Christians and Christianity

Subterms

    More stories

    • 75 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      White Evangelicals Shun Morality for Power

      by

      Evangelical Christians castigated Bill Clinton in wake of his “improper relationship” with the White House intern Monica Lewinsky. He had sinned. He would be stoned.Franklin Graham, the evangelical minister, wrote in The Wall Street Journal in 1998 that Clinton’s “extramarital sexual behavior in the Oval Office now concerns him and the rest of the world, not just his immediate family,” and that “private conduct does have public consequences.”He concluded:“Mr. Clinton’s sin can be forgiven, but he must start by admitting to it and refraining from legalistic doublespeak. According to the Scripture, the president did not have an ‘inappropriate relationship’ with Monica Lewinsky — he committed adultery. He didn’t ‘mislead’ his wife and us — he lied. Acknowledgment must be coupled with genuine remorse. A repentant spirit that says, ‘I’m sorry. I was wrong. I won’t do it again. I ask for your forgiveness,’ would go a long way toward personal and national healing.”But Mr. Graham never demanded the same of Donald Trump. To the contrary, he became one of Trump’s biggest defenders.When a tape was released during the 2016 campaign of Trump bragging years earlier about sexually assaulting women, Graham revealed his true motives: It wasn’t religious piety, but rather raw politics.He wrote on Facebook that Trump’s “crude comments” could not be defended, “but the godless progressive agenda of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton likewise cannot be defended.” He continued, “The most important issue of this election is the Supreme Court.”The Supreme Court represents a more lasting power than the presidency, a way to lock in an ideology beyond the reach of election cycles and changing demographics at least for a generation.In an interview with Axios on HBO in 2018, Graham said of his support of Trump, “I never said he was the best example of the Christian faith. He defends the faith. And I appreciate that very much.”The courts are central to that supposed defense, in Graham’s calculation.Case in point, his rigid defense of Brett Kavanaugh, who was accused by Christine Blasey Ford of cornering her in a bedroom at a 1982 house party. Graham dismissed the allegations as “not relevant” and said of the episode:Well, there wasn’t a crime that was committed. These are two teenagers, and it’s obvious that she said no and he respected it and walked away — if that’s the case, but he says he didn’t do it. He just flat out says that’s just not true. Regardless if it was true, these are two teenagers and she said no and he respected that, so I don’t know what the issue is. This is just an attempt to smear his name, that’s all.The hypocrisy of white evangelicals, taken into full context, shouldn’t have been shocking, I suppose, but as a person who grew up in the church (although I’m not a religious person anymore), it was still disappointing.I had grown up hearing from pulpits that it was the world that changed, not God’s word. The word was like a rock. A lie was a lie, yesterday, today and tomorrow, no matter who told it.I had hoped that there were more white evangelicals who embraced the same teachings, who would not abide by the message the Grahams of the world were advancing, who would stand on principle.But I was wrong. A report for the Pew Research Center published last week found that, contrary to an onslaught of press coverage about evangelicals who had left the church, disgusted by its embrace of the president, “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.”That’s right, the lying, philandering, thrice-married Trump, who has been accused by dozens of women of sexual misconduct or assault, may actually have grown the ranks of white evangelicals rather than shrunk them.To get some perspective on this, I reached out to an expert, Anthea Butler, a professor of religious studies and Africana studies and the chair of the religious studies department at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also the author of the recently released book “White Evangelical Racism.”As Professor Butler told me, the reason that some people might be surprised by these findings is that “they believed the hype.” For years, evangelicals had claimed that they were upholding morality and fighting injustice. But what the movement has really been since the 1970s, said Butler, is “a political arm of the Republican Party.” As Butler put it, evangelicals now “use moral issues as a wedge to get political power.”Butler concluded, “We need to quit coddling evangelicals and allowing them to use these moral issues to hide behind, because it’s very clear that that’s not what the issue is. The issue is that they believe in anti-vaxxing, they believe in racism, they believe in anti-immigration, they believe that only Republicans should run the country and they believe in white supremacy.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram. More

    • 50 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      The Trump Prophets Regroup

