections and social media messages of several people who know him. Reached by phone this week, Sparks, who was released after his Jan. 19 arrest, declined to comment on anything related to his presence at the Capitol.”

Rebecca Sagar and Brie Loskota, White Christian Nationalism and the Next Wave of Political Violence. The Hill, Feb 20, 2021. includes a short history from Nixon to Trump where the “Southern Strategy” courted white evangelicals into the GOP, along the rise of right-wing media. Prediction: “In the first scenario, these movements will resume targeting the federal government as a hostile entity, leading to violence like the Oklahoma City bombing. In the second scenario, white Christian nationalists, emboldened by the embrace of the Republican establishment, will increasingly target Democrats, like the attempted kidnapping of Michigan’s Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. The day before the assault on the Capitol, we saw another instance of white nationalist violence in Shasta County, Calif. Unmasked protestors at a county supervisors meeting screamed for the death of any supervisor who didn’t support them.”

Dalia Mortada, Disinformation Fuels A White Evangelical Movement. It Led 1 Virginia Pastor To Quit . NPR, Feb 21, 2020. “The lie is so powerful that a recent survey by the conservative American Enterprise Institute shows that 3 in 5 white evangelicals say Biden was not legitimately elected. Among them is Pastor Ken Peters, who founded the Patriot Church in Knoxville, Tenn., last year. "I believe that right now we have an illegitimate president in the White House and he was not elected by the people," Peters told NPR. "I believe the truly 'We the People'-elected, should-be president is residing in Florida right now." On its website, the Patriot Church is described as a movement: "a church interceding on behalf of her nation."

Sarah McCammon, Evangelical Leaders Condemn 'Radicalized Christian Nationalism'. NPR, Feb 24, 2021.

John Harwood, White Evangelicals’ Dominance of the GOP Has Turned It Into the Party of Resistance. CNN, Feb 28, 2021. “But White Christians still hold unchallenged dominance within the GOP. They represent two-thirds of rank-and-file Republicans, Jones said. And they represent more than 90% of Republican senators, House members and governors.”

Michael Luo, The Wasting of the Evangelical Mind. The New Yorker, Mar 4, 2021. “The peculiarities of how American Christianity took shape help explain believers’ vulnerability to conspiratorial thinking and misinformation.” Revisits Mark Noll’s The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind . Amazon book, 1995), with updates.

Kayleigh Rogers, Why QAnon Has Attracted So Many White Evangelicals. FiveThirtyEight, Mar 4, 2021. “Looking at the data another way, 31 percent of white evangelical Republicans rated the statement as “mostly” or “completely” accurate. Either way you slice it, there’s significant overlap between Q followers and evangelicals… perhaps the biggest connection between the world of QAnon and the world of evangelical Christians is one that’s much harder to quantify and capture, but it seems obvious when talking to someone from either group. The QAnon movement has suffered multiple failed prophecies, predictions for events that never came to pass. To continue holding onto beliefs in spite of those disappointments, followers need something many evangelicals have in spades: faith.”

Philip Gorski, Twitter. Mar 6, 2021. “Longish thread: 1/ This brief but rich analysis by @DavidAFrench captures an important shift in White #ChristianNationalism over the last decade: a new view of “apocalypse” and “prophecy.”” Long thread of tweets with books and articles on Christian nationalism. Gorski is a Yale sociologist.

Anthea Butler, White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America. UNC Press, Mar 2021. “During the buildup to the Civil War, white evangelicals used scripture to defend slavery and nurture the Confederacy. During Reconstruction, they used it to deny the vote to newly emancipated blacks. In the twentieth century, they sided with segregationists in avidly opposing movements for racial equality and civil rights. Most recently, evangelicals supported the Tea Party, a Muslim ban, and border policies allowing family separation. White evangelicals today, cloaked in a vision of Christian patriarchy and nationhood, form a staunch voting bloc in support of white leadership. Evangelicalism’s racial history festers, splits America, and needs a reckoning now.”

Ruth Graham, Conservative Activist Charlie Kirk Leaves Liberty University Think Tank. New York Times, Mar 16, 2021.

Chrissy Stroop, Don’t Discount Evangelicalism as a Factor in Racist Murder of Asian Spa Workers in Georgia. Religion Dispatches, Mar 17, 2021. Includes terrible lived experiences with white men with an Asian fetish in the Southern Baptist Church.

Daniel Kleven, Douglas Wilson and the Association of Christian Classical Schools.  Βιβλιοσκώληξ, Mar 3, 2021.  Kleven gives a detailed history and argument that the ACCS is in the Christian Reconstruction camp, is Neo-Confederate, and indulges in false US history.  “As of March 2021, there were over 300 schools listed in their nationwide directory. A number of colleges are listed as “affiliates” of ACCS, including Bethlehem College & Seminary, Colorado Christian University, Grove City College, and Reformation Bible College. Affiliate businesses include The Davenant Latin Institute and Veritas Press. Additionally, a number of prominent evangelical figures “stand with ACCS” including Albert Mohler, Os Guinness, Chuck Colson, Eric Metaxas, John Piper, and Rod Dreher, as well as ministries like the Nehemiah Institute, and Desiring God.”

Russ Vought, Is There Anything Actually Wrong With 'Christian Nationalism?' | Opinion. Newsweek, Mar 22, 2021. a good example of an white evangelical nationalism apologist

Vice News, Why So Many QAnon Believers Are Evangelical Christians. Vice News, Apr 5, 2021. examples of historical mistakes of “end-times” fervor

Kathryn Watson, Why “the Pathway to Ending the Pandemic Runs Through the Evangelical Church” . CBS News, Apr 5, 2021. interviews Franklin Graham and Curtis Chang. Curtis Chang is founder of Christians and the Vaccine which has excellent resources, interviews with Christians in the sciences, and studies. Elizabeth Dias and Ruth Graham, White Evangelical Resistance Is Obstacle in Vaccination Effort . New York Times, Apr 5, 2021. “Millions of white evangelical adults in the U.S. do not intend to get vaccinated against Covid-19. Tenets of faith and mistrust of science play a role; so does politics.” Important because CBS News, Post-COVID Lungs Worse Than the Worst Smokers’ Lungs, Surgeon Says. CBS News, Jan 15, 2021. and Michaeleen Doucleff, Extraordinary Patient Offers Surprising Clues To Origins Of Coronavirus Variants. NPR, Feb 5, 2021.

David Sessions, Why Christians and Cold War Liberals Hate “Secular Religion”.  The Bias Magazine, Apr 13, 2021.  “If it’s a mistake to describe Trumpism and social justice politics as secular religions, not least because one of the two is an actual religion, it may not be wrong to see them as linked in a mutually radicalizing feedback loop that is accelerating the decline of religious identification in the U.S.”

Nahal Toosi, Pompeo Violated Rules on Use of State Department Resources, IG Finds. Politico, Apr 16, 2021. An example of a Trumpist white evangelical who thinks he is above the law.

John Gehring, Vow of Silence?. Commonweal, Apr 23, 2021. “U.S. bishops are quiet on voting restrictions”

Brianna Keilar, Roll the Tape: What Evangelicals Are Hearing From Some Pastors About Covid-19. CNN, Apr 26, 2021. A 9 minute video of very balanced but well-chosen quotations from evangelicals who are pro- and anti-vaccine.

R.L. Stollar, How Homeschoolers Plan to Take Over the World. R.L. Stollar Blog, May 3, 2021. On Michael Farris and Christian nationalist homeschoolers.

It sounds innocuous enough. Even sterile. “The Global Home Education Exchange” (GHEX). Yet GHEX may be the most consequential right-wing organization in the world. And it has successfully flown under the radar for a decade: it doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page.

Founded in 2012, GHEX markets itself as purely academic and professional. The organization states on its website that it is “an international non-governmental organization with a mission is to advance, connect, and equip the global home education community.” Yet peel back the curtain and you will find some of the most important Christian Nationalist activists in the United States driving change internationally. These figures, not content to remake the United States into a Christian nation, are exporting the United States’ cultural wars globally, with the goal to transform the entire world into their version of God’s kingdom. Key to this strategy—besides partnering with Russian conservatives—is the establishment of homeschooling as an international, inviolable human right belonging to parents.

Eliza Griswold, A Pennsylvania Lawmaker and the Resurgence of Christian Nationalism. The New Yorker, May 9, 2021. “How Doug Mastriano’s rise embodies the spread of a movement centered on the belief that God intended America to be a Christian nation.”

Audrey Clare Farley, The Eugenics Roots of Evangelical Family Values. Religion and Politics, May 12, 2021. Paul Poponoe, to James Dobson, on the use of “positive eugenics” and the patriarchal family

J. Russell Hawkins, The Bible Told Them So: How Southern Evangelicals Fought to Preserve White Supremacy. Amazon book, May 2021. “Focusing on the case of South Carolina, The Bible Told Them So shows how, despite suffering defeat in the public sphere, white evangelicals continued to battle for their own institutions, preaching and practicing a segregationist Christianity they continued to believe reflected God's will. Increasingly caught in the tension between their sincere belief that God desired segregation and their reluctance to give voice to such ideas for fear of being perceived as bigoted or intolerant, by the late 1960s southern white evangelicals embraced the rhetoric of colorblindness and protection of the family as measures to maintain both segregation and respectable social standing. This strategy set southern white evangelicals on an alternative path for race relations in the decades ahead.”

Matt McManus, The Perils of Catholic Postliberalism.  The Bias Magazine, May 20, 2021.  This is a very helpful critique and appreciation of MacIntyre, Deneen, Finnis, Ahmari, with more appreciation of Charles Taylor and Slavoy Zizek.  “Far from just conserving the achievements of liberalism and going beyond them, they want to turn back the clock to a preliberal era where Aristotelian-Thomism sorted individuals according to divine hierarchies and the state took punitive measures against sexual deviants, intellectual dissidents and heretics without hesitation. More importantly, they are reactionary in their undialectical framing of liberalism as a profound break with Christian, and particularly Catholic, doctrine. This is in stark contrast to their usual attempt to have it both ways, purchasing credibility for Catholic Christianity by framing it as a precursor to everything about modernity that they like, or is of unquestionable value. But you can’t claim that modern science owes an unpayable debt to Christian thought while denying the positive patrimony of liberalism and liberal rationalism, as though it was some unwanted bastard child.”  Links to Matt McManus, Radicals and  Religion: Slavoj Žižek's "Materialist" Christianity.  The Bias Magazine, Dec 16, 2020. 

Ben Munster, The Last Stand at Steve Bannon’s “Gladiator School”.  The New Yorker, May 24, 2021.  “The Academy for the Judeo-Christian West is trying to stave off eviction from Trisulti, an eight-hundred-year-old monastery outside Rome, where its founder hopes to offer courses like “Cultural Marxism, Radical Jihad, and the C.C.P.’s Global Information Warfare.”

Benjamin Wallace-Wells, How a Conservative Activist Invented the Conflict Over Critical Race Theory. The New Yorker, Jun 18, 2021. “To Christopher Rufo, a term for a school of legal scholarship looked like the perfect weapon.”

Kaitlin Curtice, The American Church Needs to Reckon With Its Legacy in Indigenous Boarding Schools.  Religion News Service, Jun 24, 2021.  A parallel investigation to the Canadian investigation of its residential boarding schools for Native children.

Kristin Kobes du Mez, Braveheart’s Warped History Keeps Suckering Evangelicals. The Daily Beast, Jun 21, 2021. “Mel Gibson’s sadomasochistic fantasy is beloved by evangelical Christians (and William Wallace wannabes like Ted Cruz), who wallow in its exaltation of violent, macho religion.”

Samuel Perry, Whitewashing Evangelical Scripture: The Case of Slavery and Antisemitism in the English Standard Version. Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Jun 23, 2021. “I show how the ESV editors, while modifying certain RSV renderings to establish transitivity for their text among complementarian/biblicist Christians, sought to establish intransitivity between the text and more pejorative social interpretations by progressively re-translating lexically ambiguous terms and introducing footnotes to obviate the Bible’s ostensible promotion of slavery and antisemitism. Findings elucidate how a conservative religious subculture, confronted with increasing pluralism, negotiates gaining legitimacy for their text within their sectarian subculture while also whitewashing “the Text” for public relations outside that subculture.”

Ruth Igielnik, Scott Keeter, and Hannah Hartig, Behind Biden’s 2020 Victory . Pew Research Center, Jun 30, 2021. Trump won 84% of white evangelicals, an increase from 2016

Matthew Martens, Twitter. Twitter, Jul 3, 2021. discusses reparations and mentions, “In 1898, 73% of revenue of state of Alabama was derived from convict leasing. It was stolen money. Which means that whatever assets the state government of Alabama holds *today* were obtained in part with stolen money. Is there a moral obligation to give the money back?” Also notes, “In fact, Q141 of the Westminster Larger Catechism says that the Eighth Commandment requires “restitution of goods unlawfully detained from the right owners thereof.””

Mike Pompeo, Twitter. Twitter, Jul 5, 2021. “If we teach that the founding of the United States of America was somehow flawed. It was corrupt. It was racist. That's really dangerous. It strikes at the very foundations of our country.”

David Badash, “The Anointment of God”: Rep. Boehbert’s July 4 Rally Speech Was Filled with Christian Nationalism. Alternet, July 5, 2021.

Rachel Weiner and Spencer S. Hsu, Virginia ‘Bible Study’ Group Was Cover for Violent Militia Plans, Prosecutors Say. Washington Post, Jul 6, 2021.

“After storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, a Northern Virginia man began forming his own militia-like group in the D.C. suburbs and building up a supply of explosives under the guise of a Bible study group, according to federal prosecutors. Fi Duong, 27, appeared in court Friday and was released to home confinement pending trial, over the objections of prosecutors who sought stricter terms. According to the court record, at the time of his arrest he had several guns, including an AK-47, and the material to make 50 molotov cocktails. Details of the case were made public Tuesday.” Although Duong is of Vietnamese descent, what is significant here is his connections to Christian faith, American mythology, and anti-communism: “He and others held “Bible study” where they discussed firearms and other training, according to court documents; Duong also brought someone he described as a “three percenter” to one meeting. The right-wing Three Percenters movement, formed in 2008, is named after the false claim that only 3 percent of colonists fought in the American Revolution… Explaining that two generations of his family had fled communist regimes in China and Vietnam before immigrating to the United States, according to court documents, Duong is quoted saying, “Now we’re here. And at a certain point, you just gotta make a stand.””

