Evangelicalism: Use with Care

When it comes to discussing evangelicals and evangelicalism, more precision would go a long way.

Evangelicals often complain about misuses of these categories. Basically, they don’t want to be lumped in with fundamentalists, who don’t dance, don’t chew, and don’t go with the girls that do. Who wants to be tagged alongside segregationists, creation scientists, and millenarians?

Yet it’s remarkable how happily evangelicals misapply the category to flatter themselves. Jonathan Edwards? Charles Finney? Even Harriet Livermore, who preached before Congress in 1827? (Confession: I only learned of Harriet Livermore while Google-prepping this post.) According to this line of thought, anyone who loved the Bible, loved Jesus, and sought the conversion of unbelievers counts as an evangelical. Like the rest of us, evangelicals appropriate a version of history that flatters themselves.

There’s a critical problem with this category mistake: evangelicalism as we know it derived as a spin-off from modern fundamentalism. It is not the religion of Edwards, Finney, or Livermore, nor could it be.

The meaning of “evangelical” has changed greatly over time. It once meant, simply, “Protestant,” as it largely does in Europe today. Today’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in America does not identify as evangelical in the way that, say, the Reformed Church in America does. Their name goes back to that more ancient usage, as did the Evangelical and Reformed Church, which became part of the United Church of Christ.

The fundamentalist-liberal controversies began in the second half of the nineteenth century and dramatically transformed the American religious landscape. These conflicts emerged in response to the combination of evolutionary science and modern biblical scholarship, both of which called into question the literal, scientific truth of the Bible. Modern science won’t allow us to imagine a 6000 year-old creation, and modern biblical scholarship won’t abide the notions that Moses wrote the Pentateuch or that the Gospels represent eyewitness testimony.

Fundamentalists largely lost their battle with liberalism, a defeat that pushed fundamentalism to the cultural margins. But in the 1940s and 1950s a new movement emerged among religious conservatives. Evangelicals basically adhered to fundamentalist principles, but they sought a renewed engagement with the broader culture. They built new institutions, embraced art and popular culture. They even learned to dance. More than any other individual, Billy Graham embodied this movement toward cultural engagement.

The problem is, no one has ever successfully distinguished evangelicalism from fundamentalism because so much is at stake in the distinction. The rise of the Moral Majority and the Religious Right in the 1970s, combined with conservative movements in major denominations, further blurred the distinction.

Let’s take an example. When conservatives took control of my alma mater, the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, they said they wanted to build a great evangelical institution. (Note: they did not previously regard the seminary as “evangelical.” Southern Baptists largely avoided the term until the 1980s.) Eventually, they wound up firing members who supported women’s ordination. Southern Seminary is now known, among other things, for promoting women’s submission at home and in the church. That looks like a fundamentalist position to many of us, especially in comparison with “evangelical” seminaries like Fuller and Gordon-Conwell.

Now that 81 percent of white evangelicals have voted for Donald Trump, and the group still constitutes his most loyal base of support, the evangelical-fundamentalist distinction looks rather thin.

Experts know and write about the diversity within the evangelical movement, yet even they often use the word indiscriminately in many ways. I learned my lesson as a college student, doing honors research under Valarie Ziegler. My 1987 thesis, “Modern Fundamentalism and the Legacy of Nineteenth Century Revivalism,” demonstrates the enormous gap between, say, a Jerry Falwell and a Charles Finney. Finney knew nothing of evolutionary science or critical biblical scholarship, and his social views clearly identified him as a progressive. Falwell started out as a segregationist, then promoted the broad range of views we now identify with the Religious Right. Yet Falwell’s associates claimed a direct line between Finney and fundamentalism.

People apply the term evangelical to all sorts of people who diverge in significant ways. Is the black church evangelical? If so, why don’t African Americans support Trump like white evangelicals do? Do we include socially progressive evangelicals like Tony Campolo and Shane Claiborne — who prefer the term “red letter Christians” — alongside a Franklin Graham? How do we account for Southern Christians, who rarely identified as evangelicals before the rise of Jerry Falwell, and whose religious history is deeply imbricated with slavery and segregation?

White evangelicals’ scandalous affinity for Donald Trump leads many to question the viability of the movement itself. And well it should. It would also help if we’d be clear in what we’re talking about.

Milestones in My Journey Out of Evangelicalism

In many ways I still identify as an evangelical. I love Jesus, and I experience the sort of personal relationship with Jesus that evangelicals celebrate and psychologists are getting uncomfortably close to explaining away. I love the Bible too. And I love talking about Jesus. Those used to be the defining characteristics of an evangelical.

But times change. For a very long time evangelicals have tied themselves to the notion of biblical inerrancy, the notion that the Bible is always both consistent and correct with respect to morality, theology, and history. (It isn’t.) More recently, I’m growing suspicious that evangelicalism has reduced itself to little more than branding for a movement that subordinates women and condemns LGBTQ persons, a movement that so authoritarian and hypocritical that it will buy anything that advances its cultural interests. 

I realize this is a harsh judgment to make. And I confess that it comes in anger, as white evangelicals more than anyone else ushered Donald Trump to power. What’s especially striking about that is that few white evangelicals ever accepted Barack Obama as a fellow Christian, despite his consistent and compelling testimony. I know huge policy gaps separate evangelicals from an Obama-style Democrat, but the evangelical rejection of Obama’s faith leads me to suspect there’s a strong dose of racial resentment in that judgment. If this is harsh, and if this is angry, so be it. I hope this piece is helpful to someone else.

Maybe you’re trying to sort out your own relationship with evangelicalism. Like millions of other people, you have encountered Christ in an evangelical context, a relationship that brings you vitality, purpose, and joy – but that evangelical framework no longer works for you. If that’s true, maybe you can relate to these milestones.

Fornication. Having not grown up in church, I committed to Christ just before my fifteenth birthday. I quickly got the message that I should be reading my Bible. By my senior year in high school, I’d read it all the way through. And I had a question: “Y’all are always telling us to avoid premarital sex because it’s a sin. Well, I’m living that code, but I just read the whole Bible, and it doesn’t say that.” My youth director tried to convince me otherwise, but the truth is, he didn’t have such a great argument. A few days later I received a greeting card in the mail. Under his signature, he wrote, “Proverbs 3:5-6.”