      by

      When you are in the business of prophecy, what do you do when prophecy fails?This spring, the media mogul Stephen E. Strang made an unusual apology to readers in the pages of his glossy magazine.Mr. Strang presides over a multimillion-dollar Pentecostal publishing empire, Charisma Media, which includes a daily news site, podcasts, a mobile app and blockbuster books. At 70, he is a C.E.O., publisher and seasoned author in his own right. Despite all that, Mr. Strang worried something had gone awry.“I’ve never been a prophet,” he wrote in a pleading March editor’s note. “But there were a number of prophets who were very certain that Trump would be elected.”This had not come to pass. Mr. Strang continued, “I hope that you’ll give me the grace — and Charisma Media the grace — of missing this, in a manner of speaking.”Over the past five years, he had hitched his professional fate to the Trump presidency, in a particularly cosmic way: promoting, almost daily, the claim that Trump’s rise to power was predestined by God. Interviewed in Mr. Strang’s various platforms, a rotating cast of religious leaders spoke with mystic authority on this subject.Where secular pundits were blindsided by Mr. Trump’s 2016 victory, the prophets of Charisma had been right. And they predicted another sweeping victory for Mr. Trump in 2020. For Mr. Strang, the last year presented the following question: When you are in the business of prophecy, what do you do when prophecy fails?Mr. Strang reflected on this question in a series of interviews last month.He mused, “God has plans and purposes we don’t understand.”This month, Mr. Strang will release his first post-election book, titled “God and Cancel Culture.” The text does not dwell long on questions of prophecy, failed or otherwise. Instead, it skips into the pandemic political zeitgeist, approvingly featuring vaccine skeptics like Stella Immanuel and megachurch pastors who defied lockdowns. The election conspiracist and pillow salesman Mike Lindell does the introduction.Mr. Strang seems to have discovered that one way to handle being publicly wrong is to change the subject and to pray readers stick around.Beyond the spiritual test of unrealized prophecies, there are very earthly stakes here: Under Mr. Strang’s stewardship, Charisma had grown from a church magazine to a multipronged institution with a slew of New York Times best sellers, millions of podcast downloads and a remaining foothold in print media, with a circulation of 75,000 for its top magazine. It is widely regarded as the flagship publication of the fast-growing Pentecostal world, which numbers over 10 million in the United States. With its mash-up of political and prophetic themes, Charisma had tapped a sizable market and electoral force. In 2019, one poll found that more than half of white Pentecostals believed Mr. Trump to be divinely anointed, with additional research pointing to the importance of so-called prophecy voters in the 2016 election.In his new book, Mr. Strang mentions the former president only in passing, with far more attention going to topics such as the coming Antichrist and loathed government overlords seeking to stamp out religion wholesale.Mr. Strang summed it up, “The fact is there are people who want to cancel Christianity.”“Christians and other conservatives need to wake up and stand up,” Mr. Strang said in an interview. “It says that right on the cover of the book.”The supernatural and mass media have long been fused in the story of Pentecostalism. In 1900s Los Angeles, Aimee Semple McPherson broadcast news-style reports of miracles and prophetic words over her own radio station in Echo Park. Oral Roberts conducted healing crusades through the TV screen. The duo Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker mastered the flashy style of prime time talk shows.Mr. Strang’s journalism career began in Florida as a rookie reporter at The Sentinel Star, where he covered more mundane topics like police and town hall meetings. In 1975, Mr. Strang founded Charisma, then a small periodical put out by Calvary Assembly of God, a congregation in the Orlando area that he attended with his wife. Mr. Strang bought the magazine from the parent church in 1981 and dove into religious publishing.In time, Charisma prospered. The editorial voice had the sunny boosterism of a hometown newspaper, covering the personalities of the Pentecostal world, an audience that Mr. Strang believed was woefully underserved. While competitors such as Christianity Today courted the buttoned-up elite of American evangelicalism, Charisma cornered a niche market of what are called charismatic Christians, set apart by their interest in gifts of the spirit, including things like healings, speaking in tongues and modern-day prophecy. Mr. Strang eschewed matters of stuffy dogma for eye-popping tales about the Holy Spirit moving through current events. Editorial meetings would focus on looking for what one former employee called “the spiritual heat” behind the headlines of the day.“We didn’t want to become the kind of boring publications many ‘religious’ journals are,” Mr. Strang wrote in an early editor’s note. “That is why we went first class with this publication.”In time, he surpassed competing publications. With a slick and dependable product, Mr. Strang unified diverse groups who might otherwise squabble over doctrine or not attend the same kinds of churches at all.“Strang became the ultimate Pentecostal businessman,” said John Fea, a historian of evangelicalism at Messiah University. “At Charisma, he fused the marketplace, faith and entrepreneurship.”Mr. Strang’s project stretched to include a book imprint, several spinoff magazines and educational materials for religious schools. By 2000, the company had expanded to a plush $7.5 million, 67,000-square foot headquarters outside Orlando. At the time, The Orlando Sentinel reported that the company employed about 200 people and expected revenue that year of $30 million.Yet the internet upended the world of publishing. By 2015, when Mr. Trump began his quest for the White House, Charisma, like much of the media industry, was dealing with declines in print advertising, revenue and circulation.Mr. Strang did not initially support Mr. Trump’s candidacy, but once the nomination had been clinched, a new theme rippled through the pages of Charisma: Mr. Trump was not just some ally of political convenience, he was anointed by God.In the months to come, the pages and airwaves of Charisma featured a range of religious leaders and lay people telling of a Trump victory. Each claimed that God had revealed — in dreams, visions or ethereal signs — that Mr. Trump would take the presidency. There was, for example: Jeremiah Johnson, a youthful seer from Florida (“a relatively young man but has remarkably accurate prophetic gifts”); Kim Clement, a onetime heroin user from South Africa (“he reveals the heartbeat of God”); and Frank Amedia, a Jew-turned-evangelical preacher with a penchant for spiritual warfare (“known for his bold and accurate prophetic words”).At this time, Charisma’s staff was producing 15 stories a day, many related to the election. (Typical headlines read: “Prophecy: God Sent Donald Trump to Wage War Against Destructive Spirits” or “Prophecy: Donald Trump Is Unstoppable Because the Lord Is Unstoppable.”)