Michelle Goldberg, The Christian Right Is in Decline, and It’s Taking America With It. New York Times, Jul 9, 2021.

Max Brantley, If You Read Anything Today: ‘Ken Starr, Brett Kavanaugh, Jeffrey Epstein and Me’. Arkansas Times, Jul 13, 2021. Ken Starr is a white evangelical. See also Joe Conason, The Instructive Downfall of Ken Starr. Creators, Jul 15, 2021. Gene Lyons, Kenneth Starr Shows How Flamboyantly Pious Have So Much Further to Fall. Chicago Sun Times, Jul 22, 2021. Compare to: Associated Press, Alice Starr Speaks Out on Adultery. Associated Press, Jan 28, 1999. “Alice Starr, in an interview in the March issue of the Ladies’ Home Journal, said she could not imagine herself in Hillary Rodham Clinton’s position, after the president admitted his affair with Monica Lewinsky.”

James A. Haught, Christianity Is Collapsing. Nonreligious | Patheos, Jul 15, 2021. “A Gallup poll has found that fewer than half of Americans (47 percent) now belong to a church or mosque or temple — down from 70 percent at the start of the 21st century. Today, more than half of Americans are churchless. Tall-steeple “mainline” Protestant faiths –— once the pillar of WASP respectability –— have suffered the worst, dropping so severely that they’ve been dubbed “flatline” Protestantism. Born-again churches have followed. The Southern Baptists have lost 2 million members since 2006. Now, a brand-new finding by the Barna religious polling service says Christianity is being erased by “Don’ts — people who say they don’t know, don’t care or don’t believe that God exists.” George Barna calls the church wipeout “the most rapid and radical cultural upheaval our nation has ever experienced.””

Jack Jenkins, In Many COVID Hot Spots, a Pattern: High Concentrations of White Evangelicals . Religion News Service, Jul 15, 2021. “‘It’s clear that the pattern is more white evangelical Protestants equals lower vaccination rates,’ said Natalie Jackson, research director at the Public Religion Research Institute.”

John Fea, Is Evangelical Christianity a Religious Movement, or Is It Something Else? Current, Jul 17, 2021. re: historiography, like how the First Great Awakening was thought to support the American Revolution

Mike Rothschild, QAnon Fanatics Are Rebranding Their ‘Secret War.’ And It Could Work. NBC News, Jul 18, 2021. “This new movement is taking its cues from the Christian right and the tea party, making national issues a Main Street problem.”

Gregory Thompson and Duke Kwon, Sanctifying the Status Quo: A Response to Reverend Kevin DeYoung. The Front Porch, Jul 19, 2021. re: their argument in their book, Reparations, and the pushback they received

David Roach, Platt’s McLean Bible Church Hit With Attempted Takeover, Lawsuit from Opposition. Christianity Today, Jul 22, 2021. “The suburban DC megachurch’s recent scuffle over race and politics is symptomatic of a broader evangelical rift.” See commentary by David French, Structural Racism Isn’t Wokeness, It’s Reality . French Press | The Dispatch, Jul 25, 2021. includes biblical examples of intergenerational reparations by King David making amends for his predecessor King Saul’s house from 2 Samuel 21, King Josiah repenting of previous generations not obeying the covenant in 2 Kings 24, Daniel confessing the sins of those before him in Daniel 9:16, Nehemiah leading the Israelites in confessing the sins of their fathers in Nehemiah 9:2, and God’s commanding the Israelites to confess the sins of their fathers in Leviticus 26. French then applies that principle to racialized residential segregation in the US resulting in zoning laws that have a racializing effect, even when there are non-racist reasons for supporting the zoning laws.

Michel Martin, Top Evangelical Leader On His Shocking Resignation From the SBC. Amanpour and Company, Jul 27, 2021. interviews Russell Moore on his resignation from the Southern Baptism Convention, about white supremacy and sexual abuse

John Piper, How Could Jonathan Edwards Own Slaves? Desiring God, Aug 10, 2021. Evaluation by Dr. Anthony Bradley on Twitter . Twitter, Aug 17, 2021. “John Piper’s whitewashing of Jonathan Edward’s slave-owning & racism will keep blacks away from evangelicalism. Piper can’t admit that JE had terrible theological anthropology (which he applied)…This sentence is shocking: “I do not know whether Edwards purchased the 14-year-old Venus to rescue her from abuse.” We have accounts of Edwards commenting on beating Venus…Some question: why can’t John Piper admit that JE has theological flaws? Why can’t he admit that the noetic effects of sin affected JE? If you believe in “total depravity” then “wishful thinking” is totally & biblically unwarranted and seems a bit semi-Pelagianism.” Doesn’t it?”

Justin Nortley, Most White Americans Who Regularly Attend Worship Services Voted for Trump in 2020. Pew Research Center, Aug 15, 2021. “White evangelical Protestants have been among the Republican Party’s most loyal constituencies, and this remained true in 2020. More than eight-in-ten White evangelical Protestant voters who attend religious services frequently (85%) voted for Trump in the most recent election, as did 81% of those who attend less frequently. White evangelical Protestants tend to be more religious than other Christians by a number of measures…”

Gregory A. Smith, More White Americans Adopted Than Shed Evangelical Label During Trump Presidency, Especially His Supporters. Pew Research Center, Sep 15, 2021. “a new analysis of Pew Research Center survey data finds that there has been no large-scale departure from evangelicalism among White Americans. In fact, there is solid evidence that White Americans who viewed Trump favorably and did not identify as evangelicals in 2016 were much more likely than White Trump skeptics to begin identifying as born-again or evangelical Protestants by 2020. Additionally, the surveys do not clearly show that White evangelicals who opposed Trump were significantly more likely than Trump supporters to drop the evangelical label. The data also shows that Trump’s electoral performance among White evangelicals was even stronger in 2020 than in 2016, partially due to increased support among White voters who described themselves as evangelicals throughout this period.” See also David French, Did Donald Trump Make the Church Great Again? French Press | The Dispatch, Sep 19, 2021.

Eliott C. McLaughlin, Like Washington and Jefferson, He Championed Liberty. Unlike the Founders, He Freed His Slaves.  CNN, Sep 5, 2021. “It was 230 years ago Sunday that Robert Carter III, the patriarch of one of the wealthiest families in Virginia, quietly walked into a Northumberland County courthouse and delivered an airtight legal document announcing his intention to free, or manumit, more than 500 slaves. He titled it the "deed of gift." It was, by far, experts say, the largest liberation of Black people before President Abraham Lincoln signed the District of Columbia Emancipation Act and Emancipation Proclamation more than seven decades later. On September 5, 1791, when Carter delivered his deed, slavery was an institution, a key engine of the new country's economy. But many slaveholders -- including founding fathers George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who knew Carter -- had begun to voice doubts. That was the extent of their umbrage.”

John Fea, Billy Graham to Richard Nixon: Satan Was Working Through the Jews, But Hitler Handled It All Wrong.  Current, Sep 11, 2022.  

New Eden Ministry, St Patrick and the Pagans.  New Eden Ministry, Sep 19, 2021. A thoughtful survey of how Patrick (or his successors) saw Celtic culture as a precursor and preparation for Christian faith, akin to the Hebrew Bible.

John Fea, What Do White Evangelicals Think About the January 6, 2021 Insurrection. Current, Sep 18, 2021. shows dramatic differences by race and party affiliation, summarizes PRRI survey

Bob Smietana, Christian Author Josh McDowell Steps Away from Ministry After Comments About Black, Minority Families. Religion News Service, Sep 19, 2021. also highlights Cru organizational dynamics on race and racism.

PRRI, Tracking Vaccination by Religion at the County Level. PRRI, Sep 22, 2021. White evangelicals are more vaccine resistant

Joseph Peterson, Jesus Christ in the Colonies. The Bias Magazine, Sep 22, 2021. How conservatives came to claim they are the real victims.

Jacob Alan Cook, Worldview Theory, Whiteness, and the Future of Evangelical Faith. Fortress Press | Amazon, Sep 28, 2021. See articles: Jacob Alan Cook, What If Your ‘Christian Worldview’ Is Based on Some Sinful Ideas?. Baptist News Global, Oct 26, 2021. Jacob Alan Cook, A Short History of the Roots of Colonialism, Racism and Whiteness in ‘Christian Worldview’. Baptist News Global, Nov 2, 2021. says Abraham Kuyper, “defended Dutch colonial endeavors in South Africa as a necessary fulfillment of God’s commission in Genesis 1 to fill the earth and subdue it. “We must never, as long as we value God’s Word, oppose colonization,” Kuyper argued. “Is it not simply human folly to remain so piled up in a few small places on this planet?”

Jeremy Schwartz, “God’s Will Is Being Thwarted.” Even in Solid Republican Counties, Hard-Liners Seek More Partisan Control of Elections. ProPublica, Oct 1, 2021. examples of Christian theocratic conservatives who, when forced to recognize that democracy will not guarantee Christian theocratic-authoritarian conservatism, will abandon democracy.

Meribah Knight and Ken Armstrong, Black Children Were Jailed for a Crime That Doesn’t Exist. Almost Nothing Happened to the Adults in Charge. ProPublica, Oct 8, 2021. “Judge Donna Scott Davenport oversees a juvenile justice system in Rutherford County, Tennessee, with a staggering history of jailing children. She said kids must face consequences, which rarely seem to apply to her or the other adults in charge.” “Davenport describes her work as a calling. “I’m here on a mission. It’s not a job. It’s God’s mission,” she told a local newspaper. The children in her courtroom aren’t hers, but she calls them hers. “I’m seeing a lot of aggression in my 9- and 10-year-olds,” she says in one radio segment.” See also Nicholas Reimann, Tennessee County Reportedly Illegally Jailed Hundreds Of Children, Charging Some With Crimes That Don’t Exist. Forbes, Oct 8, 2021.

Southern Education Foundation, A History of Private Schools & Race in the American South. Southern Education Foundation). See also Southern Education Foundation, Tradition of Segregation & Resistance in the Deep South States. Southern Education Foundation). See also Southern Education Foundation, A New Era of State-Funded Segregation in Private Schools. Southern Education Foundation). See also Southern Education Foundation, How Are Public Funds Diverted to Private Schools? Southern Education Foundation).

Bill Donohue, Columbus Day or Indigenous Peoples’ Day? Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, Oct 7, 2021. defends the former and criticizes the latter based on this key judgment: “Judging past historical figures through today’s lens will likely mean that some of those in favor of excising tributes to legendary persons will themselves be erased from history. So be it.” This organization is wrong because we are not judging past historical figures through today’s lens. We are judging them against what was known and understood about Christian teaching at the time. For example, Columbus had some evangelistic motivations, but knew that the Church had, in earlier times, abolished human trafficking. He indulged in it nevertheless. Christian News Wire reproduced this article with apparent approval.

The Guardian, Inside America's Last Whites-Only Church. The Guardian, Oct 12, 2021.

Mike Hixenbaugh and Antonia Hylton, Southlake School Leader Tells Teachers to Balance Holocaust Books with 'Opposing' Views . NBC News, Oct 14, 2021. in Texas: “Teachers in the Carroll school district say they fear being punished for stocking classrooms with books dealing with racism, slavery and now the Holocaust.”

John Fea, David Barton Spreads Blatant Falsehoods About the AP US History Course, State History Standards, and a Bunch of Other Stuff. Current, Oct 17, 2021.

Jack Jenkins, Inside the Fraught Attempt to Create a Christian Nationalist Internet. Religion News Service, Oct 19, 2021.

Vice News, QAnon Conspiracies Are Tearing Through Evangelical America. Vice News, Oct 19, 2021. re: Pastor Greg Locke in Nashville, TN, whose church grew from 300 to 1200 in 15 months while railing against pedophiles in government, masks, vaccine mandates. He says leftists are evil and demon-possessed. People are being discipled by their media diet, and look for preachers who affirm that vocabulary.

CBS News, An (Un)Civil War: The Evangelical Divide. CBSN Originals, Oct 21, 2021.

Chris Hayes, J.D. Vance Tweet On Alec Baldwin Shows How Publicly Being A Jerk Became A GOP Principle. All In | MSNBC, Oct 22, 2021. has curious echoes of Mark Driscoll at Mars Hill Church.

Peter Wehner, The Evangelical Church is Breaking Apart. The Atlantic, Oct 24, 2021. leading up to Trump’s presidency and continuing on, white evangelicals were and are increasingly tribal, dividing churches, prompting pastors to quit, etc.

Hannah Dreyfuss, “The Liberty Way”: How Liberty University Discourages and Dismisses Students’ Reports of Sexual Assaults. ProPublica, Oct 24, 2021.

Lauren White, New Docs Show Pompeo Abused Taxpayer Dollars for Lavish Dinners. CREW, Oct 27, 2021.

C. Ryan Barber, The Sad Saga of How a Mid-Level Career Climber Thought He Could Help His Boss Overturn a Presidential Election and Ended Up Getting Crushed . Business Insider, Oct 28, 2021. re: Jeffrey Clark

Yonat Shimron, Study: Most White Evangelicals Don’t Want to Live in a Religiously Diverse Country . Religion News Service, Nov 1, 2021. 57% of white evangelicals

Associated Press, Christian Radio Host Gets 3 Life Prison Terms for Bilking Listeners . Associated Press | Religion News Service, Nov 2, 2021. evidence of the long-standing grift and exploitation that has been present in white evangelical Christianity since colonization

Jason Wilson, ‘Make It a Christian Town’: The Ultra-Conservative Church on the Rise in Idaho . The Guardian, Nov 2, 2021. “Christ Church has a stated goal to “make Moscow a Christian town” and public records, interviews, and open source materials online show how its leadership has extended its power and activities in the town.”

Jeff Brumley, Most Americans Favor Church-State Separation, But Many Evangelicals Do Not. Baptist News Global, Nov 3, 2021. “White evangelical Protestants stood out in that respect, with 36% preferring to see government and faith integrated, while 28% had mixed views on the subject. Only 26% of white evangelicals said church and state should be separate.”

Tell Tale Atheist, Trump Is Now Part Of Christian Evangelical Theology. Tell Tale, Nov 7, 2021. re: Johnny Enlow, Robin Bullock, and Kat Kerr from the charismatic televangelist edge of white “evangelicalism”

David French, The New Right’s Strange and Dangerous Cult of Toughness . The Atlantic, Dec 1, 2021. “An emerging culture idolizes a twisted version of “toughness” as the highest ideal and despises a false version of “weakness” as the lowest vice.”