In the King James the passage reads, “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” In other words, my youth pastor told me to stop thinking for myself and accept the authority of my teachers.

The Synoptic Problem. While reading the Bible through, I noticed that the Gospels often tell the same stories – but in very different ways. Whenever I noticed this phenomenon, I just assured myself there must be an answer I just couldn’t understand. But during a college visit I sat in on an introductory New Testament class. The professor, Richard Batey, was using a handy-dandy pull-down chart to explain how the Gospels were composed. The color-coded chart indicated which passages Matthew, Mark, and Luke had in common, and which were unique to each Gospel.

Professor Batey didn’t need to explain the rest. Because I knew the Gospels so well by that time, the main point was immediately clear: the Gospels must have some kind of literary dependence among themselves. In other words, contradictions among the Gospels must be intentional, not just different ways of remembering the same stories. I would never see the Bible the same way again.

Charlatans. Just after my conversion I attended revival services at a local church with some friends. The preacher, a future president of the Alabama Baptist Convention, was preaching on Satan. Suddenly the sound system began to crackle and fail. The preacher accounted this phenomenon to the devil: “This happens any time I preach on Satan.” I was impressed.

At the time.

My freshman year in college I began visiting Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, where the famous Adrian Rogers was the pastor. It bothered me a little that church members frequently cited their pastor as the ultimate authority: “Dr. Rogers says….” One Sunday Rogers used John 2:11 – the story of Jesus turning water into wine – as an argument that Christians should not consume alcohol.

Let me say that again. He used a miracle in which Jesus creates wine to prove that wine is sinful.

His basic argument was that ancient wine had no alcoholic content. Even at 18 I knew how to chase down that bogus argument. Of course the wine, albeit weak by today’s standards, was alcoholic! I concluded that one of two things must be true: either (a) this preacher is inexcusably lazy and doesn’t do his homework, or (b) he lacks integrity. Oh, wait: (a) is a subcategory of (b).

I stopped visiting Bellevue. And I remembered the guy with the skeevy sound system.

AA and Gandhi. My church had taught me that anyone who did not know Jesus was bound for hell. I struggled with that doctrine, but I continued to believe it. Then my Dad entered treatment for his alcoholism. I rejoice that he’s been sober over 30 years, and he continues to stay in Alcoholics Anonymous. My Dad became a person I could really admire. But that created a problem: through AA, God became very important for him, but Jesus did not (at that time). Could I affirm God’s clear blessing in my Dad’s life without giving up my doctrinal belief?

About the same time, the film Gandhi came out. Yes, it’s just a movie. But the movie conveyed a sense of holiness that I could not deny. A few years later I got to meet Arun Gandhi, Mohandas Gandhi’s grandson, and I experienced that same feeling. Over the years it’s happened countless times: the experience of profound holiness in the presence of non-Christians. Even as a college student, I realized: I can’t believe in a God who sends people to eternal damnation on the basis of their doctrinal beliefs. Sorry.

Southern Baptists and Abortion. In college I wrote a paper on “The Southern Baptist Witness on Race.” The project required me to call denominational offices, pore over denominational archives – in short, to do real history. It was fun!

Along the way I got a surprise. In 1971 the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution that favored abortion as an option under certain conditions, including “the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.” But wait. I thought Southern Baptists opposed abortion!

Encountering that resolution showed me that church teaching can change very, very quickly. Later I encountered Randall Balmer’s compelling argument that evangelical strategists embraced the pro-life movement as a means of leveraging support for other causes – particularly their right to run segregated schools and colleges.

The Southern Baptist Takeover. My church tradition was Southern Baptist. I served Southern Baptist churches, was founder and president of my college’s Baptist Student Union, and even served the denomination as a 2-year volunteer home missionary. I attended the denomination’s flagship seminary.

All the while, fundamentalists were taking control of the Southern Baptist Convention and its agencies, including my seminary. The process took more than a decade, but I was part of the last graduating class before my seminary fell under fundamentalist control. And yes, I was president of the student resistance club, the Whitsitt Society for Baptist Freedom.

We students were allowed to share a picnic with the new seminary trustees to try and establish some form of dialog. Over the years I’d seen some questionable things from the fundamentalists, especially baseless accusations against my professors. And I’d heard rumors of even worse: famous pastors condemning seminary professors as heretics without even reading their works.

One key debate involved the question of women in ministry. I shared with a trustee, “You know that the first Baptists ordained women as deacons?” He was sure I was wrong, so like a good little seminarian I offered to photocopy the primary sources and mail them to him.

You know the answer. I never heard from the guy. Of course I didn’t.

I. J. Mosala. By the time I entered graduate studies in New Testament, I’d changed my mind on many things. I accepted contradictions and multiple sources in the Bible. I’d come to celebrate women’s leadership and the full inclusion of LGBTQ persons in the church. I certainly had abandoned the notion that non-Christians are categorically bound for hell.

But fundamentalism runs deep. I still hadn’t fully grappled with the complexities raised by Scripture. The pieces crowded my head, but the puzzle hadn’t come together. Then I read Itumeleng J. Mosala’s Biblical Hermeneutics and Black Theology in South Africa. It’s not widely read, but Mosala demonstrates directly how some biblical authors promote the interests of oppression – even Luke, the supposed patron of the poor. I haven’t read Mosala in a long time, and I imagine I might disagree with him on some points now. But I could not escape his basic argument: not only does the Bible include diverse points of view, it also contains dangerous material that can’t be explained away.

I’m still ashamed that it took me so long to accept this reality. Back in high school I’d preached a sermon about Saul’s failure to kill all the Amalekites and their cattle – and somehow the ethical problems eluded me. That’s how thick the fundamentalist fog rolls in.

Religion is social. However much we might believe religion is about our personal mystical experiences or the stuff we believe, a religious journey is always formed by relationships, communities, world events, and the like. My journey out of evangelicalism is just one of many, but it is a path many, many people share in broad outline.

Way back in 2012 I wrote a blog chronicling some of this process: “Where Do ‘Liberal’ Bible Scholars Come From?” Picking up the theme, my colleague Peter Enns invited other biblical scholars, along with some pastors, to share their own stories. If you’re pushing away from an evangelical identity that asks you to set your brain aside, maybe you’ll connect with one of these stories.