“Running stories about politics got clicks. And stories about prophetic words also got clicks,” Taylor Berglund, a former editor at Charisma, said. “So you combine these two and you had the most popular articles on the site.”Monthly readership of the Charisma website rose to somewhere between two and three million, Mr. Berglund said. “There was a real incentive to keep posting like that,” he said.Leah Payne, a scholar of religion at Portland Seminary, said there has long been “a real appetite in the Pentecostal community” for the kinds of prophecies that took off at Charisma during those months, delivered by people “who believe that the Holy Spirit can and does give anyone special insight into the future.”As the polls closed in November 2016, most mainstream news outlets scrambled to explain how projections for a big Hillary Clinton victory had been so off. But Mr. Strang felt vindicated.“Those prophecies may have sounded ridiculous,” he wrote later, “but Trump was elected, just as the prophets had said.”In the next months, the Trump administration brought a cohort of Pentecostal leaders closer to the halls of power than ever before. Mr. Strang’s longtime acquaintance Paula White, a televangelist from Florida, became a spiritual adviser to Mr. Trump. At one point, the president was pictured smiling and holding Mr. Strang’s 2017 book, “God and Donald Trump.”Advocacy groups that monitor the religious right tracked Charisma’s influence with alarm, concerned about the combination of divisive politics with divine prophecy. Peter Montgomery, a senior fellow at Right Wing Watch, called Mr. Strang’s work harmful “pro-Trump propagandizing” because it cast political battles as holy wars. “This extreme demonization of one’s political opponents is toxic to our political culture,” Mr. Montgomery said.Mr. Strang’s boosters and critics often portray the company as a large and influential entity, and by most available metrics it does command a relatively large audience for a religious publisher. But Charisma’s staff appears to have shrunk since the early 2000s, when The Sentinel reported that the company employed 200. According to former staff members, in 2020 there were about 60 employees, with fewer than 10 in editorial. Charisma disputed those figures but declined to provide any information about its finances or number of employees.And for all of his hagiographic overtures, Mr. Strang’s love for Mr. Trump appears to always have been lopsidedly unrequited. The two met only once, for a brief interview in Florida.“I was never on the inside circle,” Mr. Strang said. “I went to the White House zero times.”Still, he remained a dutiful fan. Mr. Strang wrote three more glowing books about the president, including “God, Donald Trump and the 2020 Election.” In one chapter, the book explored the possibility that Mr. Trump could lose, but it came down squarely on the side of a preordained victory.And so, on Election Day 2020, Mr. Strang flew to Texas to appear on the livestream of one of his friends, the televangelist Kenneth Copeland.As exit polls were trickling in, Mr. Strang donned a red MAGA hat and beamed at the camera. “I believe Trump is going to win,” he told viewers. “The prophets have been saying that.”The next morning, Mr. Strang was surprised to find that, though ballots were still being tallied, a Biden victory seemed likely, and he would not accept the outcome for some time. He instructed his readers to ignore the mainstream media and fortify themselves in prayer.“I was feeling we were in a fairly serious place,” Mr. Strang said. “The Christian community I serve was actually kind of depressed.”Charisma did not recognize Mr. Biden as president-elect until after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol and the congressional certification of Mr. Biden’s victory.In the interim, Charisma gave a platform both to people who questioned the results and those who accepted that Mr. Biden was the president-elect. It also waded through a related challenge: the prickly question of what to do with all the failed divine predictions Charisma had published.Mr. Strang interviewed repentant prophets, such as Mr. Johnson, who shut his ministry after Mr. Trump was not re-elected. Mr. Strang also highlighted prophets who refused to budge, and he parroted Mr. Trump’s howls on Twitter about a stolen election. (“I personally do believe the election was stolen,” Mr. Strang said.)After the events of Jan. 6, Mr. Strang did condemn the violence in Washington in forthright language. At the same time he featured leaders who attended and heralded the gathering as a “prophetic breakthrough.”When a Charisma contributor named Michael Brown organized an open letter calling for firmer standards on prophecies (“We really had egg on our faces,” Mr. Brown recalled in a phone interview), Mr. Strang endorsed and published the plea at Charisma. But Mr. Strang also said his overall editorial approach wouldn’t change much at all. “No,” he said. “We won’t back off from the prophets.”His oft-repeated defense, in discussing the election fallout, is that he was simply doing his job, presenting alternate views.“We quoted other people,” Mr. Strang said. “I’m not a preacher. I’m a journalist.”Mr. Strang built Charisma from the ground up, he also likes to say, and will run it as he pleases. “I don’t have to answer to anybody. I don’t have a boss. I answer to God,” he said. “And I answer to Uncle Sam, you know, with the I.R.S.”Yet with division still lingering in the prophecy crowd, Mr. Strang ultimately seems to have decided to sidestep the question of 2020 and what was stolen or divinely ordained and simply to move on to boogeymen the whole family can agree on: the new administration, virus health mandates, what he has cast as liberal cultural censorship of conservative views and, most broadly, society’s diabolical scheme against Christianity.Mr. Strang’s new book was given a fitting debut at a megachurch rally in Michigan in late August, which was in part sponsored by Charisma and featured a lineup of conservative personalities who decried state health mandates over the course of the weekend.Trump flags billowed outside next to QAnon merchandise, and top billing went to MAGA stalwarts like Michael Flynn and Roger Stone. Mr. Strang plugged his book onstage, speaking to an audience of several thousand, and sold copies in the foyer.In an email exchange afterward, Mr. Strang ventured a cheery, if tentative, prediction of his own: He might have another hit.“I signed books all afternoon,” he typed. “People tell me I’ve hit a chord.” More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Will Christian America Withstand the Pull of QAnon?