Michelle Boorstein, Marcus Lamb, Head of Daystar, a Large Christian Network That Discouraged Vaccines, Dies After Getting COVID-19 . Washington Post, Nov 30, 2021.

Amy Goodman, From Abortion Bans to Anti-Trans Laws, a Christian Legal Army is Waging War on America . Democracy Now, Dec 3, 2021.

Thom Hartmann, Mark Meadows Exposed: The Insane Plan To Destroy Democracy. Thom Hartmann Program, Dec 9, 2021. significant because Mark Meadows professes to be an evangelical Christian; what Meadows did to foment the Jan.6 insurrection and obscure investigation into it

Jessica Johnson, The Crusade Against Critical Race Theory in Hanover County, Virginia. The Revealer, Dec 9, 2021. “I attended this meeting to explore how white Christian nationalism informed the anti-critical race theory “crusades” in secular public-school board meetings. Christian nationalism is a cultural framework through which a pervasive set of ideals merge American and Christian group membership, shaping political action. Since Christian nationalism is a flexible ideology enabled by white supremacy, its examination across a range of contexts is critical to understand its significance outside of religious institutions as well as its relationship to white identity politics.”

Zach Everson, ‘Big Lie’ Proponent John Eastman Uses Christian Crowdfunding Site To Raise Money For His Legal Bills. Forbes, Dec 15, 2021.

David Doel, Newsmax Praises Trump For Saving Christmas! The Rational National, Dec 17, 2021. features former Baptist minister Mike Huckabee, who lies to promote Trump and culture war.

Anna Kasparian and Cenk Uyghur, Kayleigh McEnany Gets Embarrassed By The Facts. The Young Turks, Dec 19, 2021. highlights how the former press secretary, an evangelical Christian woman, manipulates fear in the public against Democrats

Maggie Prosser, Nataly Keomoungkhoun and Michael Williams. Trump Declares Nation’s in Trouble as He Appears at First Baptist Church, American Airlines Center. Dallas Morning News, Dec 19, 2021. Trump lied and blamed Biden for things he did: “He briefly mentioned border security, inflation, gas prices and the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan, which he called a “mess” and the most “embarrassing day” in the nation’s history. He also talked about and thanked the military and police, who he said are facing unprecedented crime and looting… Earlier in the service, Trump walked out with First Baptist Dallas senior pastor Robert Jeffress to a standing ovation from the congregation. Trump pumped a fist and muttered “thank you” to the roaring crowd. Many of the churchgoers took cellphone photos as he walked to a seat on the front row of the sanctuary. Jeffress was one of Trump’s earliest and most vocal backers among evangelical Christian leaders during the 2016 campaign. He became one of Trump’s most prominent Christian advisers and boosters and was a frequent visitor to the White House.”

Kim Iversen and Ryan Grim. Pew Releases New Political Typology Test, Ryan And Kim Take It On Air. Where Do You Fall?  Rising | The Hill, Dec 21, 2021.  Research associate at Pew Research Center, Andrew Daniller, breaks down Pew's new political typography model.  “Faith and Flag Conservatives” are estimated to be 10% of the population.  

Jon Huckins, Apolitical Evangelicalism: Christian Nationalism’s Subtle Collaborator. Jon Huckins, Jan 6, 2022. Huckins makes a good case, in light of the intentionality of white evangelicals to be “apolitical” to serve the “church growth movement.” The effectiveness of this teaching is assumed, but reasonably so, in my opinion. One could also say that nature abhors a vacuum, so that teaching on “the U.S.” as a collective or a chosen nation was easily assumed, and/or assimilated throughout, or later.

Daniel Silliman, An Evangelical is Anyone who Likes Billy Graham: Defining Evangelicalism with Carl Henry and Networks of Trust.  Cambridge University, Dec 17, 2021.

CNBC, Why Sex Education Is So Bad In The U.S.  CNBC, Dec 21, 2021.  “The majority of U.S. students report they've had sex before graduation, which means the type of sex education they receive can be a big deal, for themselves personally and for the economy. The federal government doesn't have any official regulations for what schools must include in sex education curriculum, which has lead to inconsistent lessons across the country. Watch the video above to learn why sex education is so crucial for the economy and what happens when some students are left behind.”

Chris Hayes, Congresswoman Openly Advocates End To American Democracy.  All In | MSNBC, Dec 30, 2021.  Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who says she is an evangelical, urges a stop to Californians moving to other states via a “national divorce” between “red” and “blue” states, which is formal sedition and against the US Constitution.  Greene also said that Democrats are cockroaches -- the kind of dehumanizing language that was heard in Nazi Germany and civil war Rwanda.

PBS News Hour, Texans Explain What Animated Their Loved Ones, Neighbors to Storm the Capitol.  PBS News Hour, Jan 3, 2022.  A 10 minute video spotlighting Dallas, where 35 arrests were made, and Frisco, one of the fastest growing suburbs.  Discusses white supremacist attitudes towards non-white immigrants, and Christian nationalism. 

Katherine Stewart, Christian Nationalism Is One of Trump’s Most Powerful Weapons.  New York Times, Jan 6, 2022.  

Kathryn Joyce, How Christian Nationalism Drove the Insurrection: A Religious History of Jan.6. Salon, Jan 6, 2022. Joyce spotlights individuals and organizations behind the insurrection.

Sidney Blumenthal, The Insurrection Is Only the Tip of the Iceberg.  The Guardian, Jan 6, 2022.  “Congressman Jody Hice, a Republican of Georgia, raced by a Democratic colleague, who told me Hice was screaming into his phone: “You screwed it up, y’all screwed it all up!” (Hice has denied the incident occurred, but the Democratic congressman stands by his account.)  Hice, an evangelical minister, professor of preaching at a Southern Baptist seminary, and radio talkshow host before his election in 2014, has notably declared that freedom of religion should not apply to Muslims and that the Sandy Hook massacre of 26 people at an elementary school by a deranged shooter occurred because liberals were “kicking God out of the public square”... Hice, with QAnon proponent representative Marjorie Taylor Greene standing at his side, declared: “Myself, members of the Georgia delegation and some 74 of my Republican colleagues object to the electoral votes from the state of Georgia on the grounds the election conducted on November 3 was faulty and fraudulent due to unilateral actions by the secretary of state to unlawfully change the state’s election process.””

Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen, Denmark Accuses Russia, China, Iran of Espionage Threat.  Reuters, Jan 13, 2022.  See Julia Davis, Twitter (January 14, 2022) “The Danish intelligence has accused Russia of forging a 2019 letter to Senator Tom Cotton, claiming to be from Greenland's foreign minister & alleging there'd be an independence referendum.  Tom Cotton claims to have given Trump the idea to buy Greenland.”

Seth Cotlar, Twitter (January 16, 2022)  “This is how Trump responded to Obama's victory in Nov 2012. Who could have ever predicted that in 2021 he would have instigated a violent storming of the US Capitol after an election didn't go his way? Really, there were no signs he was prone to such extreme statements.”  On November 6, 2012, Trump tweeted, “We can’t let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!”

Brianna Keilar, Hawley Said This on National Television with a Straight Face.  CNN, Jan 22, 2022.  Sen. Hawley (R-MO) was the first Senator to say he would object to the results of the 2020 election.  Then on January 4, 2021, just before Wednesday, January 6, 2021, Hawley said he believed Trump would be declared President.  On the evening of Jan 6, Hawley objected to Pennsylvania’s election results.  Then at CPAC in Feb 26, 2021, he played up his actions.  

John Burnett, Christian Nationalism Is Still Thriving -- And Is a Force for Returning Trump to Power.  NPR, Jan 23, 2022.

Michael Emerson, White Practicing Christians and the Religion of Whiteness.  Evangelical Covenant Conference, Jan 2022.  Emerson gave a 32 minute presentation on how far apart white evangelicals are from other Christians in their practices, beliefs, approach to Scripture, etc.

Emily Baker-White, Nothing Sacred: These Apps Reserve The Right To Sell Your Prayers.  Buzz Feed News, Jan 25, 2022.  These apps, which also collect extensive information about their users, are backed by some of Silicon Valley’s best-known prospectors: Greylock Partners (Pray.com), Andreessen Horowitz (Glorify), and Peter Thiel (Hallow). Greylock, Andreessen, and Thiel are also all known for their investments in Facebook, which recently ramped up its own prayer offerings by rolling out a new tool called “prayer posts.”

Deutsche Welle, Evangelical Christians in the USA.  Deutsche Welle Documentary, Feb 9, 2022.  “Our reporters traveled to the state of Kentucky to visit a Creation Museum and a Christian theme park that features a life-size model of Noah's Ark.  Christian churches in the US play a major social role, especially in rural areas. They operate schools and universities, and organize music festivals that celebrate their faith.  Most fundamentalist Christians are opposed to abortion, pre-marital sex, and homosexuality. They believe that those who engage in these activities will be condemned to Hell. And some have formed paramilitary groups to defend themselves against those whom they perceive as enemies -- including non-believers, Communists, and Muslims.”

Chris Hayes, Republicans Try To Straddle The ‘Pro-Coup’ Line After RNC Censure.  All In | MSNBC, Feb 8, 2022.  Notice the picture of Jesus and Christian images behind Steve Bannon, who claims to be a Catholic.

Ari Melber, Mike Pence Plays Himself Again, As MAGA 'Wolves' Stay On The Hunt.  The Beat | MSNBC, Feb 8, 2022.  Melber argues that Pence did not actually exercise political courage.

Corey Fields, Five Takeaways from the Report on Christian Nationalism and January 6.  Baptist News Global, Feb 24, 2022.  (1) “White Christian nationalism supports the same kind of “sharia law” about which they warned us years ago. (2) It’s Christians’ turn to disavow distorted versions of their faith. (3) That quote about the flag and the cross was prescient. (4) This comes from a perfect storm of things that have been brewing for decades (or centuries). (5) There must be a nonviolent countermovement centered in the Jesus of the Bible.” 

Gabriel Sherman, Inside Jerry Falwell Jr.’s Unlikely Rise and Precipitous Fall at Liberty University.  Vanity Fair, Jan 24, 2022.  Adrienne Lawrence, Evangelical Dropout Comes Clean In Jaw-Dropping Interview.  Rebel HQ, Jan 27, 2022.

Sydney Laukea, The Dark History of the Overthrow of Hawaii.  TED-Ed, Feb 17, 2022.  Laukea spotlights the Missionary Party, which was the second generation of white American Christians who seized political control of Hawaii.

PRRI, The Persistence of QAnon in the Post-Trump Era: An Analysis of Who Believes the Conspiracies.  Public Religion Research Institute, Feb 24, 2022.  

Banality of Unrest (Twitter, Feb 27, 2022) “For American friends and those influenced by American religious organizations, I’ve compiled some resources that analyze the relationship between Russia/Putin and some religious groups in the US.”

Russell Moore, How Vladimir Putin Threatens the Witness of the Church.  Moore to the Point Newsletter.  “The situation is even worse when one looks at Putin’s response to the gospel itself. He has indeed carefully cultivated the Russian Orthodox Church, even to the point of approving mosaics of himself, Stalin, and the Crimean invasion being placed in a Russian Orthodox cathedral dedicated to the military. In so doing, the Russian regime has relentlessly pursued snuffing out the freedoms of minority religions—especially those of the relatively tiny band of evangelicals and evangelical missionaries from abroad.  Why would a former KGB official who says that the end of the Soviet Union was an awful disaster want to partner with a church? Perhaps it is because he believes, with Karl Marx, that religion can be a useful tool for maintaining power.”  Moore does an excellent job pointing out the facts on the ground of Putin’s regime.  

Rick Pidcock, Plagiarism Is the Least Thing to Worry About With Voddie Baucham, Who Is a Threat to Children, Women and Daughters.  Baptist News Global, March 7, 2022. 

Bethany Moreton, The U.S. Christians Who Pray for Putin.  Boston Review, Mar 11, 2022.  “The mystical connection between white Southern nostalgia, the global family values movement, and Russia.”

David French, The Best of Christian Compassion, the Worst of Religious Power.  The French Press | The Dispatch, March 13, 2022.  “On the religious roots of war and the Christian response.”  French explores how Putin has fused the Russian nation-state and its interests with the Russian Orthodox Church.

Brent Barnett, We Need to Talk About Voddie Baucham, and Fast.  Baptist News Global, Mar 24, 2022.  

Frederick Clarkson, Gary North (1942-2022) Sought to Deny Religious Liberty to ‘The Enemies of God’ — But He Was Willing to Wait Patiently for the Revolution to Develop.  Religion Dispatches, Mar 29, 2022.

Stephanie Saul, A College Fights ‘Leftist Academics’ by Expanding Into Charter Schools. New York Times, April 10, 2022. Hillsdale College seeks to influence homeschooling. “Hillsdale has ambitious plans to add to its network of classical public charter schools, which focus on “the centrality of the Western tradition.” And Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee recently invited the college to start 50 schools using public funds, including $32 million set aside for charter facilities. Hillsdale’s network currently includes 24 schools in 13 states.”

Lenore Three Stars, Indigenous Peoples and Christian Nationalism.  Evangelicals 4 Justice blog, Apr 19, 2022.  A brief reflection on how the doctrine of discovery became American Manifest Destiny, treating the land as an economic commodity rather than a part of creation to which we are connected and to which we relate.

Bill Leonard, A ‘Christian’ Nation Beset by False Witness.  Baptist News Global, Apr 27, 2022.  A provocative question about how Christian nationalists and dominionists accept lying.

Dan Diamond, Trump Officials Muzzled CDC on Church COVID Guidance, Emails Confirm. Washington Post, Apr 29, 2022. “Trump White House officials in May 2020 removed public health advice urging churches to consider virtual religious services as the coronavirus spread, delivering a messaging change sought by the president’s supporters, according to emails from former top officials released by a House panel on Friday. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent its planned public health guidance for religious communities to the White House on May 21, 2020, seeking approval to publish it. The agency had days earlier released reports saying that the virus had killed three and infected dozens at church events in Arkansas and infected 87 percent of attendees at a choir practice in Washington state, and health experts had warned that houses of worship had become hot spots for virus transmission.”