Lenten Sermon: Mark 8:31-38 in 2018

Mark 8:31-38

Three little gospel nuggets.

1.       You can talk yourself into defeat, or you can talk yourself into victory. When you speak to yourself the right way, strength, courage, vision and healing come.

2.       We have authority as believers in Christ to bring heaven’s will to earth by acting in partnership with God…What He allows or disallows—is all that we can allow or disallow here in the earth.

3.       You will only increase when you stop being stingy and release - There is a blessing in the release. Stop keeping your gifts to yourself! He gifted you so that you could provoke somebody else!

Joel Osteen.

Joyce Meyer.

T. D. Jakes.

Snapshots in messianic dreaming, Twitter style. American style.

Messianic dreaming. The idea that God will break into human affairs and make things right. Pain and wickedness will pass away. God will exercise authority over all things. It will work out.

Mix in a little American consumerism, and messianic dreaming turns out well for us. By us, I mean me. Our you (individual name). Or you (individual name). Or you (individual name). You can talk yourself into victory. You have authority to bring heaven on earth. You will increase. God can break in and make it all work out – with a little pinch of consumerist positivity – for you.

Thank you, Joel Osteen, Joyce Meyer, and T. D. Jakes, for making this all so clear. Messianic dreaming.

                So Peter calls Jesus aside. It’s what you do when you don’t want to embarrass somebody. You don’t correct them in front of everyone. You take a quiet minute, and you set them straight. It’s what David Mellott would do.

                For if ever there were a time for messianic dreaming, it would be right now. Pick your threat. Just pick one. It’s always the right time for messianic dreaming. You could be in a Syrian city, huddling cold and hungry with your children, and wondering why God doesn’t stop the shelling. You could be a student from Parkland, Florida, wondering why powerful men and women – who have never looked at a loaded gun from the wrong end – wondering how long they can evade your questions. You could live at low altitude, wondering what will happen to your livelihood when the rising salt water makes farming impossible – knowing people who matter don’t care, and wondering what kind of life your kids will have if you migrate. You could be the parent of a black or brown or Jewish child, seeing the rise in racial harassment in our public schools, and wonder why God won’t turn this country around. You could be pretty much anywhere, pick your threat, and wonder why God’s healing has not arrived.

                You could pull Jesus aside, couldn’t you, and maybe correct him? If you let your emotions out, come on now, you might just scold Jesus. Because as a messiah, as a messiah… let’s just hope Jesus has some time before the messianic evaluation forms are due. It’s only compassionate to tell him now. Because he seems to have misread the job description.

                Maybe Peter could go nicer on Jesus, but Peter tries to be kind. At least he pulls Jesus aside.

                Jesus does not save us by jumping in on our behalf. He will not save us by taking our place, even on the cross. He saves us by coming in alongside us. By becoming one of us, entering the fullness of human reality, by becoming vulnerable to growing, to grieving, to wondering – not instead of us, but right alongside of us.

                This is how Jesus answers Peter’s messianic fantasy. We may share in Jesus’ journey. We may walk the road with him. We will face opposition alongside him. We will learn the way of the cross. We hand over our deeds to our own lives.

                This gospel does not dominate the airwaves. It won’t sell many books. Those who proclaim it probably won’t need insurance for their private jets. Messianic dreaming sells. Christ-like living might not. Jesus’ gospel is poor marketing.

                Let’s face it… we’d rather not buy it, either. Or have to sell it.

               

These days, there’s no need for heroes. The kids from Parkland, Florida, like Emma González and David Hogg, staring down the emissaries of hate with clarity and truth, those young people are true heroes. Thank God for them. But we do not need them to take our place in the work of grace and justice. We need Jesus to walk alongside us, as we walk with one another.

                We don’t need another moment, another crisis either. We don’t have to look back to Fanny Lou Hamer, or Dietrich Bonhoeffer, or Daniel Berrigan – as if the days of dangerous witness have passed. Bishops and pastors are calling in. Right now, if we are fully engaged in ministry. Right now, if we speak of Syrian children as fellow human beings in need of shelter; right now, if we cry out for the need to invest in the health and education of poor children; right now, if we confront religious bigotry and dismissive racism, believe me (WINK), right now we won’t have to look for another moment. People will push us, “Pastor, just preach the gospel.” They will demand our silence. They will threaten our jobs.  

                Someone might say, “That’s easy for you to say, Greg. You’re a professor. You have tenure. You actually benefit from speaking out.” I hope you say that. Because there is no more demanding call right now than to serve as a pastor, or as a chaplain, or as a religious educator, as an agent of change – there is no more demanding call than to be out there doing the work of justice and grace. You would be absolutely right.

                We all want heroes. But Jesus call disciples. He demands our lives.

                And the challenge – for Peter, for me, for all of us – the challenge is to believe Jesus. To trust that Jesus, and Jesus alone, will provide a life so much richer, much more vital, and far more abundant than the life we hand over.

                This is grace, this life. We cannot create it for ourselves. We cannot even choose it. But from time to time we do receive a brush-by, a glimpse, a taste of this life. I see how you look after one another. I see you driving one another to the doctor, bearing one another’s burdens.

                Teaching in an outlaw seminary, banned by the Nazis, Dietrich Bonhoeffer remarked: “The physical presence of other Christians is a source of incomparable joy and strength to the believer.”

                May I share an extended quote from Bonhoeffer, his last circular letter from the underground seminary?

A sort of joy exists that knows nothing at all of the heart’s pain, anguish, and dread; it does not last; it can only numb a person for the moment. The joy of God has gone through the poverty of the manger and the agony of the cross; that is why it is invincible, irrefutable. It does not deny the anguish, when it is there, but finds God in the midst of it, in fact precisely there; it does not deny grave sin but finds forgiveness precisely in this way; it looks death straight in the eye, but it finds life precisely within it.

                We live at a moment of intense corporate pain. Our society, once declaring itself a haven for displaced persons, now seeks out black and brown people to deport. It tells our children they need teachers carrying heat. More obviously than we could have imagined, it takes from the poor and gives to the rich. It tells us all to be bitter, fearful, materialistic, shallow, anything but free, anything but joyful. And in the face of this some preachers, SOME PREACHERS, preach the shallow joy that does not know pain.