      by

      The scandals, jagged-edged judgmentalism and culture war mentality that have enveloped significant parts of American Christendom over the last several years, including the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, have conditioned many of us to expect the worst. Which is why the annual meeting of the convention this week was such a pleasant surprise.The convention’s newly elected president, the Rev. Ed Litton, barely defeated the Rev. Mike Stone, the choice of the denomination’s insurgent right. Mr. Litton, a soft-spoken pastor in Alabama who is very conservative theologically, has made racial reconciliation a hallmark of his ministry and has said that he will make institutional accountability and care for survivors of sexual abuse priorities during his two-year term.“My goal is to build bridges and not walls,” Mr. Litton said at a news conference after his victory, pointedly setting himself apart from his main challenger. But those bridges won’t be easy to build.Tensions in the convention are as high as they’ve been in decades; it is a deeply fractured denomination marked by fierce infighting. The Conservative Baptist Network, which Mr. Stone is part of, was formed in 2020 to stop what it considers the convention’s drift toward liberalism on matters of culture and theology.Ruth Graham and Elizabeth Dias of The Times describe the individuals in the Conservative Baptist Network as “part of an ultraconservative populist uprising of pastors” who want to “take the ship.” They are zealous, inflamed, uncompromising and eager for a fight. They nearly succeeded this time. And they’re not going away anytime soon.They view as a temporary setback the defeat of Mr. Stone, who came within an eyelash of winning even after allegations by the Rev. Russell Moore, the former head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s public policy arm, that Mr. Stone blocked investigations of sexual abuse at Southern Baptist churches and engaged in a broader campaign of intimidation. (Mr. Stone has denied the charges.)True to this moment, the issues dividing the convention are more political than theological. What preoccupies the denomination’s right wing right now is critical race theory, whose intellectual origins go back several decades, and which contends that racism is not simply a product of individual bigotry but embedded throughout American society. As The Times put it, “the concept argues that historical patterns of racism are ingrained in law and other modern institutions, and that the legacies of slavery, segregation and Jim Crow still create an uneven playing field for Black people and other people of color.”What upset many members of the Conservative Baptist Network was a nonbinding 2019 resolution approved at the convention’s annual meeting stating that critical race theory and intersectionality could be employed as “analytical tools” — all the while acknowledging that their insights could be subject to misuse and only on the condition that they be “subordinate to Scripture” and don’t serve as “transcendent ideological frameworks.”Late last year, the Rev. J.D. Greear, who preceded Mr. Litton as president, tweeted that while critical race theory as an ideological framework is incompatible with the Bible, “some in our ranks inappropriately use the label of ‘CRT!’ to avoid legitimate questions or as a cudgel to dismiss any discussion of discrimination. Many cannot even define what C.R.T. is. If we in the S.B.C. had shown as much sorrow for the painful legacy that sin has left as we show passion to decry C.R.T., we probably wouldn’t be in this mess.” (The Southern Baptist Convention was created as a result of a split with northern Baptists over slavery. In 1995, the convention voted to “repent of racism of which we have been guilty.”) In his farewell address as president last week, Mr. Greear warned against “an S.B.C. that spends more energy decrying things like C.R.T. than they have of the devastating consequences of racial discrimination.” And another former president of the convention, the Rev. James Merritt, said, “I want to say this bluntly and plainly: if some people were as passionate about the Gospel as they were critical race theory, we’d win this world for Christ tomorrow.”Even if you believe, as I do, that some interpretations of critical race theory have problematic, illiberal elements to them, it is hardly in danger of taking hold in the 47,000-plus congregations in the convention, which is more theologically and politically conservative than most denominations. What is ripping through many Southern Baptist churches these days — and it’s not confined to Southern Baptist churches — is a topic that went unmentioned at the annual convention last week: QAnon conspiracy theories.Dr. Moore, who was an influential figure in the Southern Baptist Convention until he split with the denomination just a few weeks ago, told Axios, “I’m talking literally every day to pastors, of virtually every denomination, who are exhausted by these theories blowing through their churches or communities.” He said that for many, QAnon is “taking on all the characteristics of a cult.”Bill Haslam, the former two-term Republican governor of Tennessee, a Presbyterian and the author of “Faithful Presence: The Promise and the Peril of Faith in the Public Square,” put it this way in a recent interview with The Atlantic:I have heard enough pastors who are saying they cannot believe the growth of the QAnon theory in their churches. Their churches had become battlegrounds over things that they never thought they would be. It’s not so much the pastors preaching that from pulpits — although I’m certain there’s some of that — but more people in the congregation who have become convinced that theories are reflective of their Christian faith.According to a recent poll by the conservative American Enterprise Institute, nearly a third of white evangelical Christian Republicans — 31 percent — believe in the accuracy of the QAnon claim that “Donald Trump has been secretly fighting a group of child sex traffickers that include prominent Democrats and Hollywood elites.” White evangelicals are far more likely to embrace conspiracy theories than nonwhite evangelicals. Yet there have been no statements or resolutions by the Southern Baptist Convention calling QAnon “incompatible with the Baptist Faith & Message,” which six S.B.C. seminary presidents said about critical race theory and “any version of critical theory” late last year. Too many Southern Baptist leaders, facing all sorts of internal problems and dangers, would rather divert attention and judgment to the world outside their walls. This is not quite what Jesus had in mind.The drama playing out within the convention is representative of the wider struggle within American Christianity. None of us can fully escape the downsides and the dark sides of our communities and our culture. The question is whether those who profess to be followers of Jesus show more of a capacity than they have recently to rise above them, to be self-critical instead of simply critical of others, to shine light into our own dark corners, even to add touches of grace and empathy in harsh and angry times.That happens now and then, here and there, and when it does, it can be an incandescent witness. But the painful truth is it doesn’t happen nearly enough, and in fact the Christian faith has far too often become a weapon in the arsenal of those who worship at the altar of politics.Rather than standing up for the victims of sexual abuse, their reflex has been to defend the institutions that cover up the abuse. Countless people who profess to be Christians are having their moral sensibilities shaped more by Tucker Carlson’s nightly monologues than by Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.Perhaps without quite knowing it, many of those who most loudly proclaim the “pre-eminence of Christ” have turned him into a means to an end, a cruel, ugly and unforgiving end. And this, too, is not quite what Jesus had in mind.Peter Wehner (@Peter_Wehner), a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center who served in the Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush administrations, is a contributing Opinion writer and the author of “The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

    • 88 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Ignites a War Within the Church