Christiane Amanpour, Why This Former Anti-Abortion Activist Regrets the Movement He Helped Build. CNN, May 4, 2022. Amanpour interviews Frank Schaeffer right before the Dobbs decision. Frank Schaeffer talks about his decision to work with C. Everett Koop to make a hard-line anti-abortion movie. He talks about how the film helped turn white evangelicals decide to turn from segregation to anti-abortion and anti-gay causes.

Ruth Graham, As a ‘Seismic Shift’ Fractures Evangelicals, an Arkansas Pastor Leaves Home.  New York Times, May 9, 2022.  “Kevin Thompson thought he would lead his hometown church for the rest of his life. Then came Trump and everything after.”

Joy Reid, Alito's Reason For Overturning Roe: Decline In 'Domestic Supply Of Infants' For Adoption. The Reid Out | MSNBC, May 10, 2022. Reid cites many examples of white evangelical political commitments ranging from anti-abortion to anti-contraception. Reid also challenges Alito’s legal history and legal reasoning: Alito does not account for how enslaved black women used abortion as acts of resistance, and how anti-abortion laws in the 1800s were the response of the newly professionalized doctors against black women’s knowledge of herbal abortifacients. See more on abortion policy.

Tim Alberta, How Politics Poisoned the Evangelical Church.  The Atlantic, May 10, 2022.  “The movement spent 40 years at war with secular America. Now it’s at war with itself.”

Adam Joyce, If There Is a “Third Way”, This Isn’t It: How Christian Centrists Acquiesce to America’s Broken Political System.  ABC News, May 10, 2022.  

Associated Press, US Identifies More Than 50 Native American Boarding School Burial Sites.  The Guardian UK, May 11, 2022.  “First-of-its-kind study establishes 408 federal schools as officials say number of children who died could be in the tens of thousands.”  “The US government directly ran some of the boarding schools. Catholic, Protestant and other churches operated others with federal funding, backed by US laws and policies to “civilize” Native Americans.” See U.S. Department of the Interior, Investigative Report, Outlines Next Steps in Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative. U.S. Department of the Interior, May 11, 2022. Links to Bryan Newland, Assistant Secretary, Indian Affairs, Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report. U.S. Department of the Interior, May 2022. See summary by Amy Goodman, Nick Estes: Indian Boarding Schools Were Part of "Horrific Genocidal Process" by the U.S. Democracy Now, May 13, 2022. Volume 1 is a preliminary report which discovered 500 deaths of indigenous children at these “schools,” which had terrifying conditions and goals. The Catholic Church is implicated in the treatment of these children. The Interior Department expects to discover many more as the research continues.

Timothy Tseng, How American Exclusion Created the Chinese Church.  Christianity Today, May 11, 2022.  “The first Chinese converts were drawn to a gospel of equality.”  

Jonathan V. Last, Christian Nationalism Has Eaten Evangelical Churches.  The Bulwark, May 11, 2022. 

David Doel, Israeli Forces Attack Funeral Of Slain Palestinian-American Journalist.  The Rational National, May 13, 2022.  Doel includes video footage, pointing out the incongruities of the Israeli authorities’ interpretation of the event, and some US media which “both-sidesed” the funeral attendees and the Israeli police force. From a media and political standpoint, this event and its news coverage indicates the inflkuence of white American evangelical dispensationalists, who tend to excuse this behavior by Israeli authorities.

Samuel L. Perry and Philip S. Gorski, With the Buffalo Massacre, White Christian Nationalism Strikes Again.  Washington Post, May 20, 2022.  While the shooter was not a Christian, and therefore I have some mild misgivings about the title here, the underlying trends are concerning.  See also Silvia Foster-Frau, Arelis R. Hernández, Scott Clement and Emily Guskin, Poll: Black Americans Fear More Racist Attacks After Buffalo Shooting.  Washington Post, May 21, 2022.  “Two years after George Floyd’s murder, nearly 8 in 10 Black Americans say there has been little or no improvement in how police treat Black people, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll.”

Nate Hochman, What Comes After the Religious Right?  New York Times, Jun 1, 2022.  Hochman basically says that if the religious right was bad, the non-religious right will be worse.  “The decline in Republican church membership directly coincides with the rise of Mr. Trump. As Timothy P. Carney found in 2019, the voters who went for Mr. Trump in the 2016 primary were far more secular than the religious right: In the 2016 G.O.P. primaries, Mr. Trump won only about 32 percent of voters who went to church more than once a week. In contrast, he secured about half of those who went “a few times a year,” 55 percent of those who “seldom” attend and 62 percent of Republicans who never go to church… These voters are more nationalistic and less amenable to multiculturalism than their religious peers, and they profess a skepticism of the cosmopolitan open-society arguments for free trade and mass immigration that have been made by neoliberals and neoconservatives alike.”  See also Emile Doak, Helen Andrews, Micah Meadowcroft, and Sohrab Ahmari, Whither The Religious Right?, With Nate Hochman.  The American Conservative, Jun 3, 2022.  

Dana Milbank, Bill Barr’s Reign of Innuendo — Unmasked.  Washington Post, Jun 3, 2022.  Trump and Barr politicized the Justice Department by going after people who properly opposed Trump politically.  “In fulfilling Donald Trump’s demands to investigate the Russia investigators and those who allegedly “unmasked” Flynn, Barr wasn’t seeking justice. He now admits that trying to make a case that the FBI acted in bad faith against Trump — as Republicans allege — would have been “onerous” and “a herculean case” and a “very hard thing to prove.”  Barr was giving Justice cover to the reckless allegations being made by Trump and his allies. Barr made sure the lies had a lengthy head start to leave lasting impressions before any corrective could be issued.”  See also Joe Scarborough, Last Week Saw The Unmasking Of Bill Barr: Dana Milbank.  Morning Joe | MSNBC, Jun 6, 2022. 

Eula Biss, The Theft of the Commons.  The New Yorker, Jun 8, 2022.  “Across centuries, land that was collectively worked by the landless was claimed by the landed, and the age of private property was born.”  

Matthew A. McIntosh, Theodosius Avenging a Roman Official in the Massacre of Ancient Thessalonica.  Brewminate, Jun 6, 2022.  A sensitive reading of the confrontation of Bishop Ambrose of Milan and Emperor Theodosius.

Thomas Lecaque, Christian Nationalists and the Holy Gun Crusade.  Religion Dispatches, Jun 7, 2022.

Heather Cox Richardson, Author Talk with Heather Cox Richardson on How the South Won the Civil War.  Oxford Academic | Oxford University Press, Sep 22, 2020.  At the 28:20 minute mark, Richardson talks about William F. Buckley Jr. God and Man at Yale.  Buckley said that movement conservatives wanted to overturn the “liberal consensus” of the New Deal state.  To do this, they rejected the Enlightenment, and presented instead Christianity and no regulation of business together.  Buckley said movement conservatives needed to stop appealing to reason, and only to emotion and story of the little guy opposing larger forces.  Joseph McCarthy then said he was going after communists in Congress, the little guy against the behemoth state.  Then, the John Birch Society was formed around the story of John Birch exposing State Department support for China and communism.  In 1871, white supremacists in the South who opposed Reconstruction called the government “socialist” and “communist” well before the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.  Richardson argues that Biden’s “reach across the aisle” language is not a policy position per se, but politically necessary to help the public return to a sense that government could work, especially on issues where 70 percent of Americans agree:  abortion, gun control, minimum wage, etc. 

Nehru Hasan, Oval Office Standard gf with DOJ Three Days Before Jan 6. MSNBC, Jun 14, 2022.  Hasan examines Christian lawyer Jeffrey Clark in light of Bill Barr’s testimony before the Jan 6 Committee.

Rick Pidcock, What Has John MacArthur Actually Said About Race, Slavery, and the Curse of Ham?  Baptist News Global, Jun 20, 2022. 

Ariana Garcia, Attorney General Ken Paxton Says He Will Defend Texas Sodomy Law If Supreme Court Revisits Lawrence vs. Texas.  Houston Chronicle, Jun 28, 2022.  Re: Lawrence v. Texas (2003).  “Vittert pressed on, asking, "For the sake of time here, you wouldn't rule out that if the state legislature passed the same law that Lawrence overturned on sodomy, you wouldn't have any problem then defending that and taking that case back to the Supreme Court?" Paxton responded: "Yeah, look my job is to defend state law and I'll continue to do that. That is my job under the Constitution and I'm certainly willing and able to do that."

Deutsche Welle, Faith, Power, and Manipulation: The Secrets of the Opus Dei Sect.  Deutsche Welle, Jun 30, 2022.  The ultra-conservative Catholic group:  its origin, mission as christianization of society, and spread through young people.

Vice News, How the Anti-Abortion Rights Movement Took Down Roe. Vice News, Jul 2, 2022. Spotlights the Christian organization called Alliance Defending Freedom and their legal strategy. ADF was on the Mississippi legal team, and wrote the argument in Dobbs.

Morning Joe and Eddie Glaude, Jan. 6 Committee Member Releases Audio Of Threats Made To His Office.  Morning Joe | MSNBC, Jul 6, 2022.  The threats against Adam Kinzinger are deeply rooted in Christian language.  Joe Scarborough correctly condemns Christian nationalism for believing that God’s will entailed the Jan 6 insurrection and the death of Capitol Police officers.  They highlight Paul Weyrich, Jerry Falwell, and the Moral Majority using abortion to bring evangelicals into the Republican Party. 

Alan Bean, Roger Williams, John Cotton, and the Future of the American Experiment. Baptist News Global, Jul 8, 2022.

Ayman Mohyeldin, Christian Nationalism Appears Ascendant In GOP Politics. Ayman | MSNBC, Jul 18, 2022.

Simone Harari Baulieu and Jonathan Hayoun, A History of Antisemitism: Part 1: 38 - 1144.  Deutsche Welle Documentary, Jul 23, 2022.  The documentary highlights how the first Christian acts of violence against Jews started during the First Crusade and were sustained.  The impact of what we would call “Christian nationalism” or “political identity” connected to violence turns against minority groups like Jews.  Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux was a positive example who stood against this violence.  Augustine’s theory about Jewish witness but inferiority was complicated.  The documentary also highlights Christian tropes of Jews:  deicide or christ-killers; human sacrificers; ritual contamination.  Part 2:  1144 - 1791 covers physical tropes of Jews and economic ones of Jews as usurers, bankers, greedy financiers.  This segment also covers Spain during the Inquisition, which began the blood theory of race.  Part 3:  1791 - 1945 covers the French Revolution and new political movements that viewed European and “World Jewry” through a conspiratorial lens.  Part 4:  1945 to Today covers the foundation of the State of Israel, Holocaust-denial, and other forms of anti-semitism.

Rachel Maddow, Christian Nationalism's Racist Past Precludes Revival Except Among GOP's Trumpiest. The Rachel Maddow Show | MSNBC, Jul 26, 2022. Spotlights Gerald L.K. Smith, who set up Christ of the Ozarks and ran against FDR in 1944 on a “Christian nationalism” platform. He became a spokesman and leading figure for Christian nationalism, like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Doug Mastriano (GOP nominee for governor in Pennsylvania) today who said that Jewish conservatives like Ben Shapiro are not welcome in his movement.

Molly Olmstead, Where the Right-Wing Attacks Against Education Finally Went Too Far—for Republicans. Slate, Jul 27, 2022. “Tennessee has found the line it won’t cross.” The line was Larry Arnn, President of Hillsdale College, attacking public school teachers and their training as “dumb” in an effort to promote a “Christian reconstructionist” and revisionist history of the U.S. to K-12 education in Tennessee.

Isaac Weiner, Praying Coach ‘Inexplicably Indifferent’ of Players’ Needs Despite Court Win. The Columbus Dispatch, Jul 28, 2022. Comments on mediation and other employee alternatives available to Coach Joseph Kennedy. A Jewish perspective, which highlights how non-Christian players feel.

Ayman Mohyeldin, Christian Nationalism Is On the Rise. Ayman |MSNBC, Jul 29, 2022. Interviews Amanda Tyler, lead organizer with Christians Against Christian Nationalism. The Family Research Council filed to be a church with the IRS.

Caleb Gayle, The American Faith I Was Raised In. The Atlantic, Aug 7, 2022. “Growing up in the Bible Belt, I was taught that Church and state should never have been separate.” An African American Christian reflection.

Mike Hixenbaugh, Conservative Christian Cellphone Company Wins Control Over Four Texas School Boards.  NBC News, Aug 25, 2022.  See also Alex Wagner, Mobile Phone Company Makes Mission Of Christian Nationalism In Schools.  Alex Wagner | MSNBC, Aug 25, 2022.  Wagner shares video of Patriot Mobile’s CEO Leigh Wambsconss to highlight her Christian nationalist views.

Chanhee Heo, The White Christian Understanding of the U.S. Has a Global History.  Washington Post, Aug 31, 2022.  “Missionaries spread the idea of Christianity accounting for American success throughout the world.”  “The global expansion of American evangelism contributed to Koreans’ association of Christianity with the United States and White supremacy.”

Liam Adams, Employee Sexual Activity Policies at Dave Ramsey's Company Revealed in New Documents.  The Tennessean, Sep 2, 2022.  “Personal finance guru Dave Ramsey, an evangelical Christian figure, and company being sued by former employee.  Court documents in lawsuits recently released, revealing more about company stances on employee sexual activity.  Attorneys for client suing Ramsey argues company sexual activity policies apply to men and women differently.”

Kristin Du Mez, Cats in the Oatmeal.  Du Mez Connections | Substack, Sep 4, 2022.  “Q: What does Quaker oatmeal have to do with American evangelicalism?  More than you might think. The founder and president of Quaker Oats, Henry Crowell, also served as president of Moody Bible Institute for nearly three decades. Business historians remember Crowell for his breakfast food empire built by transforming oatmeal-as-commodity, sold at the market rate, into Quaker Oats, the trademarked product sold at a premium. The key to his strategy was leveraging concerns over tainted food to prejudice consumers against the traditional open barrel. Then, using colorful packaging and massive promotional campaigns, he offered a sealed box emblazoned with a smiling Quaker as the wholesome alternative.  To convince consumers to pay a premium for his packaged, branded oats, Crowell worked to ensure the quality of his product, but he also worked to instilling doubt in the minds of consumers about his competition by manufacturing fear over the quality of bulk oats. Quaker Oats were “guaranteed pure,” but who really knew where the oats in the barrel came from? According to Gloege, Quaker Oats promoters engaged in their own “investigative reporting,” telling stories of “a retailer sitting ‘on the nice, soft flakes,’ pocket knife in hand, fingernail ‘trimmings falling into Rolled Oats to be retailed at 4 cents a pound.” And of another retailer who kept the barrel “in a ‘nice, warm, sunny window’” that was “a perfect bed for a ‘Tabby Cat. Ten pounds of oats with cat hairs for 35 cents” (Guaranteed Pure, 174-75).”