                But we know a Savior who plumbs the depths of human anguish. We know a Savior who will walk alongside us in our pursuit of grace and justice. We know a Savior who agonized on the cross yet lives in resurrection glory. We know a Savior who, when we hand ourselves over to him, walks with us in joy. Amen.

White Evangelicals, Authoritarianism, and Trump

No man exercised greater influence on me than my grandfather. He died when I was twelve, several years before I came to a Christian confession of my own. Papa was a country Missionary Baptist, member of a church that had an outdoor pool in order to facilitate baptism in “living water.” I remember the quiet intensity of his praying and his faithful preparation every weekend to lead adult Sunday School.

Papa read a great deal despite his eighth grade education. Only recently did I come to understand why his education ended so early: just fourteen, he set out on his own after his mother suffered a mental health collapse that would leave her institutionalized for the rest of her life. I had all the information but never put it all together until my Mom shared the whole story. Compassion for my grandfather, dead over 50 years, moved me to weep for him.

Somehow Papa’s Bible fell to me after his death. Inside I found some study notes, along with a typewritten page of fundamentalist apologetics. You can find the story, marked “false” at Snopes.com, the internet fact-checker. As the story goes, NASA scientists once found themselves stumped by a missing day in their astronomical calculations. A Christian scientist resolved the problem by pointing them to Joshua 10:12-13. There God stops the movement of the sun and the moon – “about a whole day,” as the King James Version renders it – to allow the Israelites extra time to exterminate their enemies.

I suppose my grandfather treasured that story.

Our media teems with analyses of why white evangelicals support Donald Trump. Evangelicals have long touted “family values.” But in the 2016 election they favored a serial adulterer who has no firm connection to an actual congregation over a lifelong United Methodist, and they did so by an 80-16 margin. Some attribute white evangelical support for Trump to the racist disposition of many white voters, which indeed had a measurable impact on the election. Others point to policy issues, abortion and church-state relations, which surely influenced evangelical voters.

By no means am I competent to rank the reasons for white evangelical loyalty to Trump. Messiah College historian John Fea is indeed qualified, and his book on the question will show up this summer. I’m eager to read the book, but I’m also impatient. For now, we might ask what distinctive factors in evangelicals’ DNA might lead them to support an authoritarian candidate like Trump. And Trump was an authoritarian candidate. Saying “I alone can fix it,” and “I know more than the generals,” candidate Trump accused the news media of “fake news” encouraged his supporters to beat up protestors at his rallies, compared US intelligence agencies to Nazis, and attacked the credibility of a judge who happened to be Mexican-American. I would like to highlight a few dimensions of evangelical identity that surely predispose Christian conservatives to tolerate this kind of authoritarianism.

              
First, suspicion of expert opinion thrives among Christian conservatives. The fundamentalist movement emerged as a response to the twin threats of Darwin’s theory of evolution and critical biblical scholarship. Not only did fundamentalists lose the battle to control mainline Protestant denominations, they also lost public respectability. The Scopes Monkey Trial symbolizes their loss of esteem, leading to a broad cultural prejudice against religious conservatives as backwater rubes who oppose science and reason. For these reasons Christian conservatives crave public legitimacy. Alienated from higher education and other conventional sources of knowledge, fundamentalists have been quick to believe what their leaders tell them. Back in 1995 evangelical historian Mark Noll addressed this problem in his classic The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.

                
Second, fundamentalists compensated for their cultural losses by creating alternative institutions, a world of their own. Christian schools, colleges, universities, seminaries, and publishing houses allowed fundamentalists to credential their own experts. Meanwhile, “evangelicals” emerged from the fringes of fundamentalism, establishing their own institutions. We might explain the distinction between evangelicals and fundamentalists in terms’ of evangelicals’ desire for greater integration into the broader society. But that boundary is remarkably porous.* If the Creation Museum may provoke general ridicule, the far more hip Museum of the Bible garners major media attention – but hardly of the flattering variety. Evangelicals and fundamentalists both tie themselves to the notion of biblical inerrancy – a commitment that inevitably leads to cultural conflict. Their institutions may look and feel different, but both groups find it necessary to guard their own sources of truth.

                
My grandfather’s NASA story shows how easily the combination of cultural marginalization and institutional protectionism render Christian conservatives especially susceptible to false narratives, whether actual “fake news” or authoritarian lies. Nine women may accuse senatorial candidate Roy Moore of sexual misconduct, but true believers will believe neither them nor the media sources that report their stories. On a grander scale, most evangelicals reject contemporary climate science, perhaps in numbers large enough to tip the scale on US policy.

                
My grandfather died in 1978, just as the Moral Majority was gaining national prominence. Keen observers noted a shift in the fundamentalist ethos at that point. Christian conservatives began an effort to return from the cultural margins and exercise influence over the larger culture. Imitating pop culture, Christian music and film industries sprang up. Indeed, Christian filmmaking may be at its high point right now. Christian political influence ushered Ronald Reagan to the White House.

                
Few have paid it serious attention until recently, but within the Religious Right a new theological sensitivity emerged – dominionist theology. Dominionists teach that Christians should “take dominion” over culture, electing leaders and enacting laws according to their understanding of God’s will. In short, dominionism is thoroughly authoritarian. Most dominionists are not so extreme, but some preachers will call for the execution of gays and lesbians on biblical grounds. Dominionism represents an extreme form of evangelical authoritarianism, but its influence is growing.

                
Christian fundamentalism emerged as a response to cultural movements that undermined cherished Christian assumptions, especially those tied to the Bible’s literal and scientific accuracy. By rejecting widely accepted sources of knowledge, such as academia and the media, then by building their own sources of authority, Christian conservatives have grown more and more insular – more and more authoritarian. The ultimate expression of evangelical authoritarianism may lie in the home schooling movement. By removing children from the public schools, evangelicals can indoctrinate them in creationist science and theological dominionism. Indeed, Frank Schaeffer, one of the early and most influential home schooling advocates, has said as much. Now an atheist, Schaeffer writes that the home school movement was explicitly designed to “undermine a secular and free vision of America and replace it by stealth with a form of theocracy.”

                
If we take the long view, we should not be surprised that white evangelicals came to support Donald Trump in such large numbers. Trump favored their cherished policies, winning their sympathy despite his, um, complicated personal life. His authoritarian rhetoric troubled few religious conservatives, who are long accustomed to such discourse. And because they do not trust conventional experts and popular news media, evangelicals were ready to believe Trump suffered unfair attacks from the media. “Fake news,” indeed.