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyTrump Ignites a War Within the ChurchAfter a week of Trumpist mayhem, white evangelicals wrestle with what they’ve become.Opinion ColumnistJan. 14, 2021, 4:18 p.m. ETTrump supporters brought a cross to pray outside the U.S. Capitol as Congress met to ratify Joe Biden’s electoral victory last week.Credit…Win Mcnamee/Getty Images“Over the last 72 hours, I have received multiple death threats and thousands upon thousands of emails from Christians saying the nastiest and most vulgar things I have ever heard toward my family and ministry. I have been labeled a coward, sellout, a traitor to the Holy Spirit, and cussed out at least 500 times.”This is the beginning of a Facebook post from Sunday by the conservative preacher Jeremiah Johnson. On Jan. 7, the day after the storming of the Capitol, Johnson had issued a public apology, asserting that God removed Donald Trump from office because of his pride and arrogance, and to humble those, like Johnson, who had fervently supported him.The response was swift and vicious. As he put it in that later Facebook post, “I have been flabbergasted at the barrage of continued conspiracy theories being sent every minute our way and the pure hatred being unleashed. To my great heartache, I’m convinced parts of the prophetic/charismatic movement are far SICKER than I could have ever dreamed of.”This is what is happening inside evangelical Christianity and within conservatism right now. As a conservative Christian friend of mine put it, there is strife within every family, within every congregation, and it may take generations to recover.On the one hand, there are those who are doubling down on their Trump fanaticism and their delusion that a Biden presidency will destroy America.“I rebuke the news in the name of Jesus. We ask that this false garbage come to an end,” the conservative pastor Tim Remington preached from the pulpit in Idaho on Sunday. “It’s the lies, communism, socialism.”The violent Know-Nothingism, which has always coursed through American history, is once again a torrent, threatening more violence in the days ahead.On the other hand, many Trump supporters have been shaken to the core by the sight of a sacrilegious mob blasting Christian pop music and chanting “Hang Mike Pence.” There have been defections and second thoughts. The Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, who delivered a prayer at the Trump inaugural, told his congregation Sunday, “We must all repent, even the church needs to repent.”The Trump-supporting Texas pastor John Hagee declared: “This was an assault on law. Attacking the Capitol was not patriotism, it was anarchy.”After staying basically level for four years, Trump’s approval ratings dropped roughly 10 points across several polls in a week. The most popular piece on the Christianity Today website is headlined, “We Worship With the Magi, Not MAGA.” In the world of secular conservatism, The Wall Street Journal editorial page called on Trump to resign. Addressing Trump supporters, the conservative talk show host Erick Erickson wrote, “Everything — from the storming of the Capitol to people getting killed to social networks banning you to corporations not giving you money — everything is a logical consequence of you people lying relentlessly for two months and taking advantage of American patriots.”One core feature of Trumpism is that it forces you to betray every other commitment you might have: to the truth, moral character, the Sermon on the Mount, conservative principles, the Constitution. In defeat, some people are finally not willing to sacrifice all else on Trump’s altar.The split we are seeing is not theological or philosophical. It’s a division between those who have become detached from reality and those who, however right wing, are still in the real world.Hence, it’s not an argument. You can’t argue with people who have their own separate made-up set of facts. You can’t have an argument with people who are deranged by the euphoric rage of what Erich Fromm called group narcissism — the thoughtless roar of those who believe their superior group is being polluted by alien groups.It’s a pure power struggle. The weapons in this struggle are intimidation, verbal assault, death threats and violence, real and rhetorical. The fantasyland mobbists have an advantage because they relish using these weapons, while their fellow Christians just want to lead their lives.The problem is, how do you go about reattaching people to reality?David French, the conservative Christian writer who fought in the Iraq war, says the way to build a sane G.O.P. is to borrow a page from the counterinsurgency handbook: Separate the insurgents from the population.That means prosecuting the rioters, impeaching the president and not tolerating cyberterrorism within a community or congregation.Others have to be reminded of the basic rules for perceiving reality. They have to be reminded that all truth is God’s truth; that inquiry strengthens faith, that it is narcissistic self-idolatry to think you can create your own truth based on what you “feel.” There will probably have to be pastors and local leaders who model and admire evidence-based reasoning, wrestling with ideas.On the left, leaders and organizations have arisen to champion open inquiry, to stand up to the cancel mobs. They have begun to shift the norms.The problem on the right is vastly worse. But we have seen that unreason is a voracious beast. If it is not confronted, it devours not only your party, but also your nation and your church.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 75 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Cristianos evangélicos blancos y extremismo pro-Trump

