Podcast
News
“Trump’s overtures struggle to register with religious voters: New signs point to Trump losing a sizable chunk of his Christian voters, upending his path to reelection.”
The online survey, which was commissioned by the left-leaning group Vote Common Good and conducted by a team of academic pollsters from the University of Southern California, Duke University, University of Maryland College Park and University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, predicts an 11 percentage point swing toward Biden among evangelicals and Catholics who backed Trump in 2016, based on input from both demographics across five major 2020 battleground states: Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Other polls have captured similar gains in Biden’s religious support, including an August survey by Fox News that showed the former vice president at 28 percent support among white evangelicals — up 12 percentage points from 2016 exit polls for the Democratic nominee.
“State of Theology: Evangelicals Hold Steady on Doctrine, More Outspoken on Politics”
The biggest change in this year’s State of American Theology Study had to do with approaches to political engagement, with evangelicals half as likely to believe that Christians should be silent on political issues than back in 2016.
“Black Lives Matter co-founder denounces Pat Robertson for saying the movement is 'anti-God'"
Patrisse Cullors, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter, is denouncing televangelist Pat Robertson for comments he made about the Black Lives Matter movement being “anti-God.”
“To insinuate that our movement is trying to destroy Christianity is disgraceful and outright offends our Christian siblings who are a part of our movement against racial injustice,” Cullors said in a statement released Saturday (Sept. 12).
“Black Pastor Wants His Mostly White Congregation To Understand Racial Justice”
The racial justice movement asks what role white people should play in the struggle. Lenny Duncan's ministry tries to answer that question. He's a black pastor in the whitest denomination in the U.S.
“Capitol Hill’s stalwart ‘Jesus Lady’ dies at 92: Rita Warren was a part of the fabric of life for lawmakers, staffers and lobbyists”
She was arrested 20 times, but only once on Capitol Hill. She protested the closing of the Capitol steps to build the Capitol Visitor Center, spray-painting “JESUS” on them and chaining herself to a gate. The charges were later dropped.
“Most people understood that she was exercising her freedom by being out there, just expressing her faith and her tremendous faith and love for her love for country,” said Pepin. “She appreciated this country because she knew what it was like to live under the Nazi regime.”
Warren was born in Italy, came of age under Mussolini’s regime and had close encounters with Nazi troops as a child, which she credited with shaping her understanding of the power of Jesus and the roots of her deep faith.
Opinion
“What Christians Get Wrong About Critical Race Theory – Part I”
Given the importance critics and opponents attribute to CRT, this widespread ecclesiastical silence is tragic. All sides owe Christians an account of what CRT is and why it is harmful or useful. Charity and justice demand as much. Therefore, the widespread silence on these very issues is a strike against the Church’s leaders. As Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote years ago: “A time comes when silence is betrayal.”
As a racialized minority suffering from internal and external forms of racism, this silence—this betrayal—hurts. Most of my life, I have lacked an antiracist vocabulary; those harming me had a racist one. Most of my life, I couldn’t diagnose my racialized wounds; those harming me inflicted these wounds with precision. Most of my life, I unwittingly wandered in a racialized cave; those harming me worked to keep me in the shadows. So, when Christian leaders offer meager condemnations or approvals of race-conscious scholarship, I lament, fear that they have engaged in selective anti-intellectualism—the very thing Mark Noll observes characterizes the Evangelical mind—along racialized lines, and desire to shed light where shadows mesmerize.
“White evangelicals and Catholics may finally be opening their ears”
Cultivating fear of the coming melanin invasion is now the defining theme of the Trump campaign. It is also the rawest recourse to bigotry on the national stage since Alabama Gov. George Wallace in the 1960s and ’70s.
And it puts White evangelicals and Catholics in a bind. The protection of nascent life remains a deep commitment of most moral conservatives, and Trump has been an antiabortion president. Yet supporting Trump involves the affirmation that blatant racial prejudice is not disqualifying in an American president. Publicly identifying with the Trump campaign scandalously associates the Christian faith itself with brazen bigotry.
Research
“Is Political Diversity Acceptable to Christians?”
It is clear that evangelical partisans are quite different from their mainline counterparts. For instance, 75 percent of evangelical Democrats believe that a Republican can be a good Christian, compared to 86 percent of mainline Democrats. But only 51 percent of evangelical Republicans believe a Democrat can be a good Christian compared to 71 percent of mainline Republicans. Why?
“No race problem here: Despite summer of protests, many practicing Christians remain ambivalent”
As racial tensions have risen in recent months, a new report reveals that some Christians are becoming less motivated to act on racial justice, and an increasing share say there is “definitely” not a race problem in the country.
“Christians generally, and practicing Christians in particular, have changed their minds on addressing racial injustice, but if anything, they're actually moving away from being motivated,” said David Kinnaman, president of Barna Group.
“It's not a majority of Christians, but it is a segment of Christians who say they're unmotivated or not at all motivated to address racial injustice,” he said, adding that the group has “essentially doubled” in the last year.
Trump’s white evangelical support and family separation
Events
Faith and Politics: Does church or state embody God’s will for history? Sept. 24, 7:30-8:30pm est.
Meet Shadi Hamid, Ross Douthat, Jacqueline Rivers, John Huleatt and Peter Mommsen.
Questions of justice should matter deeply to all people of faith. But why do we so easily imagine that party politics are the answer? Join our online panel discussion with Shadi Hamid, senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, and New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, and Jacqueline Rivers, executive director of the Seymour Institute. Plough’s editor-in-chief, Peter Mommsen, will moderate. We’ll be discussing Plough Quarterly’s Spring issue, Faith and Politics, an online and print foray into the bigger questions we need to ask ourselves in a contentious election year.
Announcement
I joined the leadership committee of Christians Against Trumpism & Political Extremism.