*Some readers will take exception to the ways in which I am blurring the categories of evangelicalism and fundamentalism. We may indeed distinguish between the two groups. Fundamentalists tend to hold narrower views concerning what might count for legitimate differences of opinion among Christians, and they generally voice a more negative view of the larger culture. Evangelicalism emerged as a moderating response to both tendencies. But if we pay close attention to how evangelicals and fundamentalists actually use these categories, the distinction all but vanishes. Conservative Christians call themselves evangelical when it favors them. This applies even when they believe women should submit to the leadership of men, oppose equal rights for LGBTQ persons, and believe that persons who do not confess Christ in the way they do are bound for hell. For these reasons I choose not to distinguish between the two groups. After all, 80 percent of “evangelicals” voted for Trump.

Smoke Vision Goggles

Donald Trump and the GOP set off all kinds of smoke this weekend. It’s a remarkable case of “where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” but with a twist. This time the smoke doubles as a smokescreen. With our eyes stinging and our vision clouded, how do we clear our vision?

First, the smokescreen. This morning Donald Trump launched a five-tweet ministorm. Going after Hilary Clinton, Trump touched all three corners of his current Clinton Bermuda Triangle of Bullshit: (1) Clinton’s link to the Steel dossier, (2) the made-up but scary story of Clinton brokering uranium to Russia, and (3) “but her emails.”

Of course, we don’t know whether Clinton herself knew about the Steele dossier, but we do know that David Corn reported the truth about a year ago: Republicans initiated Christopher Steele’s research into Trump, and Democrats picked it up after Trump had secured the GOP nomination. As for the uranium deal, there’s literally no scandal at all. And the emails.... We’re back to that again?

Remarkably, the GOP itself launched an anti-Hillary campaign almost a year after her election loss. The official GOP account tweeted: “The script has flipped on the Russia investigation. Now Hillary and the DNC have explaining to do. Demand answers.” And two House committees have launched investigations of the non-scandal.

One might wonder: Why are Trump and the Republicans so worked up over Hillary Clinton when she’s nowhere near the reins of power? There’s a simple answer: on Friday CNN reported that special  counsel Robert Mueller now has his first criminal indictment. Someone’s about to get arrested in the #TrumpRussia investigation. 

We’re hardly surprised that, facing such a threat, Donald Trump would set off every distracting smoke bomb in his arsenal. What’s more distressing, yet not surprising, is that the Republican Party and its politicians are collaborating. We’re facing the greatest cover-up in US history, a genuine crisis of democracy, and one party is completely down with the deception.

What with all the smoke in the air, almost everyone missed an incredibly important element of the cover-up. At week’s end the Trump administration sought and received a resignation from Dana Boente, US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. The goal, NBC News reports, is for Trump to select Boente’s successor. However ordinary it may look, this is a huge story. Boente served as interim Attorney General after Sally Yates was fired. More to the point, last spring it was Boente’s office that issued subpoenas for business records related to Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security advisor. In other words, Trump has removed a federal prosecutor who is playing a key role in the Russia investigation. 

There’s more. A few days ago Trump took the remarkable step of personally interviewing potential US attorneys for the District of Columbia and the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York. It also appears Trump interviewed a candidate for Southern Florida, where Mar-a-Lago is located and where Trump has conducted suspicious real estate deals with shady Russians. It’s no exaggeration to see this news as chilling. Presidents almost never interview US attorney candidates, as federal prosecutors are not supposed to relate directly to the White House. Indeed, Trump has interviewed no others.

Let’s take one more step. Trump’s special interest in US attorneys seems restricted to the four districts most germane to the #TrumpRussia investigation. I’ll let that pass without further comment.

The cover-up is massive at this point. We may not know the truth beneath it yet, but we do have some facts.

• During his campaign candidate Trump famously claimed he had no deals with Russia. We now know he was negotiating Trump Tower Moscow at that time, a deal that ultimately fell through.
• Candidate Trump openly encouraged Russia to publish dirt on Hillary Clinton, even though he repeatedly voiced skepticism that Russia was involved in the campaign. Put another way, Trump actively assisted the Russians in interfering with a US election by denying the strong judgments of the intelligence committee. 
• Several of Trump’s closest associates are on record denying or failing to disclose (that’s a crime) contacts with Russia during and after the campaign. Among them are a campaign chair, his current attorney general, and a national security advisor. Trump himself played a role in covering up the nature of a meeting that included his son, his son-in-law, his campaign chair, and Kremlin agents.
• And of course Trump fired FBI director James Comey, stating in an interview that he was motivated by the #TrumpRussia investigation. He and his allies have devoted their attention to smearing Robert Mueller as well.

At this point, there’s no smoking gun that proves Trump collaborated with Russia in the 2016 election. But the facts above are incontrovertible. No dispassionate person could view them without judging that a cover-up is almost certainly in play. Thus, this weekend’s smokescreen. We’re facing a big week this week. By the time the smoke clears, our democratic experiment itself will hang in the balance.

February 8 Update: Trump's Lying

The most recent lies from Trump raise deep concerns. The pattern is that his administration lies, hoping their loyalists believe their lies. Once they’re called out on the lies, they act like nothing’s happened.

The lies have more sinister functions. They distract us from the real damage Trump is doing to democracy, and they make it nearly impossible to appeal to actual evidence. These are classic Russian disinformation techniques. Need I mention they go back to the 1920s and 30s as well?

Reporters just discovered that over a period of days during the campaign Sean Spicer referred to a terrorist attack in Atlanta. No such attack ever happened. This is the same pattern as the Kellyanne Conway Bowling Green massacre lie. (Daily Beast, 2/8/17)

Meanwhile, Trump repeats the lie that the murder rate is at its highest point in 45-47 years. Actually, it’s the lowest it’s been in that period, less than half what it was in 1980.

Now, one more. Trump’s list of underreported terror attacks includes places that have never had a terrorist attack! More to the point, the NYTimes shows how heavily covered were almost all of the attacks on the list. (2/8/17)

While this lying is happening, we learn of more Trump corruption. In a lawsuit, Melania Trump actually complains that she lost an opportunity to use her position as first lady for personal profit. But of course the next day the White House denies any such plans. See here and here.  