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Capitol Riot FalloutliveLatest UpdatesInside the SiegeVisual TimelineNotable ArrestsFar-Right SymbolsPartidarios del presidente Trump irrumpieron en el edificio del Capitolio de Estados Unidos.Credit…Evelyn Hockstein para The Washington Post vía Getty ImagesSkip to contentSkip to site index‘Estamos en una lucha del bien contra el mal’: cómo los cristianos evangélicos blancos se fusionaron con el extremismo de TrumpUna potente mezcla de agravio y fervor religioso ha impulsado el apoyo entre los leales a Trump, muchos de los cuales se describen como parte de una especie de guerra santa.Partidarios del presidente Trump irrumpieron en el edificio del Capitolio de Estados Unidos.Credit…Evelyn Hockstein para The Washington Post vía Getty ImagesSupported byContinue reading the main storyElizabeth Dias y 13 de enero de 2021 a las 18:59 ETRead in EnglishWASHINGTON — Antes de que los miembros autoproclamados del grupo de extrema derecha Proud Boys marcharan hacia el Capitolio de Estados Unidos el 6 de enero, se detuvieron para arrodillarse en la calle y rezar en el nombre de Jesús.El grupo, cuyos participantes han adoptado posturas misóginas y antiinmigrantes, oró para que Dios trajera “reforma y renacimiento”. Dieron gracias por “la maravillosa nación en la que todos tenemos la bendición de vivir”. Le pidieron a Dios la restauración de su “sistema de valores” y el “valor y la fuerza para representarte y representar bien nuestra cultura”. Además, invocaron la protección divina para lo que estaba por venir.Luego se pusieron de pie. Con un megáfono, el líder del grupo declaró que los medios de comunicación debían “quitarse de mi maldito camino”. Después procedieron a caminar hacia el Capitolio.La presencia de rituales, lenguaje y símbolos cristianos fue inconfundible el miércoles 6 de enero en Washington. Había una pancarta de una campaña presidencial en broma para “Jesús 2020” de color azul y rojo; un parche que decía “Armadura de Dios” en el uniforme camuflado de un hombre; y una cruz blanca que declaraba, en mayúscula, “TRUMP GANÓ”. Todo esto intercalado con alusiones a las teorías de conspiración de QAnon, banderas confederadas y camisetas con mensajes antisemitas.La mezcla de referencias culturales y las personas que las portaban, dejaron en evidencia un fenómeno que se ha estado gestando por años: que los rincones más extremos de apoyo al presidente Donald Trump se han vuelto inseparables de algunas partes del poder evangélico blanco en Estados Unidos. En lugar de tener vertientes de apoyo completamente separadas, estos grupos se han mezclado entre sí cada vez más.Esta potente mezcla de rencor y fervor religioso le ha dado un enorme impulso al apoyo proveniente de un amplio grupo de partidarios de Trump, muchos de los cuales se describen a sí mismos como participantes de una especie de guerra santa, según entrevistas. Y muchos de ellos, inmersos en mentiras sobre las elecciones presidenciales y ahora sobre los mismos disturbios, dijeron que las consecuencias de los eventos del 6 de enero solo han alimentado un sentido más profundo de victimismo y de sentirse incomprendidos.Lindsay French, una cristiana evangélica de 40 años de Texas, decidió ir a Washington luego de recibir lo que denominó como una señal tipo “zarza ardiente” de Dios para participar en el evento, tras las peticiones de su pastor a los feligreses de “detener el robo”.“Estamos en una lucha del bien contra el mal, de la oscuridad contra la luz”, dijo, y declaró que se estaba alzando como la reina Ester, la heroína bíblica que salvó a su pueblo de la muerte.“Estamos cansados de que nos retraten como si fuéramos personas horribles”, dijo, reconociendo que hubo algo de violencia, pero insistiendo en la mentira de que Antifa fue responsable de esos actos.Los partidarios de Trump se reunieron cerca del Capitolio durante la manifestación “Detener el robo” la semana pasada en Washington, D.C.Credit…Selcuk Acar/NurPhoto vía Getty ImagesLos partidarios de Trump invocaron a Dios la semana pasada, mientras avanzaban al Capitolio de Estados Unidos.Credit…Stephanie Keith/ReutersComo muchos republicanos en el Congreso, algunos líderes evangélicos que han apoyado de gran manera a Trump se distanciaron a ellos y a su fe de los insurrectos. Robert Jeffress, pastor de la megaiglesia First Baptist Dallas, tachó la violencia de “anarquía”. El asedio al Capitolio “no tiene nada que ver con el cristianismo”, dijo. “Nuestro apoyo al presidente Trump se basó en sus políticas”.Sin embargo, los críticos afirman que ya es demasiado tarde para intentar separar la cultura cristiana conservadora blanca que ayudó a impulsar a Trump al poder de la violencia de la semana pasada en Washington.“No se puede entender lo que pasó hoy sin lidiar con el nacionalismo cristiano”, señaló el 6 de enero Andrew Whitehead, sociólogo de la Universidad de Indiana-Purdue en Indianápolis, y agregó que los movimientos evangélicos blancos han al menos tolerado el extremismo de ultraderecha, desde mucho antes de Trump. “Ellos proporcionaron los fundamentos políticos y teológicos de esto, lo que ha permitido que reine la anarquía”.En un video publicado en Facebook, grabado en Washington la noche del 4 de enero, Greg Locke, un pastor de Tennessee, se refirió a sí mismo como parte del “regimiento de túnicas negras”, una referencia al clero estadounidense que participó de manera activa en la Revolución estadounidense. En un mitin la noche siguiente, Locke predicó a una multitud de partidarios de Trump en Freedom Plaza, y predijo “no solo un Gran Despertar, sino el mayor despertar que jamás hayamos visto”.Los disturbios del 6 de enero, causados por una multitud en su gran mayoría blanca, también ilustraron la división racial en el cristianismo estadounidense.Capitol Riot FalloutLatest UpdatesUpdated 13 de enero de 2021 a las 21:36 ETMore arrests are made in connection with Capitol attack, as lawmakers demand answers.Speaker Pelosi wants heavy fines for lawmakers who refuse to pass through House metal detectors.A Proud Boys supporter threatened violence against the Rev. Raphael Warnock, prosecutors said.Horas antes del ataque al Capitolio, el reverendo Raphael Warnock de la Iglesia Bautista Ebenezer en Atlanta, había sido elegido para el Senado de Estados Unidos después de que muchos cristianos blancos conservadores intentaran retratarlo como un radical peligroso, aunque su campaña estuvo fundamentada en la visión moral tradicional de la iglesia negra. Por años, muchos cristianos negros les han advertido a los creyentes blancos que la retórica racial de Trump iba a terminar mal.“Nuestras quejas no han sido escuchadas”, afirmó Jemar Tisby, presidente de un colectivo cristiano negro llamado The Witness (el testigo).“Este es el auténtico cristianismo blanco estadounidense”, dijo sobre los eventos del 6 de enero. “El desafío que tienen los cristianos blancos de Estados Unidos es examinar lo que han forjado en materia religiosa”.Dentro del Capitolio, los senadores que se opusieron a los resultados de las elecciones fueron algunos de los cristianos conversadores más notorios del Partido Republicano, como Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley y Cindy Hyde-Smith.Los frutos de la alianza entre grupos de extrema derecha —cristianos y otros— fueron evidentes el 6 de enero, antes de que comenzaran los disturbios, cuando miles de partidarios de Trump se reunieron para protestar la certificación de los resultados de las elecciones presidenciales, en las que Joe Biden derrotó de manera definitiva a Trump, incluso tras los intentos para desacreditar la votación. Muchos de los asistentes eran evangélicos blancos que se sintieron llamados a viajar cientos de kilómetros desde sus hogares hasta Washington.Oren Orr, de 31 años, un arboricultor de Robbinsville, Carolina del Norte, donde va a la Iglesia Bautista Santeetlah, alquiló un automóvil para conducir hasta Washington. Llevaba su bandera estadounidense justo debajo de los oficiales en las gradas, y su esposa tenía una bandera cristiana. Trump podría ser el último presidente en creer en Jesús, dijo. (Biden habla a menudo sobre su fe católica de toda la vida y, a diferencia de Trump, asiste con frecuencia a los servicios religiosos).Orr dijo que trajo un bastón y una pistola Taser a Washington, pero no los sacó. “Sé que el Señor me respalda sin importar lo que pase”, dijo.En cuanto a la amplia evidencia de que muchos en la multitud eran racistas, Orr dijo: “Nos llaman supremacistas blancos y todo esto. Tengo muchos amigos de color. Algunos de mis mejores amigos son de México”..