Peter Zeihan, Where In the World: Red Devil Lake and Russian Propaganda.  Zeihan on Geopolitics, Sep 14, 2022.  A 9.5 minute video.  Zeihan observes that the Russian people had no natural barriers to protect them, so had to expand, absorbing neighboring peoples and reducing them to non-threats.  The Russian state also had to be proficient because Russian soil quality is abysmal and rain is unpredictable.  Hence, Zeihan says, Russia kept expanding and became “a multi-ethnic empire.”  About 30% of the population of Russia is not ethnically Russian, and intelligence and disinformation-propaganda agencies need to pacify the non-Russian populations.  “So any propaganda or misinformation that we are seeing in the United States, the West in general, or the wider world, is nothing compared to the general operating principles that the Russians operate at home.”

Chuck Todd, Christian Nationalism On the Rise.  NBC News, Sep 15, 2022.  Lauren Boehbert (R-CO), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Doug Mastriano (2022 GOP candidate for PA governor), Michael Peroutka (2022 GOP candidate for Maryland Attorney General).  Examines Moscow, Idaho, home to the University of Idaho, as a case study.  Interviews Douglas Wilson, pastor of Christ Church, and his culture warrior strategy; Trump retweeted an outdoor worship service that protested mask mandates.  Then, interviews Andrew Whitehead and Anthea Butler.  Al Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, supports Christian Nationalism. 

Ligonier Ministries and LifeWay Ministries, The State of Theology.  2022.  65% of American evangelicals deny original sin, and 43% deny Jesus’ divinity.  But 90%+ are resolute against extramarital sex and abortion.

Sarah Posner, The Christian Nationalist Boot Camp Pushing Anti-Trans Laws Across America.  Insider, Sep 21, 2022.  Regarding “the Family Research Council and the Arkansas affiliate of the Family Policy Alliance, the political arm of Focus on the Family. Founded in 1977 by the anti-LGBTQ psychologist James Dobson, Focus on the Family has worked to shape the views of tens of millions of U.S. evangelicals on sexuality and gender—and how they should engage politically in order to ensure that that government be guided by a "biblical worldview."”

Stella Rouse and Shibley Telhami, Most Republicans Support Declaring the United States a Christian Nation.  Politico, Sep 21, 2022.  Stats by age are very important; younger Republicans are not as fond of Christian nationalist language and positions.  “Our polling found that white grievance is highly correlated with support for a Christian nation. White respondents who say that members of their race have faced more discrimination than others are most likely to embrace a Christian America. Roughly 59 percent of all Americans who say white people have been discriminated against a lot more in the past five years favor declaring the U.S. a Christian nation, compared to 38 percent of all Americans. White Republicans who said white people have been more discriminated against also favored a Christian nation (65 percent) by a slightly larger percentage than all Republicans (63 percent).”

David French, The Spiritual Lessons of a Christian Nationalist Military Defeat.  The French Press | The Dispatch, Oct 9, 2022.  French critiques National Conservatism: A Statement of Principles as being the soft version of Catholic integralism.  

Michelle Goldberg, The Empty Gestures of Disillusioned Evangelicals.  New York Times, Dec 5, 2022.  

BBC, How a New Christian Right Is Changing US Politics.  BBC News, Nov 28, 2022.  A 25 minute video.  The first focus of political engagement is school boards.  Patriot Mobile cell phone company pumped millions into Texas elections.

Amanda Tyler, Testimony: Confronting White Supremacy Part VII.  Oversight Committee Democrats, Dec 13, 2022.  Tyler is the Executive Director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.  She explains why Christian nationalism must be addressed, as it fuels white supremacy, and why Christians have a special responsibility to oppose CN.

David French, How a Great American Victory Altered American Faith.  The French Press | The Dispatch, Dec 18, 2022. During the Cold War, Christians in the U.S. portrayed the conflict as not just geopolitical, but civilizational and religious.  It was a fight between Christian faith and atheism.

Amy Goodman, Diana Buttu & Gideon Levy: Israel's New Far-Right Gov't Entrenches Apartheid System with US Support.  Democracy Now, Jan 5, 2023.  

Jonathan Poletti, Kevin McCarthy Is a Perfect Evangelical.  Medium, Jan 5, 2023. 

Bob Smietana, Who Are the Christian Nationalists? A Taxonomy for the Post-Jan. 6 World.  Religion News Service, Jan 6, 2023.  “A guide to emerging Christian nationalist voices.”

Charlie Savage, Adam Goldman and Katie Benner, How Barr’s Quest to Find Flaws in the Russia Inquiry Unraveled.  New York Times, Jan 26, 2023.  “The review by John Durham at one point veered into a criminal investigation related to Donald Trump himself, even as it failed to find wrongdoing in the origins of the Russia inquiry.”  An expose of Catholic arch-conservative Bill Barr’s abuse of power.  See review by Ari Melber, Trump and Barr Lose as “Deep State” Bomb Goes Off:  Failed DOJ Plot Revealed by Expose.  The Beat | MSNBC, Jan 27, 2023.

Kristin Kobes du Mez, Christian Nationalism in the Neighborhood: On the Politics of Ottawa County.  Du Mez Connections, Jan 29, 2023. Ottawa County, Michigan.

Peter Stone, Far-Right Project that Pushed Election Lies Expands Mission as Trump Ramps Up 2024 Campaign. The Guardian UK, Jan 30, 2023.  “ReAwaken America, a project of the Oklahoma-based entrepreneur Clay Clark, has hosted numerous revival-style political events across the US after receiving tens of thousands of dollars in initial funds in 2021 from millionaire Patrick Byrne, and become a key vehicle for pushing election denialism and falsehoods about Covid vaccines. ReAwaken America also boasts close ties to retired Lt Gen Michael Flynn, who in December 2020 met with Trump, Byrne and others at the White House to plot ways to reverse Trump’s election loss. The meeting happened shortly after Trump pardoned Flynn, who was convicted for lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador before serving briefly as Trump’s national security adviser. Clark’s project also has links to Dr Simone Gold, who served a 60-day jail sentence for illegally entering the Capitol on 6 January and founded America’s Frontline Doctors, an anti-vaccine group that has also touted bogus cures.”

PRRI Staff, A Christian Nation? Understanding the Threat of Christian Nationalism to American Democracy and Culture.  PRRI, Feb 8, 2023.  

David Siders, What It Looks Like When the Far Right Takes Control of Local Government. Politico, Feb 21, 2023.  Re: Ottawa Impact in West Olive, Michigan.

John Fea, My Father Didn’t Need James Dobson to Teach Him How to Be a Patriarch. Focus on the Family Had a Different Influence on Him.  Current, March 13, 2023.  

Kris Aaron, SBC: “They Are Who We Thought They Were”. Baptist News Global, Mar 17, 2023. Two majority black megachurches left the Southern Baptist Convention. “The SBC hasn’t just told us who they are with regard to gender roles, though. After decades of good work on racial reconciliation, they flushed all that down the drain so that they could condemn the law school concept and current conservative bogeyman, Critical Race Theory. In fact, shortly after a joint statement condemning Critical Race Theory was released by the six SBC seminary presidents in November 2020, two large majority Black megachurches left the SBC. They gave up trying.”

Jeff Sharlet, The Undertow: Scenes From a Slow Civil War. W.W. Norton & Company | Amazon page, Mar 2023. From the book description:

“Across the country, men “of God” glorify materialism, a gluttony of the soul, while citing Scripture and preparing for civil war―a firestorm they long for as an absolution and exaltation. Lies, greed, and glorification of war boom through microphones at hipster megachurches that once upon a time might have preached peace and understanding. Political rallies are as aflame with need and giddy expectation as religious revivals. At a conference for incels, lonely single men come together to rage against women. On the Far Right, everything is heightened―love into adulation, fear into vengeance, anger into white-hot rage. Here, in the undertow, our forty-fifth president, a vessel of conspiratorial fears and fantasies, continues to rise to sainthood, and the insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt, killed on January 6 at the Capitol, is beatified as a martyr of white womanhood.”

See interview by Sam Seder and Emma Vigeland, Fascism vs Christian Nationalism: Is There A Difference? The Majority Report, Jul 16, 2023.

Phil Vischer, Skye Jethani, and Christian Taylor, The Entitlement of White Christian Nationalists | Clip from Episode 561. Holy Post, Apr 20, 2023. Phil asks why a Christian missionary in China would not raid the capitol of Beijing, but white evangelicals did on January 6. One difference is allegiance and identity: being a missionary for Jesus is very different from being a Christian nationalist.

Andy Spears, Hillsdale Heist Week in Tennessee. The Education Report | Medium, Apr 29, 2023. Rejections in four of five districts where American Classical Academy applied.

“This past week was Hillsdale Heist week in Tennessee. The extremist charter school network applied to open American Classical Academies in five Tennessee districts - Madison, Maury, Montgomery, Robertson, and Rutherford. This just one year after the schools, connected to Michigan-based Hillsdale College, had applied to open in Madison, Rutherford, and Montgomery counties. Last year, the schools were rejected in all three districts, then Hillsdale appealed to Gov. Bill Lee’s handpicked State Charter Commission, then withdrew those appeals.”

See also David Dark, Nashville’s Entangled ‘Prayer Trade’ is a Warning to the Rest of the Country. Religion News Service, Oct 20, 2022. “'God,' we might say, is big business and big politics, too, in Nashville.”

Rachel Maddow, U.S. Religious Extremists Help Push Radical Anti-Gay Laws in Africa.  The Rachel Maddow Show | MSNBC, May 2, 2023.  Features Nigeria and especially Uganda.

Alex Wagner, White Christian Nationalism Emerges from Shadows of GOP Politics.  Alex Wagner Tonight | MSNBC, May 13, 2023.  “Texas State Rep. James Talarico and Michelle Goldberg, columnist for the New York Times, talk with Alex Wagner about a push by Texas Republicans to impose new religious measures on public schools, and the shift in Republican politics to more openly embrace white Christian nationalism.” James Talarico also identifies as a Christian, and explains why Christian nationalism is in error.

Phil Vischer and Skye Jethani, Extra Extra! Debrief of the Daniel Hummel Interview with Phil and Skye. Holy Post, May 15, 2023. J.N. Darby’s dispensational pre-millenialism was his attempt at prioritizing evangelism and missions instead of political involvement. White American evangelicals led by Dwight L. Moody used that theology to excuse themselves from abolition and the moral and theological crisis precipitated by the Civil War, and to separate themselves from the moral need to support Reconstruction.

Chris Hayes, DeSantis Pushes Child Health Care Bans, Fights with Disney in His ‘MAGA Kingdom’. All In | MSNBC, May 18, 2023. Hayes argues that DeSantis’ policies involve a heavy-handed state that overrules free speech, parental rights, abortion rights, etc. in an appeal to Christian nationalism. Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American May 18, 2023. Letters from an American | Substack, May 18, 2023. Richardson notes, “No longer committed to keeping the government weak to stay out of the way of business development, the party is now committed to creating a strong government that enforces Christian nationalism. This is a major and crucially important political shift. From the earliest days of the Reagan Revolution, those leaders who wanted to slash the federal government to end business regulation and cut the social safety net recognized that they did not have the votes to put their program in place. To find those votes, they courted racists and traditionalists who hated the federal government’s protection of civil rights. Over time, that base became more and more powerful until Trump openly embraced it in August 2017, when he said there were “very fine people on both sides.””

Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American May 21, 2023. Letters from an American | Substack, May 21, 2023. Vladimir Putin published a list of 500 Americans banned from Russia, including GA Sec of State Brad Raffensperger, who refused to lie about Trump’ s vote count in GA for the 2020 election, and Capitol Police officer Michael Byrd, who killed Jan 6 insurrectionist Ashli Babbit. Putin’s list makes clear that he supports the Trump movement. Putin in Russia, Orban in Hungary, and Trump in the US platform an illiberal Christian state.

Christopher Wiggins, Moms for Liberty Defends Hitler Quote in Newsletter Before Removing It.  The Advocate, Jun 23, 2023. “In the newsletter’s first edition, Hitler was quoted saying, “He who OWNS the youth, GAINS the future.” The quote appears to have originated from one of Hitler’s 1935 rally speeches, but that is uncertain.”  MfL later apologized.

Valerie Hobbs, No Love in War: A Story of Christian Nationalism . MayFly Books, Jul 2023. See panel discussion on video with Carol Ann Vaughn Cross, Julie Ingersoll, and Angelia Wilson in Valerie Hobbs, No Love in War: A Story of Christian Nationalism - Book Launch.  Centre for the Study of Bible and Violence, Jul 17, 2023.  

David French, Who Truly Threatens the Church?  New York Times, Jul 9, 2023. 

Valerie Hobbs, No Love in War: A Story of Christian Nationalism . MayFly Books, Jul 2023. See panel discussion on video with Carol Ann Vaughn Cross, Julie Ingersoll, and Angelia Wilson in Valerie Hobbs, No Love in War: A Story of Christian Nationalism - Book Launch.  Centre for the Study of Bible and Violence, Jul 17, 2023.  

Emily Cochrane, Alabama Lawmakers Decline to Create New Majority-Black Congressional District. New York Times, Jul 21, 2023. After a Supreme Court order to redraw the district map and create a new majority-Black district, Republican lawmakers pushed through a new map a month which did not do so.

Andrew Perez, The Church of Leonard Leo. The Lever, Jul 24, 2023. Leonard Leo, “a devout Roman Catholic, is the architect of the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority and oversees a billion-dollar political influence machine. In March, he quietly purchased [ St. Ignatius of Loyola Catholic Church in the seaside town of Northeast Harbor, Maine near Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park] through a charitable nonprofit he formed last year, according to financial records reviewed by The Lever. The nonprofit says its purpose includes “educating the public on the importance of religious expression and human rights of conscience. That freedom of conscience theme has been at the center of the conservative movement’s push to allow businesses to cite religious objections as rationales for denying services and products to women and LGBTQ+ customers. Leo’s church purchase appears to be the launch of a broader religious advocacy mission: starting with the exclusive Maine community that’s already enraged by how he’s worked to imprint his conservative religious views on American society.”