And of course we now know that Trump himself has never really relinquished his awareness of his own businesses, much less his stake in them. (CBS News, 2/8/17)

February 7 Update

Today’s lone Trump reflection: Trump’s lies & authoritarianism. Links in the comment boxes below.

We start with Lawrence Douglas’ observation that Trump’s lies specially target three institutions: the press, the judiciary, and universities, the very institutions that are committed to pursuing truth and exposing lies. Republicans have long been after universities, trying to reduce them to trade schools rather than centers for disciplined inquiry in all domains of life. The Observer, 2/7/17.

The full scale of Trump’s lying comes out in a NYTimes analysis (2/7/17) of three major lies in one Trump Facebook post on the Muslim Ban. (That’s what we should call it.) I’ve had several very smart people repeat one or more of these lies to me. But they’re lies.

So Trump tweets, “If something bad happens, blame [judge] and court system,” shouldn’t we take that as an implicit threat against the judiciary?

And when Trump tells military personnel the media “have their reasons” for failing to report terrorist attacks, you gotta feel the threat in that too. Here’s the full quote: “All over Europe it’s happening. It’s gotten to a point where it’s not even being reported, and in many cases, the very, very dishonest press doesn’t want to report it. They have their reasons, and you understand that.” New York Times, 2/7/17.

By the way, Bradd Jaffy notes that 48 journalists were killed covering terrorism in 2016 alone. 72 in 2015. NBC news responds that it covered 57 of the 78 attacks, some extensively (2/7/17).

For the full racist agenda of Trump’s claim against the media, see the list of supposedly underreported terrorist attacks his administration put out. Paris? Brussels? Oh, right: covered to death. Most terrorist attacks happen in Asia and Africa, but Trump’s list emphasizes Europe and North America (Telegraph 2/7/17). “The five countries with the highest total impact from terrorism were Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Pakistan and Syria. These five countries accounted for 72 per cent of all deaths from terrorism in 2015, with a total of 21,059 people being killed.”

If we really want to be honest about the racist dimension of Trump’s lies, he doesn’t include mass murderers by white racists in Charleston (against blacks), Victoria, Texas (burned a mosque), and Quebec (against Muslims, by a Trump supporter). In fact, here’s the FBI’s Most Wanted list for domestic terrorism. Mighty white, eh?

Finally, Trump lies a like a five year-old. This morning’s tweet: “I don't know Putin, have no deals in Russia, and the haters are going crazy - yet Obama can make a deal with Iran, #1 in terror, no problem!” (1) Trump has bragged that he knows Putin. It’s on video. (2) Russian investors basically bought Trump out of bankruptcy in 2008, but of course those deals weren’t “in” Russia. And (3) by what sort of logic does a fool defend himself by saying someone else did a bad thing? (Of course, pretty much the whole world things the Iran treaty was a good thing.)

January 31 Update

This week is all about authoritarianism. Yes, we had the immigration order. But it's more than an immigration order, it's the more fundamental threat to our system of checks and balances. Here we go.

Security expert John Schindler points out that Trump has elevated Bannon and Flynn while also displacing the DNI and the Joint Chiefs chair from the National Security Council principals' meeting. Thus, military and intelligence expertise are displaced by politicians and ideology. The Observer, 1/30/17.

The State Department has long had a "Dissent Channel," in which employees could express dissent from national policy without fear of reprisal. When over 100 career people dissented concerning the immigration order, Trump responded with intimidation. Per Sean Spicer: "And if somebody has a problem with that agenda then that does call into question whether or not they should continue in that post or not." (CNN, 1/30/17). This after Trump has already torn the top off the State Department's executive expertise and sent gag orders to other agencies.

Senator Marco Rubio called for information regarding the new immigration order, only to get this: "We were told that the directive was, they were not to share any information today." Politico, 1/30/17.

The situation is so distressing that even conservative commentators are warning of a breakdown in our governing fabric. David Frum imagines a democracy gone down with a whimper in the March 2017 Atlantic.

More alarmist is a piece by Google executive Yonatan Zunger, who pieces a huge conspiracy theory from disparate facts.

• The State Department is all but empty of top-level experience and expertise, vulnerable to whatever Trump might want to do.
• Trump has already filed his 2020 candidacy papers, a rare step that allows him to receive campaign contributions NOW and threatens non-profits who might speak out against him.
• On Wednesday Reuters reported the sale of 19.5% of Rosneft, the Russian state oil company. But of course to whom is unknown. This gels with the Steele dossier, in which it is supposed that Putin promised Trump 19% of Rosneft in return for lifting sanctions against Russia. (I would ask, perhaps this is Putin just trolling us, but it bears attention.)
• Let's remember that Trump has not yielded control of his businesses, even though he claimed he had done so in a press conference, complete with fake (blank) documents. 
• I'll add a couple of pieces here. Trump has just accused our ally Germany of manipulating its currency, at the exact same time that Russia has stepped up its violence in the Ukraine. Let's remember, now: Trump has never criticized Putin, and he once denied Russia was in the Ukraine. 

Meanwhile, all over the country, Republicans are moving to criminalize protest. Ask yourself, what would these measures have meant during the women's suffrage movement? Union organizing? The Civil Rights Movement? Stonewall? (NPR, 1/31/17).

So is alarmism in order?

 

This page is devoted to news and resources related to the struggle to maintain democracy over against the threats raised by a Donald Trump presidency and related anti-democratic initiatives.

New resources will appear daily at the top of this page. Resources are arranged by topic below.

Please suggest new links and people to watch as you're able.

Authoritarianism

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, "Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?" New York Times op-ed from 12/16/16. This piece lays out a full case.

Another full case from Thomas B. Edsall of the New York Times, 12/15/16. Lots of links to actual reports and evidence.

And Jonathan Chait just a week after the election in New York Magazine, 11/11/16: "Trumpistan Week One: The Unthinkable Slowly Becomes Normal."


"Trump Posse Browbeats Republicans." How Trump allies use intimidation to silence GOP critics. Politico piece by Rachel Bade, 12/21/16.

"Dear America, Why Did You Let Us Down?" Concern from Australia. Op-ed in the New York Times by Lisa Pryor, 12/16/16.

The Professor Watchlist has generated numerous stories. Here's one from Professor Tobin Miller Shearer in the Missoula Independent, 12/15/16.