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-c7gg1r{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:0.875rem;line-height:0.875rem;margin-bottom:15px;color:#121212 !important;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-c7gg1r{font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-rqynmc{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc strong{font-weight:600;}.css-rqynmc em{font-style:italic;}.css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1cs27wo{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1cs27wo{padding:20px;}}.css-1cs27wo:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}.css-1cs27wo[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-1cs27wo[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-1cs27wo[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-1cs27wo[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-k9atqk{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-k9atqk strong{font-weight:700;}.css-k9atqk em{font-style:italic;}.css-k9atqk a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ccd9e3;}.css-k9atqk a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ddd;}.css-k9atqk a:hover{border-bottom:none;}Capitol Riot FalloutFrom Riot to ImpeachmentThe riot inside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 6, followed a rally at which President Trump made an inflammatory speech to his supporters, questioning the results of the election. Here’s a look at what happened and the ongoing fallout:As this video shows, poor planning and a restive crowd encouraged by President Trump set the stage for the riot.A two hour period was crucial to turning the rally into the riot.Several Trump administration officials, including cabinet members Betsy DeVos and Elaine Chao, announced that they were stepping down as a result of the riot.Federal prosecutors have charged more than 70 people, including some who appeared in viral photos and videos of the riot. Officials expect to eventually charge hundreds of others.The House has begun proceedings on an article of impeachment. It accuses the president of “inciting an insurrection” that led to the rampage by his supporters.La propagación de mentiras sobre la integridad de las elecciones —y ahora también sobre la raíz de los disturbios del 6 de enero— se ha infiltrado profundamente en los círculos cristianos conservadores. Las creencias evangélicas apocalípticas sobre el fin del mundo y el inminente juicio divino se confunden con las teorías de conspiración de QAnon que afirman de manera falsa que el país está dominado por burócratas y pedófilos del “Estado profundo”.Abigail Spaulding, madre de 15 hijos y ama de casa que viajó al mitin junto con amigos de su iglesia en Carolina del Sur, rompió en llanto mientras hablaba del temor que sentía por sus hijos bajo un gobierno de Biden. Dijo que su esposo les había explicado a sus hijos que cuando Biden sea juramentado como presidente, “ellos pueden tomar la Biblia, llamarla discurso de odio y desecharla”. Spaulding tenía otras preocupaciones sobre Biden, extraídas de Facebook y Twitter, todas falsas.La religión estaba en la mente de muchos de quienes se reunieron en Washington la semana pasada para apoyar al presidente Trump.Credit…Kenny Holston para The New York TimesEn Kalamazoo, Michigan, Laura Kloosterman, de 34 años, asistió a misa el 6 de enero y oró para que el Congreso se negara a certificar la victoria de Biden. Había leído denuncias en línea sobre máquinas de votación defectuosas que le quitaron votos a Trump. No hay pruebas de estas afirmaciones, las cuales han sido promovidas en línea por Trump y otras figuras de la derecha.Kloosterman sigue al escritor evangélico y presentador de radio Eric Metaxas, quien ha afirmado en repetidas oportunidades que los resultados de las elecciones fueron fraudulentos. Metaxas, quien golpeó a un manifestante frente a la Casa Blanca el verano pasado, le dijo a Trump en una entrevista a finales de noviembre que estaría “feliz de morir en esta batalla”, durante una conversación sobre los intentos de revertir los resultados electorales. “Dios está con nosotros”, agregó.Otros simpatizantes del presidente llevan meses sembrando dudas entre los cristianos sobre un fraude. Estas creencias falsas han forjado conexiones aún más fuertes entre los evangélicos blancos y figuras conservadoras.Un grupo llamado Marcha de Jericó, que ha encabezado una serie de manifestaciones a favor de la “integridad electoral”, realizó cinco días de eventos en Washington que culminaron el miércoles. El mes pasado, el grupo, que incluía oradores como Metaxas y Michael T. Flynn, exasesor de seguridad nacional de Trump, marchó alrededor del Capitolio siete veces, modelando su protesta en una batalla bíblica en la que los israelitas marcharon alrededor de la ciudad de Jericó hasta que sus muros se derrumbaron, dejando que sus ejércitos tomasen la ciudad.A principios de esta semana, cuando Enrique Tarrio, el líder de los Proud Boys, fue arrestado en Washington bajo sospecha de quemar una pancarta de Black Lives Matter arrancada de una histórica iglesia negra, sus partidarios recaudaron más de 100.000 dólares para su defensa legal en una plataforma de recaudación de fondos cristiana llamada GiveSendGo.“Mucha gente no está de acuerdo con que GiveSendGo permita campañas para personas o causas con las que ellos personalmente no están de acuerdo, al igual que la gente no está de acuerdo con la forma en que Jesús mostró amor a los ‘pecadores de la sociedad’”, dijo el cofundador de la plataforma, Jacob Wells. “Elegimos no tomar partido en absoluto y eso hace que muchos de los dos lados nos odien”.Desde los disturbios, muchos de los simpatizantes de esta causa afirmaron que estaban enfurecidos por la remoción de Trump y otros de redes sociales como Twitter, y la desactivación del recién llegado sitio conservador de redes sociales Parler. Lo ven como parte de una conspiración más grande para silenciar al cristianismo. Están en la búsqueda de la manera para garantizar que sus voces sean escuchadas.Adam Phillips, un contratista de 44 años de Robbinsville, Carolina del Norte, tenía trabajo y no pudo ir a Washington el 6 de enero —“El Señor no lo consideró apropiado”, comentó— pero sí asistió a dos manifestaciones desde noviembre, la marcha “Detengan el robo” y la marcha MAGA del millón.“Desde hace tiempo es evidente que los cristianos están bajo la represión y el escrutinio de todos”, dijo. “Todas las cosas sobre las que se fundó el país están bajo ataque, están tratando de eliminar el nombre de Dios de todo, en especial el nombre de Jesús”.Elizabeth Dias reportó desde Washington y Ruth Graham desde Warner, Nueva Hampshire.Elizabeth Dias cubre fe y política desde Washington. Antes cubrió temas similares para la revista Time. @elizabethjdiasRuth Graham es una corresponsal nacional que cubre la religión, la fe y los valores. Anteriormente reportó sobre religión para Slate. @publicroadAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      How White Evangelical Christians Fused With Trump Extremism