Josef Federman, Israeli Parliament Takes First Major Step in Netanyahu’s Contentious Overhaul, Deepening Divisions.  Associated Press, Jul 24, 2023.  

Zack Beauchamp, What Israel’s New Judicial Law Reveals About Its Democracy.  Vox, Jul 24, 2023.  

Leeja Miller, How The Religious Right Ruined Everything.  Leeja Miller, Jul 26, 2023.  

Kyle Kulinski, Kyle Reacts To Vile Prager U Propaganda Indoctrinating Florida Kids. The Kyle Kulinski Show, Aug 9, 2023.  Kyle shows a PragerU video that they took down, defending Robert E. Lee.  

S.E. Cupp, Has Trump Broken Christianity?  CNN, Aug 11, 2023.  A 5 minute video citing Christianity Today’s editor Russell Moore, who reports on pastors who try to teach Jesus’ “turn the other cheek” ethic and get called “woke” and rejected.  See Scott Detrow, Gabriel J. Sánchez, Sarah Handel, He Was a Top Church Official Who Criticized Trump. He Says Christianity Is In Crisis.  NPR, August 8, 2023. 

Kyle Kulinski, 'God Anointed Trump': News Network Goes Full Cult.  The Kyle Kulinski Show, Aug 14, 2023.  

Morning Joe, New Iowa Poll: Trump Commands Strong Lead Over DeSantis, Despite Indictments.  Morning Joe | MSNBC, Aug 21, 2023.  Trump has 47% of evangelical voters, and Mike Pence has only 6%.  “The first 2024 Iowa poll by NBC News and the Des Moines Register reveals that 42% of likely Republican caucus-goers say Trump is their first choice out of 14 different GOP presidential candidates, while 19% pick DeSantis. This advantage is driven by strong support from Republicans and evangelicals, with 65% not believing Trump committed serious crimes despite indictments.”

Morning Joe, Is the MAGA Base a Cult?  Morning Joe, Aug 21, 2023.  “In a new CBS News National Poll, Trump sustains a notable 62% lead in the GOP primary race, with his supporters reference his legal challenges as a further reason for their backing. Ron DeSantis follows at 16%, with other candidates polling in single digits. Additionally, 91% of respondents prefer candidates to emphasize their own cases in debates rather than targeting Trump. The Morning Joe panel delves into these figures, questioning whether the MAGA base can be labeled a "cult." Notably with 71% of Trump's supporters considering him a more reliable source of information than media figures, religious leaders, and even their own friends and family.”

Emma Brown and Peter Jamison, The Christian Home-Schooler Who Made ‘Parental Rights’ a GOP Rallying Cry. Washington Post, Aug 29, 2023. “On a private call with Christian millionaires, home-schooling pioneer Michael Farris pushed for a strategy aimed at siphoning billions of tax dollars from public schools”

Jason Horowitz and Ruth Graham, Pope Says a Strong U.S. Faction Offers a Backward, Narrow View of the Church. New York Times, Aug 30, 2023. “In unusually sharp remarks published this week, Pope Francis said some conservative American Catholics wrongly ignore much of the Church’s mission and reject the possibility of change.” “In 2018, in a major document called an apostolic exhortation on the subject of holiness, Francis explicitly wrote that caring for migrants and the poor is as holy a pursuit as opposing abortion. “Our defense of the innocent unborn, for example, needs to be clear, firm and passionate,” he wrote. “Equally sacred, however, are the lives of the poor, those already born, the destitute, the abandoned.””

Summer Concepcion, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp Dismisses GOP Calls for Special Session to Impeach DA Fani Willis.  NBC News, Aug 31, 2023.  A tale of different Christian faiths:  Georgia Republicans are broadly Protestant; Georgia Governor Brian Kemp is a white evangelical who takes his oath on the Bible seriously.  

Robert P. Jones, The Roots of Christian Nationalism Go Back Further Than You Think.  Time, Aug 31, 2023.  The Catholic Doctrine of Discovery and the experience of Native Americans and concerns for the land are important factors. 

John Fea, Eric Metaxas and John Zmirak On Why Mike Pence Is Not a Good Christian.  Current, Sep 5, 2023. 

Julie Mueller, Huckabee: 2024 Will Be Last Election ‘Decided by Ballots Rather Than Bullets’ if Trump Loses Over Legal Cases.  The Hill, Sep 6, 2023.  Former pastor and AK Governor Mike Huckabee speaks to mobilize the MAGA base while maintaining plausible deniability personally.  His daughter Sarah Huckabee Sanders similarly defended and/or downplayed Trump’s many calls for violence in the past.

John Fea, Wheaton College Study on Race: “We Cannot Be Healed and Cannot Be Reconciled Unless and Until We Repent.” Current, Sep 14, 2023. 

Kimberly Chandler, Jackson Says We Must Own the Hardest Chapters of US History During 1963 Church Bombing Remembrance.  Associated Press, Sep 15, 2023. 

Brett Meiselas, Married Republican Gov Kristi Noem and Trump Advisor’s Years-Long Affair Exposed.  Meidas Touch, Sep 15, 2023.  A case study in hypocrisy.

Daniel K. Williams, Why Did Jonathan Edwards Think That Slavery Was Morally Right?  Current, Sep 27, 2023.  

David French, One Reason the Trump Fever Won’t Break.  New York Times, Oct 1, 2023.  Several weeks ago, I wrote about the “rage and joy” of MAGA America. Outsiders see the rage and hatred directed at them and miss that a key part of Trump’s appeal is the joy and fellowship that Trump supporters feel with each other. But there’s one last element that cements that bond with Trump: faith, including a burning sense of certainty that by supporting him, they are instruments of God’s divine plan.

Skye Jethani, The Real Problem with Christian Nationalism.  Holy Post, Oct 3, 2023. Jethani groups Christian Nationalism into the Prosperity Gospel, where Jesus is just a means to another end.

James Angelos, Germany’s Far-Right ‘Firewall’ Cracks.  Politico, Oct 4, 2023.  “A vow by mainstream parties not to cooperate with Alternative for Germany is under pressure as the party surges in the polls.”

Alex Wagner, Far-Right Christian Dominionists Infiltrate Schools, Civic Offices in Texas.  Alex Wagner Tonight | MSNBC, Oct 5, 2023.  Alex Wagner, Students Fight to Defend School Against Takeover by Fringe Religious Ideology.  Alex Wagner Tonight | MSNBC, Oct 5, 2023.  Antonia Hylton and Mike Hixenbaugh, NBC News reporters and co-hosts of the "Grapevine" podcast, talk with Alex Wagner about the fringe evangelical movement trying to seize power and impose religious values on civic institutions from town government to school boards, and the pushback by students who feel let down by the adults they had hoped would protect their school and their education.  Cell phone company Patriot Mobile works with Christian nationalist school board candidates.

Alex Wagner, Far-Right Christian Dominionists Infiltrate Schools, Civic Offices in Texas.  Alex Wagner Tonight | MSNBC, Oct 5, 2023.  Alex Wagner, Students Fight to Defend School Against Takeover by Fringe Religious Ideology.  Alex Wagner Tonight | MSNBC, Oct 5, 2023.  Antonia Hylton and Mike Hixenbaugh, NBC News reporters and co-hosts of the "Grapevine" podcast, talk with Alex Wagner about the fringe evangelical movement trying to seize power and impose religious values on civic institutions from town government to school boards, and the pushback by students who feel let down by the adults they had hoped would protect their school and their education.  Cell phone company Patriot Mobile works with Christian nationalist school board candidates.

Emma Vigeland, GOP Picks Election Denying Far-Right Christian Nationalist To Be Speaker.  The Majority Report, Oct 25, 2023.  “After winning the speaker vote, Republican Rep. Mike Johnson was asked about his role in the legal efforts to overturn the 2020 election. North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx yells at her to shut up.  Back in 2018, Johnson gave his thoughts on what he saw as an existential threat to american government in the form of congress's inability to rein in So-called "entitlement spending."”

Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry, The Christian Nationalism of Speaker Mike Johnson.  Time, Oct 26, 2023.  

Warren Throckmorton, Who is David Barton?  The Throckmorton Initiative, Oct 26, 2023. “Mike Johnson says Barton has had a profound influence on everything he does. What does he believe?”

Katelyn Fossett, ‘He Seems to Be Saying His Commitment Is to Minority Rule’.  Politico, Oct 27, 2023.  A Q&A with historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez on the Christian nationalist ideas that shaped House Speaker Mike Johnson.  Pseudo-historian David Barton, promoter of the Christian nation myth, figures prominently.

Ben Meiselas, Meidas Unearths Shocking Video of GOP Speaker; It’s Ugly.  Meidas Touch, Oct 28, 2023.  Mike Johnson, new Speaker of the House, says that mass shootings are the result of departing from natural law and Christian faith especially from the 1960s.

Andy Spears, Is This Hillsdale's Vision?  The Education Report | Substack, Nov 2, 2023.  Toward theocracy by way of schools

Christopher Wiggins, Moms for Liberty Candidates Rejected by Voters in Key School Board Elections.  The Advocate, Nov 8, 2023. 

Christopher Wiggins, Watch Florida Moms for Liberty Members Try to Report Librarians to the Police Over a YA Novel.  The Advocate, Nov 10, 2023. The book that ignited this controversy, Storm and Fury by Jennifer L. Armentrout, is a young adult novel that contains some make-out scenes and some sexually-themed content within a fantastical context, according to Popular Information. Despite the objections raised by Moms for Liberty, the book has been endorsed by educational bodies and the author.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Why I Am Now a Christian.  Unherd, Nov 11, 2023.  “We can’t withstand China, Russia and Iran if we can’t explain to our populations why it matters that we do. We can’t fight woke ideology if we can’t defend the civilisation that it is determined to destroy. And we can’t counter Islamism with purely secular tools. To win the hearts and minds of Muslims here in the West, we have to offer them something more than videos on TikTok.”  Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, Founder of the AHA Foundation, and host of The Ayaan Hirsi Ali Podcast. Her new book is Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women’s Rights.  Notice that her explanation had nothing to do with Jesus himself, or his bodily resurrection and its meaning of new humanity for all humanity.  Ali is weaponizing Christian faith.

Jensen Davis, The Parent Trap.  Air Mail, Nov 25, 2023.  “For nearly 40 years, and with the support of a Christian evangelical mega-church, Gary and Anne Marie Ezzo have preached a shocking and damaging parenting program to thousands of Americans.”

Robyn Dixon, Most Russians Back War in Ukraine and Buy Putin’s Case for It, Report Says.  Washington Post, Nov 28, 2023. 

Nikki McCann Ramirez, Florida GOP Chair Accused of Sexually Assaulting Threesome Partner.  Rolling Stone, Nov 30, 2023.  “Police are investigating Christian Ziegler, husband of Moms for Liberty co-founder Bridget Ziegler, over accusations that he sexually assaulted the couple's alleged partner.” See also ABC News, Conservative Activist Bridget Ziegler Rocked by Sex Scandal. ABC News, Feb 8, 2024. This sordid episode shows how a white couple who engages in a three-way LGBTQ relationship could pretend to stand for conservative values as political activists.

Virginia Chamlee, Florida GOP Chair, Whose Wife Co-Founded Moms for Liberty, Accused of Sexual Assault amid Ménage à Trois Scandal.  People, Nov 30, 2023. “The Sarasota County Police Department confirms to PEOPLE that there is an active investigation into Christian Ziegler.”

Bradley Onishi, The Texas Rep. Fighting Christian Nationalism.  Straight White American Jesus Podcast, Dec 18, 2023. Onishi interviews Rep. James Talarico who is an evangelical and former public school teacher who became a US Congressman in Texas and opposes Christian Nationalism.

Abbie VanSickle and Steve Eder, ‘Extended Family’ With Reach and Power.  New York Times, Dec 24, 2023.  “The Supreme Court justice has built a network of former clerks who share messages, meals and a common vision — wielding influence at universities, law firms and the highest rungs of government.”

Sam Seder and Emma Vigeland, Israel / US Connections Are Deeper And More Disturbing Than You Think.  The Majority Report, Dec 28, 2023.  Peter Beinart of Jewish Currents joins Sam and Emma to discuss the recent events in Israel and Palestinian territories. Officials in Benjamin Netanyahu’s government often express a desire to weaken Israel’s Supreme Court, citing limitations on their ability to punish Palestinians. Palestinian perspectives, however, interpret these policies as part of a larger strategy involving mass expulsion. In March, anti-occupation activist Fadi Quran expressed concerns about another Nakba, referring to the expulsion of Palestinians at Israel’s birth. A poll showed that 65% of Palestinians viewed Israel’s “long run aspiration” as extending its borders and expelling Arab citizens. While such a prospect may seem unthinkable in mainstream American discourse, Palestinian fears of expulsion are rooted in history and are not unfounded. The current government's radicalism, combined with escalating violence, raises concerns about a potential surge in Palestinian expulsion, prompting the question of what actions American officials would take to prevent it.

Alan Bean, The Roots of White Evangelical Desperation. Baptist News Global, Jan 3, 2024.

Paul Williams, Understanding Biblical Roots of American Exceptionalism and Support of Israel with Dr Louay Fatoohi. Blogging Theology, Jan 4, 2024.

Walter Isaacson, The Unseen Faces of Jan. 6 and Why Trump Poses a “Uniquely Dangerous Threat.”  Amanpour and Company, Jan 5, 2024.  “Almost three years after a mob of insurgents stormed the U.S. Capitol, the dark shadow of January 6 continues to hang over the fate of American democracy. According to a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll, Republicans are more sympathetic to the rioters and more loyal to Donald Trump than they were in 2021, while over one-third of all Americans now believe Biden’s election win was illegitimate. Robert Pape is Director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats. He joins Walter Isaacson to discuss how political violence moved from the margins to the mainstream.”  Pape points out that the convicted rioters were middle class professionals and businesspeople.  

Sam Seder and Emma Vigeland, Shocking New Jan 6 Footage Has GOP Going Full Lunatic. The Majority Report, Jan 8, 2024. Important video footage of insurrectionists breaking the glass into the House chamber, declaring their intentions. Video footage like this demonstrates that these were not “tourists.”