Jamelle Bouie of Slate puts the North Carolina's legislature's attack on gubernatorial authority in the light of Trumpism, racism, and the decline of the GOP. 12/15/16

Trump cuts Twitter out of Silicon Valley meeting because Twitter refused to create a "Crooked Hillary" emoji. Nancy Scola in Politico, 12/14/16.

"The Republican War on Democracy," Jason Sattler op-ed in USAToday, 12/21/16.

David French of the National Review on how Trump is abandoning his promises to supporters. 12/21/16.

Paul Waldman of the Washington Post, "How conservatives will be forced to fall in line behind Trump," on Trump's authoritarian tactics. 12/21/16.

Messianic messaging from Trump and from the GOP. Second photo from @dandresner. 12/27/16

As things reach a boiling point with the intelligence community, the Wall Street Journal reports that Trump is planning to restructure the CIA. This is truly chilling, should he get away with it: he doesn’t like the results, so he crushes the agency.

CNBC reports that "Office of Government Ethics Director Walter Shaub emailed Trump aides in November to lament that despite his office's repeated outreach, "we seem to have lost contact with the Trump-Pence transition since the election." 1/7/17

Government Ethics Director Walter Shaub also wrote Senators Shumer and Warren to complain that Trump is rushing through his appointees -- so much so that the office lacks time to gather information appropriately. Here's the letter. 1/7/17.

I don't have time to link this information, but it's easily documented. During Trump's 1/11/17 press conference Trump:

• Refused to answer questions from CNN, calling it a "fake news" organization.
• Showed off piles of folders that supposedly document his distancing himself from his businesses. The pages were blank.
• Threatened key intelligence agencies, saying they were acting like Nazis.

Disturbing News Related to Trump Appointees 

(in order of threat)

Monica Crowley, national security communication director.

• CNN discovers over 50 instances of plagiarism in a 2012 book by Monica Crowley, Trump pick for national security communications. During the campaign, Crowley encouraged Vladimir Putin to reveal the Clinton emails -- how'd she know? Demonstrating its impeccable commitment to ethics, the Trump campaign issues a statement: "HarperCollins—one of the largest and most respected publishers in the world—published her book which has become a national best-seller. Any attempt to discredit Monica is nothing more than a politically motivated attack that seeks to distract from the real issues facing this country." Later we learn that large sections of her doctoral dissertation were plagiarized -- other works too. 

Betsy DeVos, Education.

• DeVos directly lied in her Senate committee hearing, claiming she had never served on the board of her parents' foundation. She was listed as an officer for 7 years. The Intercept 1/18/17.
• Betsy DeVos, Trump's Education pick, hasn't finished her ethics paperwork, but they're forcing the hearing anyway. Remember, DeVos is an actual enemy of public education who has never participated in public education other than to undermine it. She's up today (Jan 17). CNN 1/16/17.

Lt. General Mike Flynn, national security adviser

• Meeting with leader of Austria's right-wing Freedom Party, a guy with a warm relationship to Putin. Nick Baumann, Huffington Post, 12/20/16.  
• General Flynn again. His nutty son -- the one who promoted Pizzagate -- tweets an article to the effect that Dad should be in charge of a reconfigured national intelligence structure. Linked embedded through this Laura Rosen tweet. 1/17/17. 
• Adam Khan tweets that the Obama administration fired Flynn for leaking classified information -- twice. 1/20/17.

Mick Mulvaney, budget

• "Do we really need government-funded research at all?" Julia Belluz at Vox, 12/21/16.
• "Trump's Budget Director Pick Spoke at a John Birch Society Event," just last July, Pema Levy in Mother Jones, 12/19/21. 

Tom Price, Health and Human Services

•  Health and Human Services nominee Tom Price bought a fair amount of stock ($1000-15,000) in a hip replacement tech company, one week before introducing (!!!) a bill that delayed implementation of regulations that would have affected the company. Said company contributed to his campaign fund both before and after the bill was introduced. Business Insider. 1/17/17.

Wilbur Ross, Commerce

• Nor has ethics paperwork been filed for Wilbur Ross, Commerce nominee. 

Jeff Sessions, Attorney General.

• Attorney General pick Jeff Sessions denounced by a circuit court in Alabama: "the misconduct of the Attorney General in this case far surpasses in both extensiveness and measure the totality of any prosecutorial misconduct ever previously presented to or witnessed by this court" while AG of Alabama in 1996. CNN, 12/21/16. 
• Elizabeth Wydra reports on Sessions' horrible track record as Alabama's Attorney General. Slate. 1/9/17. 

Corruption in the Trump Administration 

As far as I'm aware, Trump never signed over his business interests to anyone, including his sons. Daily News, 1/23/17.

"Trump team discussing 'half-blind' trust for conflicts of interest," Josh Gerstein at Politico, 12/21/16.

Carrie Levine of the Center for Public Integrity, "Donald Trump's sons behind nonprofit selling access to president-elect," 12/19/16. By the way, they are on no other nonprofit boards.


"Under political pressure, Kuwait cancels major event at Four Seasons, switches to Trump's D.C. hotel," Judd Legum at thinkprogress.org, 12/19/21.

Worries that a Trump administration might destroy or alter government data: "How Trump's White House Could Mess with Government Data," Clare Malone at fivethirtyeight.com, 12/15/16.

No sooner does the Office of Government Ethics blast Trump's plan for running his business through his sons as inadequate, the House Oversight chair calls in him for a private, transcribed interview. As CNN puts it, Rep Chaffetz is more worried about bad publicity for Trump than about Trump's conflicts of interest. CNN reporting, 1/13/17.

Russia and Trumpism

A single must-read on Donald Trump and why he poses an alarming threat to the stability of the United States. His embrace of Russia reflects implications with big-time organized cartels in the former Soviet Union, all of which link to Vladimir Putin. Reported with footnotes by James S. Henry in The American Interest. 12/19/16. 

On the Russian threat to the United States through Trump. Sarah Kendzior shares excerpts from Soviet bloc intelligence agencies, via stories in European news outlets like Bild. They knew Trump was evading taxes and cultivated relationships with him back in the 1980s. Check out the photos, with English translations at this story, posted 12/15/16.

PBS Frontline has a new piece on Putin and the larger picture of what he's doing. So does Michael Crowley (long piece) in Politico, 12/16/16.