Jared Yates Sexton, The Prince of Lies: The Heresy of White Christian Nationalism and Donald Trump.  Dispatches from a Collapsing State | Substack, Jan 12, 2024.  “You don't get authoritarianism without the perversion of religion and it doesn't just spontaneously appear”

Ryan Burge, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Church Attendance and Voting for Trump.  Graphs About Religion, Jan 22, 2024. “I muster all the evidence that I can to answer a simple question: who likes Trump the most?”

Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies, Spiritual Warriors: Decoding Christian Nationalism at the Capitol Riot. ICJS, Jan 31, 2024. “Video footage from the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot shows a myriad of religious symbols and actions. Why do you have groups of Christians, as a riot is going on just yards away from them, singing praise and worship music? Why are people blowing shofars? Why are people speaking in tongues as tear-gas grenades detonate all around them? In this short documentary based on three years of research, ICJS Protestant Scholar Matthew D. Taylor describes the central role the New Apostolic Reformation, a relatively new charismatic Christian movement, played in instigating the Capitol riot. The NAR continues to be a force in American politics and will wield considerable influence going into the 2024 election.”

Reed Galen, The Threat of White Christian Nationalism - Part I: Piety Not Required with Jeff Sharlet. The Lincoln Project, Feb 7, 2024. Jeff Sharlet discusses the current coalition of dominionists. The religious and cultural landscape of present-day American evangelicalism, how white Christian nationalism is not "old-time religion" but a rapidly mutating political theology, and how white Christian nationalism isn't synonymous with piety and has warped into an ideology to serve Trumpism.

Jews for a Secular Democracy, Christian Nationalism and the 2024 Elections with Dr. Bradley Onishi. Jews for a Secular Democracy, February 8, 2024. Onishi uses presidents as a helpful lens: Carter disappointed white evangelicals, who then turned to Reagan. Obama was threatening to evangelicals, who then turned to Trump. Onishi also explains how white Christian Nationalists relate to Jews and Israel. Onishi explains “proximity to whiteness” from the personal standpoint of his mixed race background and involvement in conservative white evangelical CN contexts. The JSD reps and Onishi also explain white evangelicalism as responding negatively to the Civil Rights Movement, from Brown v. Board to white church-adjacent school segregation to the IRS challenge to the tax-exempt status of these schools.

Reed Galen, The Threat of White Christian Nationalism - Part III: The Power Worshippers with Katherine Stewart. The Lincoln Project, Feb 15, 2024. Katherine Stewart discusses how the white Christian nationalist movement is driven by a cohort of leaders and organizations that form a deep organizational network, how the attack on public education is part of a larger project to destroy democratic institutions, and what members of the pro-democracy movement can do to fight against the advancement of white Christian nationalism.

Ben Meiselas, Trump Lawyer Flips Out After Devastating NY Verdict. Meidas Touch, Feb 16, 2024. “Their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological.” Lawyer Alina Habba wears a cross and was interviewed by a show called “His Glory.”

Richard Allen Hyde, True Christian Nationalism. Providence Magazine, Feb 19, 2024. A historical and moderate and softer view, but one that is still vulnerable to the mythos of American exceptionalism for its own sake and not because of any particular substance.

Reed Galen, The Threat of White Christian Nationalism - Part IV: White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Trump. The Lincoln Project, Feb 20, 2024. Sarah Posner discusses how the Reagan coalition laid the groundwork for Trump and the Religious Right, including abortion policy and the Southern Strategy. Trump played into performative authority and masculinity shaped by evangelical-charismatic-Pentecostal preaching, especially of the prosperity gospel. Posner also highlights the “spiritual warfare” teaching of these charismatic churches to “take back America.”

Joy Reid, Bombing Mexico? Banning Muslims? Inside Radical Right's Plan for Second Trump Presidency. The Reid Out | MSNBC, Feb 20, 2024.

Kristen Kobes du Mez, When Nazism Enters the Chat. Du Mez Connections | Substack, Feb 21, 2024.

Steve Rabey, Trump Tells Christian Broadcasters: ‘You Cannot Let People Vote for Democrats’. Baptist News Global, Feb 23, 2024.

Robert P. Jones, Support for Christian Nationalism in All 50 States: Findings From the 2023 American Values Atlas. Public Religion Research Institute, Feb 28, 2024. This webinar featured experts including PRRI President and Founder Robert P. Jones, Ph.D., as well as Andrew Whitehead, Ph.D., Jemar Tisby, Ph.D., and Katherine Stewart to discuss Christian nationalism supporters’ demographics, religious affiliation, policy priorities, and support for presidential candidates.

Russell Gold, The Billionaire Bully Who Wants to Turn Texas Into a Christian Theocracy. Texas Monthly, Mar 2024. The state’s most powerful figure, Tim Dunn, isn’t an elected official. But behind the scenes, the West Texas oilman is lavishly financing what he regards as a holy war against public education, renewable energy, and non-Christians.

Owen Morgan, Christian Nationalist Pastors-We Want A Fascist Dictatorship. Owen’s Fireside Chat, Mar 1, 2024. Owen shows many clips of Christian radio personalities and pastors and national figures.

Wisecrack, Jordan Peterson Doesn’t Understand Christianity. Wisecrack, Mar 8, 2024. Peterson is using the guise of Christianity to transmit his own form of patriarchal, Darwinian, reactionary thought.

David Masciotra, Exurbia Now: The Battleground of American Democracy. Melville House | Amazon page, reprint edition April 2024. A brilliant commentary on demographics interacting with White Evangelical megachurches and Latino-American Christian voters as well.

The suburbs have become too liberal and diverse for many white American conservatives, so “exurbia”—areas outside the cities and their suburbs—are becoming the staging ground for the radical right extremist insurgency . . . Beyond a fanatical devotion to former president Donald Trump, one of the curious things that united the rank and file of the January 6 insurrectionist mob was that many of them were residents of one of America’s fastest growing residential areas: Exurbia. Home to the likes of Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ohio’s Jim Jordan, big box retailers, chain restaurants, monster trucks, and megachurches, exurbia is becoming America’s greatest political battleground, more important to American politics than urban or rural America.

In this brilliant work of political and cultural inquiry, veteran political journalist David Masciotra provides a definitive account of what exurbia is, how it came to be, and how it's transforming American life. Zooming in outside the greater metropolitan area of Chicago—where Masciotra grew up—he shows how exurbia has become a safe space to fly the MAGA flag and romanticize the mores of the pre-civil rights, pre-feminist, pre-gay rights 1950s. But, as Masciotra also shows, reactionary white flight is not the whole story of small-town America. The story often lost is the power and persistence of small-town liberals—people who believe in equality, celebrate diversity, and enroll in movements for justice. Exurbia, as it turns out, is ground zero for the fight over a democracy mightily beleaguered, yet still full of promise, and still worth fighting for. Combining interviews, research, and anecdote—and anchored in personal experience—Exurbia Now delivers a powerful ballad on the state of small-town America, and provides a sense of the fight for democracy, on the ground, in the heartland.

See interview by Ken Harbrough, MAGA Radicalization Centers Fully Exposed by Expert. Burn The Boats | Meidas Touch, Jun 11, 2024. Starts with the story of Crown Point, Indiana, which is outside Chicago’s northern suburbs. For the past 10 - 20 years, while Crown Point has grown economically, it has become more right-wing and politically extreme. During a peaceful Black Lives Matter march around the town square, they were flanked by predominantly white men with Osama bin Laden beards and assault rifles. Why is this happening?

Ana Kasparian, Right-Wingers Lose It On Tucker Carlson After Interview. The Young Turks, Apr 11, 2024. Carlson interviewed Palestinian Lutheran pastor Rev. Munther Isaac. GOP Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) replied very negatively.

Jacobin Magazine, How the US Privatized War. Jacobin, May 14, 2024. Spotlights Dutch Reformed Midwesterner Erik Prince and Blackwater, the US mercenary firm he founded. Now private equity firms fund mercenary groups and private contractors.

Ken Silverstein, Off Leash: Inside the Secret, Global, Far-Right Group Chat. The New Republic, May 30, 2024. “Military contractor Erik Prince started a private WhatsApp group for his close associates that includes a menagerie of right-wing government officials, intelligence operatives, arms traffickers, and journalists. We got their messages.”

Mike Hixenbaugh, They Came for the Schools: One Town's Fight Over Race and Identity, and the New War for America's Classrooms. Mariner Books | Amazon page, May 2024. Award-winning journalist Mike Hixenbaugh delivers the immersive and eye-opening story of Southlake, Texas, a district that seemed to offer everything parents would want for their children—small classes, dedicated teachers, financial resources, a track record of academic success, and school spirit in abundance. All this, until a series of racist incidents became public, a plan to promote inclusiveness was proposed in response—and a coordinated, well-funded conservative backlash erupted, lighting the fire of a national movement on the verge of changing the face of public schools across the country. They Came for the Schools pulls back the curtain on the powerful forces driving this crusade to ban books, rewrite curricula, limit rights for minority and LGBTQ students—and, most importantly, to win what Hixenbaugh’s deeply informed reporting convinces is the holy grail among those seeking to impose biblical values on American society: school privatization, one school board and one legal battle at a time. They Came for the Schools delivers an essential take on Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, as they demean public schools and teachers and boost the Christian right’s vision. Hixenbaugh brings to light fascinating connections between this political and cultural moment and past fundamentalist campaigns to censor classroom lessons. Finally, They Came for the Schools traces the rise of a new resistance movement led by a diverse coalition of student activists, fed-up educators, and parents who are beginning to win select battles of their own: a blueprint, they hope, for gaining inclusive and civil schools for all.

J.D. Sholten, Ruth Ben-Ghiat Discusses Project 2025. One Country, Jun 10, 2024. A very informative 47 minute video. Project 2025 is already building a team to replace ordinary civil servants with Trump-loyalists who will rubber stamp anything Trump tells them to do, including mass deportations of 10 - 15 million people. They seek to dismantle the Department of Education and privatize schools so Christian schools can get more public funding. Authoritarian fascist movements depend on increasing targets of hate and fear; public disorder will increase.

Jemar Tisby, Three Reactions to the PCA Cancelling David French. Footnotes, Jun 11, 2024.

John Fea, Revival and Revolution. Commonweal Magazine, Jul 2, 2024. The MAGA Evangelical theory that the Great Awakening led to the American Revolution.

Lerone A. Martin, The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover: How the FBI Aided and Abetted the Rise of White Christian Nationalism. UCTV Insight, Jul 3, 2024. A one hour lecture on video by the author about his book.

Seth Gruber, The Most Evil Man in Evangelicalism, and Those Who Platformed Him. Clear Truth Media, Jul 7, 2024. An example of a smear campaign against an honorable Christian — Dr. Francis Collins — who seeks to respectfully approach both faith and science. Gruber criticizes Collins for not holding to a strict conception = personhood position, and allowing stem-cell research.

John Fea, “What a Mess”: Conservative Intellectual Robert George Responds to the GOP Platform. Current, Jul 9, 2024.

John Fea, When a Holocaust Denier Took Down a Christian College Professor. Current, Jul 9, 2024. Evan Kilgore, a Holocaust denier-minimizer, transformed his firing from Grace College and Theological Seminary in Winona Lake, Indiana into a career as a right-wing commentator. Back in October, Kilgore turned his sights on Matthew Warner, a first year communications professor at Grace, who was then fired. The lesson is that conservative Christian institutions don’t have the luxury of caution and patience.

Rick Perlstein, Project 2025 … and 1921, and 1973, and 1981. The American Prospect, Jul 10, 2024. “Terrifying blueprints for the next Republican presidency are a quadrennial tradition.”

Abby Phillips, Evidence Shatters Trump’s Claims About HIs Ties to Project 2025. CNN, Jul 11, 2024.

Andy Kroll and Nick Surgey, Inside Ziklag, the Secret Organization of Wealthy Christians Trying to Sway the Election and Change the Country. ProPublica, Jul 13, 2024. See also Amy Goodman, Ziklag Exposed: Secretive Christian Nationalist Network Tries to Purge Voters in Battleground States. Democracy Now, Jul 30, 2024.

Michele Martin, Kristin Du Mez: Project 2025 Will Redefine Constitution in Name of Christianity. Amanpour and Co., Jul 23, 2024. Around the 10 minute mark, Du Mez observes that the Christian Nationalists define “freedom” in the Christian sense only as freedom to obey God, not in the original civic and legal sense. The “pursuit of happiness” means the “pursuit of blessing.”

Vice News, Traveling the Bible Belt After the 2020 Election. Vice News, Jul 26, 2024. Abortion policy continues to be a leading rhetorical motivation for evangelicals supporting Trump’s fascism.

Leeja Miller, Trump Was Just The Beginning For the Tech Billionaires Who Want To Take Over The World. Leeja Miller, Jul 29, 2024. Billionaire Peter Thiel claims to be a Christian, and influenced J.D. Vance back to Christian faith.

Warren Cole Smith, Which Shepherds Are for Sale? The Dispatch, Aug 3, 2024. See also Gavin Ortlund, Megan Basham's Shepherds For Sale: Problems With This Book.  Truth Unites, Jul 31, 2024.  See also Gavin Ortlund, Responding to Megan Basham's Latest Claims.  Truth Unites, Aug 5, 2024. 

Michael Reneau and Jake Meador, After Virtue Came Strongman Politics. The Dispatch, Aug 4, 2024. How postliberal Christians came to embrace a political movement at odds with their values.

Molly Olmstead, J.D. Vance's Religion: How Catholicism Changed the Candidate's Worldview.  Slate, Aug 8, 2024. 

James Risen, Racism Is Why Trump Is So Popular. The Intercept, Aug 10, 2024. Trump’s popularity with his base isn’t the result of economic anxiety, as many claimed in 2016. It’s about race and demographics.

James Talarico, James Talarico Grills Texas Education Commissioner Over New Christianity-Infused Curriculum. James Talarico, Aug 14, 2024.

Dana Bash, Project 2025 Co-Author Discusses Work in Hidden-Camera Video. CNN, Aug 15, 2024. Re: Russell Vought, who said Trump blessed his work.

Jeremy Howard, 134: Driscoll, Basham, Wilson, and Footnotes: A Conversation with Janet Mefferd (DTE #14). Do Theology, Aug 20, 2024. “Jeremy converses with Janet Mefferd about her history in Christian journalism, her famous conflict with Mark Driscoll, and the latest controversies surrounding Megan Basham, Doug Wilson, and the Christian Nationalism movement. The over-arching concern about each of these topics is for Christians to care about maintaining a standard of ethics in their ministries.”

Ali Velshi, Inside Project 2025’s Plan to Weaken Unions and Lower Workers’ Wages. Velshi | MSNBC, Aug 24, 2024.

Ali Velshi, ‘Elected By No One’: ‘Reaganland’ Author on How the Heritage Foundation Wields Power. Velshi | MSNBC, Aug 25, 2024.

Nilay Saiya and Stutu Manchanda, Christian Nationalism and Violence Against Religious Minorities in the United States: A Quantitative Analysis. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Sep 2, 2024.

In the 1990s, violent Christian nationalists carried out the bombings of a government building in Oklahoma City, Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park, and numerous abortion clinics across the country. In recent years, however, Christian nationalist violence has experienced a resurgence. Christian nationalist ideology figured prominently in the violence of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia; mass shootings at an African American church in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015, a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018, three different spas in the Atlanta area in 2021, a grocery store in Buffalo, New York in 2022; and dozens of instances of “lone-wolf” Christian vigilante violence. And, of course, it was on full display during the 2021 Capitol insurrection (Jenkins 2022).

Bard Center for the Study of Hate, Julie Ingersoll and Peter Montgomery New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). Bard Center for the Study of Hate, Sep 9, 2024. A 60 minute video on charismatic independent churches and their role in U.S. politics.

Molly Olmstead, Sent by God. Slate, Sep 25, 2024. “They’re gathering by the thousands. They’re growing fast. They believe that Democrats are possessed by demons—and that Donald Trump must be president again at any cost.”

“This was the third stop of the “Courage Tour,” a traveling worship spectacle passing through key battleground states ahead of the upcoming presidential election. Organized by Wallnau, a sixtysomething Texas-based evangelical with a salesman’s persona, the three-day event was a marriage of the religious and the political, a swirl of prophecies and PowerPoints and speaking in tongues. It was a call to arms, a campaign strategy session, and—above all—an honest-to-God old-fashioned Pentecostal tent revival.

It was also a showcase of the power of a rapidly growing, militant right-wing movement in American Christianity.

Wallnau is a major leader in a coalition of Christians who believe that Trump is prophesied to play a critical role in the nation’s spiritual reformation—that the former president is destined to be a catalyst for the next Great Awakening, even. These Christians see Trump as a modern-day Cyrus the Great, the powerful empire builder and nonbeliever who is credited in the Old Testament with returning the Jews to the Holy Land. They believe that under Trump’s protection, American Christians will rise up, defeat their demonic enemies, and take their rightful place of power in the country.”

Rich Logis, Former MAGA Insider Spills the Beans on Trump’s Plan. Meidas Touch, Sep 28, 2024. Rich Logis, founder of Leaving MAGA, interviews Guinevere Nell, an ex-Heritage Foundation analyst now speaking out about the inner workings of the organization responsible for Donald Trump’s Project 2025 plan. Nell says the free market side of Heritage was subsumed by the Christian nationalist side, which is authoritarian and anti-democratic, white supremacist and patriarchal.

Gareth Gore, Opus: The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking, and Right-Wing Conspiracy inside the Catholic Church. Simon and Schuster | Amazon page, Oct 2024. For over half a century, Banco Popular was one of the most profitable banks in the world—until one day, in 2017, when the Spanish bank suddenly collapsed overnight. When investigative journalist Gareth Gore was dispatched to report on the story, he expected to find yet another case of unbridled capitalist ambition gone wrong. Instead, he uncovered decades of deception that hid one of the most brazen cases of corporate pillaging in history, perpetrated by a group of men sworn to celibacy and self-flagellation who had secretly controlled Popular and abused their positions there to help spread Opus Dei to every corner of the world. See Ben Meiselas, Secret Group Embedded In Supreme Court Gets Exposed. Meidas Touch, Oct 4, 2024. Interviews Court Accountability leader Alex Aronson on how a secretive Catholic group Opus Dei that was formed in monarchist Spain supporting Franco in the 1920’s has taken over the American courts through the Republican Party.

Jerry Park, Do Asian Americans Support White Christian Nationalism? Center for Asian American Christianity, Oct 14, 2024.

Talia Lavin, Wild Faith: How the Christian Right Is Taking Over America. Legacy Lit | Amazon page, October 15, 2024.

Genetically Modified Skeptic, How Religious Was America in 1776? Genetically Modified Skeptic, Oct 16, 2024. Based on the sociological estimates and statistics of Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-2005: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy. Rutgers University Press | Amazon page, 2005. During colonial times, approximately only 17% of the colonies’ population were “religious” and thus Christian. White people had higher rates of churchgoing, with South Carolina having the highest rate of White churchgoing, notably with the lowest ratio of White to Black people. Only when the individual states stopped supporting state-churches — they stopped paying ministers with government funding — did religious adherence rise because of the increased competition in the religious marketplace.

Adam Jortner, Brits Weren’t Just Facing Off Against White Protestant Christians − US Patriots Are Diverse and Have Been Since Day 1. The Conversation, Oct 18, 2024.

Thom Hartmann, Far Right Tries To Force Trump Bible Into Public Schools! Can We Stop Them? w/ Patrick Elliot. Thom Hartmann Show, Oct 29, 2024. Oklahoma local politics. “On June 27, 2024, Ryan Walters issued a mandate that would require every public school in Oklahoma to incorporate the bible into the curriculum for grades 5-12. . A clear violation of the separation of Church and State.. Thom Hartmann is joined by Patrick Elliot, the Legal Director for Freedom From Religion Foundation to discuss how to stop Christian nationalism from infecting our kids in public schools.”

Robert P. Jones, One Week from the Election: The Survey Findings Keeping Me Up at Night. PRRI, Oct 29, 2024. “The latest PRRI American Values Survey highlights disturbing dynamics that will be with us far beyond Election Day.” “Despite all of Trump’s coarseness, misogyny, convictions for sexual assault, explicit racism, and demonization of immigrants, PRRI finds all white Christian subgroups continue to support Trump at comparable levels to 2020: white evangelial Protestants at 83%, white non-evangelical Protestants at 60%, and white Catholics at 61%. At the other end of the spectrum, 85% of Black Protestants, 70% of the religiously unaffiliated, and 61% of Latino Catholics are supporting Kamala Harris.”

Mark Wingfield, Matt Gaetz is a Southern Baptist Who Appears to Get a Free Pass. Baptist News Global, Nov 18, 2024. Maya Yang and Anna Betts, House Committee Reportedly Told of Second Sexual Encounter Between Matt Gaetz and 17-year-old – Live. The Guardian, Nov 21, 2024. Gaetz resigned from Congress to quash the Ethics Committee report from coming out. Every Republican Representative supported Gaetz. Then he withdrew his nomination for Attorney General. For Republican hypocrisy, since they accused Democrats for running pedophile rings in the recent past, see Bryan Tyler Cohen, Bombshell: Actual Reason for Gaetz Withdrawal Shocks All. Brian Tyler Cohen, Nov 21, 2024.

John Knefel, Trump Set to Appoint Project 2025 Architect Russ Vought to Office of Management and Budget. Media Matters, Nov 20, 2024. Vought is a leading proponent of “Schedule F,” a plan to potentially fire thousands of federal civil servants and replace them with MAGA acolytes.

Tim Miller, Shocking Police Report Gives Horrific New Details on Trump Nominee. Bulwark Takes, Nov 21, 2024. Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee to be Secretary of Defense, espouses a Christian nationalist worldview. He is credibly accused of sexual assault by a woman, Jane Doe, at a conference of political conservatives. See Lawrence O’Donnell, Republican Senators Say ‘Hell No’ to Musk and Trump. The Last Word | MSNBC, Nov 21, 2024. O’Donnell spotlights Hegseth’s marital history: He married his first wife in 2004 and started an affair with a woman he met at Fox News who became his second wife after he divorced his first wife. During his second marriage, Hegseth had an affair with a woman who got pregnant, and had his baby. Hegseth’s second wife filed for divorce in September 2017. The Republican convention occurred in October 2017, when Hegseth allegedly raped Jane Doe named in the police report. Hegseth is now married to his third wife. Note Alice Herman, Pete Hegseth, Trump’s Pentagon Pick, Sparks Alarm Over Far-Right Extremism. The Guardian, Nov 15, 2024:

“For Hegseth, “leftists” – proponents of LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights and racial justice – lurk around every corner, posing an existential threat to the United States. In American Crusade, Hegseth writes that he believes the US faces a moment of “irreconcilable differences between the Left and the Right in America leading to perpetual conflict that cannot be resolved through the political process”. He adds: “No, I’m not calling for violence, I’m just pointing out the reality.” Despite many such caveats in the book, Hegseth frequently proposes violent ideas. “This time in our history calls for an American Crusade,” he writes in the book’s introduction. “Yes, a holy war for the righteous cause of human freedom.””

See Kiera Butler, Trump’s Defense Secretary Pick Hopes for a Christian Crusade. Mother Jones, Nov 15, 2024. See also Kyle Mantyla, Pete Hegseth's Plan To Create A Christian Nationalist 'Educational Insurgency'. People For | Right Wing Watch, Nov 19, 2024. For more on Hegseth’s book, see Jonathan Chait, Donald Trump’s Most Dangerous Cabinet Pick. The Atlantic, Nov 21, 2024. Jason Wilson, Trump’s Pentagon Pick Hegseth Wrote of US Military Taking Sides in ‘Civil War’. The Guardian, Nov 22, 2024. “In one of his five published books he wrote that in the event of a Democratic election victory in the US there would be a “national divorce” in which “The military and police … will be forced to make a choice” and “Yes, there will be some form of civil war.” Tim Miller and Sam Stein, His Own Mother!? Email From Pete Hegseth’s Mom Call Him an “Abuser of Women”. Bulwark Takes, Nov 30, 2024. Tim Miller and Sam Stein, Repulsive! It Keeps Getting Worse For Pete Hegseth! (w/ Bill Kristol). The Bulwark Podcast, Dec 2, 2024. See Philip Bump, Pete Hegseth’s Strongest Ally Isn’t Trump. It’s Fox News. Washington Post, Dec 4, 2024. Kyle Kulinski, ‘I’m Not Done!’: Liberal Blows Up CNN Panel. The Kyle Kulinski Show | Secular Talk, Dec 4, 2024. Kulinski points out that Hegseth supports the War on Terror, drunkenly shouted kill all Muslims, doesn’t believe in germ theory, and has an alcohol problem. See Pete Hegseth, Battle for the American Mind. Harper Collins, 2022. MAGA Republicans like Charlie Kirk put pressure on Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) to confirm Hegseth, and she capitulated. See Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, Krystal And Saagar Debate Pete Hegseth SecDef Nomination. Breaking Points, Dec 10, 2024. See also Jonathan V. Last, Sarah Longwell, and Tim Miller, Clueless! The GOP's Own Voters Hate Them! Trump Sends Don. Jr's Ex Out of the Country! Next Level | The Bulwark, Dec 11, 2024. The Bulwark suspects that Senator Ernst capitulated for a few reasons, but the end result is that Ernst, a survivor of sexual assault who cares about the military, now supports sexual assaulter Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense.

Graham Kates, Trump Education Secretary Pick Linda McMahon Named in Recent WWE Child Sex Abuse Lawsuit. CBS News, Nov 21, 2024. She and her husband are alleged to have known that ringside announcer Melvin Phillips for years hired — and later assaulted — "ring boys" as young as 13.

Ian M. Giatti, Texas Board Approves Optional Bible-Infused Curriculum for Elementary Schools. Christian Post, Nov 22, 2024. Democratic-linked South Asian advocacy group warns move ‘undermines religious freedom’

Ben Meiselas, WTH!! GOP Exposes its Entire Crime Enterprise for Trump. The Meidas Touch, Nov 24, 2024. Repeated sex abuse scandals, including with minors, point to a deeper organizational problem with the party that supposedly stood for “family values” and “conservatism.”

James Talarico, Public Schools Are Not Sunday Schools. James Talarico, Nov 25, 2024. Talarico argues as a seminary student, minister-in-training, and Congressman that the Texas GOP leaders recognize they are proposing something unconstitutional, because they want teachers in public schools who teach the Bible to have immunity from First Amendment lawsuits.

Andy Spears, Hillsdale College and a Call for Violent Revolution in Service of Christian Nationalism. The Education Report, Nov 28, 2024. “n a recent issue of Hillsdale’s newsletter - Imprimis - President Larry Arnn talks about the current “culture wars” and notes that the battle for public schools has “not yet” necessitated violence… A recent story out of Virginia indicates that Hillsdale’s curriculum may have found favor from that state’s Governor, Glenn Youngkin.”

Emma Vigeland, Republican's "Christian" Values Politely Ripped To Shreds On CNN. The Majority Report with Sam Seder, Dec 11, 2024. Audie Cornish, a Black woman who identifies as a Christian, challenges Scott Jennings, a White man who also identifies as a Christian. Jennings supports the mass destruction and death of Gazans, but complains about the assassination of United Health CEO Brian Thompson. David Pakman, The Most Incredible 28 Seconds of Fox News Ever. The David Pakman Show, Dec 12, 2024. Fox News commentator Laura Ingraham, who claims to be a Christian and wears a cross on her necklace, decries Luigi Mangione’s killing of a CEO but defends Daniel Penny’s killing of a man on a subway in NY.

Laura Frances Callahan, Matthew D. Taylor, Kristin Kobes du Mez, Elizabeth Neumann, Lilliana Mason, Rachel Brown, Remaining Vigilant: What to Watch for in the Days Ahead. Center for Philosophy of Religion, Dec 13, 2024. Taylor wonders what Trump 2 will be like, and spotlights in the form of a bell curve of probability: Trump 1; Poland under Law and Justice; Turkey under Erdogan; Hungary under Orban; India under Modi; and Russia under Putin. Du Mez highlights white evangelical attitudes towards information, media, and conspiracy theories. Neumann discusses the threat of political violence and terrorism, hate crimes and targeted violence. Mason discusses racial and gender violence and predictors: racial resentment beliefs about Black-White inequality; beliefs about women’s roles; beliefs about the other party. Brown discusses the relationship between communication and violence.

R.R. Reno, Mere Christendom. First Things, Dec 2024. Writes mostly approvingly of Doug Wilson, and disapprovingly of Luke Bretherton.