Really happening: our allies are concerned that they can no longer trust US intelligence with Trump possibly compromised by Russia. Here's a piece by intelligence expert John Schindler in the Observer (1/22/17).

• I've already posted a couple of Israeli articles to the same effect, and the Times of London is pointing out the same thing, per this tweet. 

We've been pointing out Russia's desire to take advantage of instability in the Balkans. See this piece by Petri Makela in Medium (1/16/17). 

Finally, I've been reluctant to post the three-part Financial Times report on how Putin-aligned criminals essentially bailed Trump out of bankruptcy years ago. It's so technical I could barely follow it. I know this is Alternet/Daily Kos, but it summarizes those stories in a helpful way. (1/10/17).

  New York Times lead editorial asks about Trump's ties with Russia. 12/15/16.

FBI and CIA agree that Russia intervened in the election in order to promote Trump's chances. Adam Entous and Ellen Nakashima in the Washington Post, 12/16/21.

A Canadian take: "Russian's American Coup," Scott Gilmore in Maclean's. 12/12/16.

David Frum argues that China and Russia are playing Trump in the Atlantic (12/19/16): "Foreign Policy Poker with Donald Trump."

A 1988 Washington Post story expressing concern that the USSR had cultivated Donald Trump. Follow @sarahkendzior for running discussion. 1988.

Sarah Kendzior tracks Trump's involvement with Russia all the way back through the USSR days in Quartz, 12/23. This is a must read.

Just before the election David Corn reports intelligence concerns about Trump being coopted by Russia in Mother Jones. 11/30/16.

The Washington Post editorial board approached the Rubicon in suggesting that Trump might in factbe a Russian agent (12/30/16). It’s not an accusation, but an expression of concern. Consider this paragraph:

Why is Mr. Trump so dismissive of Russia’s dangerous behavior? Some say it is his lack of experience in foreign policy, or an oft-stated admiration for strongmen, or naivete about Russian intentions. But darker suspicions persist. Mr. Trump has steadfastly refused to be transparent about his multibillion-dollar business empire. Are there loans or deals with Russian businesses or the state that were concealed during the campaign? Are there hidden communications with Mr. Putin or his representatives? We would be thrilled to see all the doubts dispelled, but Mr. Trump’s odd behavior in the face of a clear threat from Russia, matched by Mr. Putin’s evident enthusiasm for the president-elect, cannot be easily explained.

In refuting the intel reports, Trump continually repeats talking points showing up on Russian propaganda. Lots – I mean, lots – of people notice that the time lapse between a line showing up on Russian media and coming from Trump can be as short as 20-25 minutes. The same thing happened regarding ramping up the US nuclear arsenal.

Two Israeli papers report that Israel is considering whether it can continue to trust the US with sensitive information. Either they've decided this on their own, or they've been warned by US personnel, per some accounts. The fear is that intel will go through Trump to Russia and eventually to Iran. Sources: Buzzfeed 1/13/17, Yediot Ahronot 1/12/17, Haaretz 1/12/17. This means that our own intelligence agencies believe Trump may be in Putin's pocket.

Regarding the Buzzfeed dossier, the British newspaper the Independent reports that Christopher Steele, the former spy who compiled the dossier, was deeply frustrated that the FBI seemed not to act on his concerns. He reported that Trump had conspired to downplay the Russian invasion of the Ukraine before the Trump campaign followed through by modifying the GOP platform with respect to the Ukraine. The report also documents Senator McCain's significant efforts to check out the story even before the election. So alarmed was Steele that he continued working after his contract expired. 1/14/17.

Meanwhile, two investigations emerge. A Senate panel will look into Russia's involvement with the election, including possible ties between Trump and Russia (NPR 1/13/17), and a Department of Justice inquiry into the FBI's handling of the Clinton email situation in the context of the election (CNN 1/12/17).

Adam Khan (@Khanoisseur) tweets that Trump rep Carter Page had multiple meetings with Russian brokers who stood under US sanction, including Russian spies. You just have to read the reporting he's bringing out: huge money passing back and forth between Trump people and Russians. Among other things, he's sharing a $10 million fine against Trump Taj Mahal for illegal money laundering. Here's one story from Narcosphere (10/23/16), looking back at the history.

Back in October the Financial Times was tracking Trump's likely ties to dirty money from the former Soviet bloc. This, from a period in which Trump was financially vulnerable. Tom Burgis, 10/19/16.

Related to the CNN & Buzzfeed revelations of a report involving Trump collusion with Russia, a few items.

• David Corn, who first broke the story of a spy who knew about Trump working with Russia, reflects on his interview with that spy. Mother Jones, 1/13/17. 
• Since Trump's press conference, in which he said he knew better than to misbehave in Russia, an old report surfaces. A Hungarian model says Trump asked her to come to his room in Moscow in 2013. The Hungarian story linked here is November 2016. She first discussed the incident on Hungarian TV in May 2016.

Racism, Pervasive

FoxNews tweets Bill O'Reilly saying, "The left wants power taken away from the white establishment and they want a profound change in the way America is run." 12/21/16

Lancaster, PA: Jewish family flees community, hopefully temporarily, after Breitbart and other outlets blame them for the end of a school Christmas play. Lancasteronline, 12/22/16.

Ezra Klein interviews Heather McGee of Demos on Trump and racism. 63 minutes. 12/21/16. "Race remains the organizing principle in American politics."

White Supremacy on the Loose

White supremacists target Jews in Montana town, supporting Richard Spencer. Carimah Townes at thinkprogress.org, 12/18/16.

Resisting Trump 

"Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda."  Download the PDF.

Jeff Colgan of Brown University has created a "Risk of Democratic Erosion" reading list. 

Facebook "Prophetic Resistance" group.

Cognitive scientist George Lakoff on "How to Help Trump." 12/15/16.

Key Twitter Accounts:  

• @sarahkendzior (Sarah Kendzior)
• @jbouie (Jamelle Bouie)
• @jonathanchait (Jonathan Chait)
• @DavidCornDC (David Corn)
• @davidfrum (David Frum)
• @mashagessen (Masha Gessen, a Russian journalist)
• @Kasparov63 (Garry Kasparov, Russian chess champion and exile)
• @EvanMcMullin (Evan McMullin)