      by

      Supporters of President Trump storm the United States Capitol building.Credit…Evelyn Hockstein for The Washington Post, via Getty ImagesSkip to contentSkip to site indexHow White Evangelical Christians Fused With Trump ExtremismA 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.Supporters of President Trump storm the United States Capitol building.Credit…Evelyn Hockstein for The Washington Post, via Getty ImagesSupported byContinue reading the main storyElizabeth Dias and Jan. 11, 2021Updated 10:10 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — Before self-proclaimed members of the far-right group the Proud Boys marched toward the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, they stopped to kneel in the street and prayed in the name of Jesus. The group, whose participants have espoused misogynistic and anti-immigrant views, prayed for God to bring “reformation and revival.” They gave thanks for “the wonderful nation we’ve all been blessed to be in.” They asked God for the restoration of their “value systems,” and for the “courage and strength to both represent you and represent our culture well.” And they invoked the divine protection for what was to come.Then they rose. Their leader declared into a bullhorn that the media must “get the hell out of my way.” And then they moved toward the Capitol.The presence of Christian rituals, symbols and language was unmistakable on Wednesday in Washington. There was a mock campaign banner, “Jesus 2020,” in blue and red; an “Armor of God” patch on a man’s fatigues; a white cross declaring “Trump won” in all capitals. All of this was interspersed with allusions to QAnon conspiracy theories, Confederate flags and anti-Semitic T-shirts.The blend of cultural references, and the people who brought them, made clear a phenomenon that has been brewing for years now: that the most extreme corners of support for Mr. Trump have become inextricable from some parts of white evangelical power in America. Rather than completely separate strands of support, these groups have become increasingly blended together.This potent mix of grievance and religious fervor has turbocharged the support among a wide swath of Trump loyalists, many of whom describe themselves as participants in a kind of holy war, according to interviews. And many, who are swimming in falsehoods about the presidential election and now the riot itself, said the aftermath of Wednesday’s event has only fueled a deeper sense of victimhood and being misunderstood.Lindsay French, 40, an evangelical Christian from Texas, flew to Washington after she had received what she called a “burning bush” sign from God to participate following her pastor urging congregants to “stop the steal.” “We are fighting good versus evil, dark versus light,” she said, declaring that she was rising up like Queen Esther, the biblical heroine who saved her people from death.“We are tired of being made out to be these horrible people,” she said, acknowledging there was some violence but insisting on the falsehood that Antifa was behind it. Trump supporters gathered near the Capitol during a “Stop the Steal” rally last week in Washington, D.C.Credit…Selcuk Acar/NurPhoto, via Getty ImagesTrump supporters invoked God last week as they surged on the U.S. Capitol.Credit…Stephanie Keith/ReutersLike many Republicans in Congress, some evangelical leaders who have been most supportive of Mr. Trump distanced themselves and their faith from the rioters. Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Dallas, called the violence “anarchy.” The siege on the Capitol “has absolutely nothing to do with Christianity,” he said. “Our support of President Trump was based on his policies.” But critics said it was too late to try to separate the white conservative Christian culture that helped push Mr. Trump to power from last week’s violence in Washington.“You can’t understand what happened today without wrestling with Christian Nationalism,” Andrew Whitehead, a sociologist at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, said on Wednesday, adding that white evangelical movements have long at least tolerated far-right extremism, well before Mr. Trump. “They provided the political and theological underpinnings of this, and it has allowed anarchy to reign.”In a Facebook video shot in Washington on Monday night, Tennessee pastor Greg Locke referred to himself as part of the “black robe regiment,” a reference to American clergy who were active in the American Revolution. At a rally the next night, Mr. Locke preached to a crowd of Trump supporters in Freedom Plaza, predicting “not just a Great Awakening, but the greatest awakening that we have ever seen.” The riot on Wednesday, carried out by a largely white crowd, also illustrated the racial divide in American Christianity. Hours before the attack on the Capitol, the Rev. Raphael Warnock of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta had been elected to the U.S. Senate after many conservative white Christians tried to paint him as a dangerous radical, even as his campaign was rooted in the traditional moral vision of the Black church. And for years many Black Christians have warned white believers that Mr. Trump’s rhetoric on race was going to end badly. “Our cries go unheeded,” Jemar Tisby, the president of a Black Christian collective called the Witness, said. “This is authentic white American Christianity on display,” he said of Wednesday’s event. “The challenge for white Christian America is to examine what they have wrought religiously.”Inside the Capitol, senators who objected to the election results were among the most prominent conservative Christians in their party, including Senators Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Cindy Hyde-Smith. The fruits of the alliance between far-right groups — Christian and otherwise — were clear on Wednesday, before the rioting began, as thousands of Trump supporters gathered to protest the certification of the presidential election results, with Joseph R. Biden Jr. definitively defeating Mr. Trump, even after attempts to discredit the election. Many in attendance were white evangelicals who felt called to travel hundreds of miles from home to Washington.Oren Orr, 31, an arborist from Robbinsville, N.C., where he goes to Santeetlah Baptist Church, rented a car to drive to Washington. He carried his American flag right up below the officers on the bleachers, and his wife had a Christian flag. Mr. Trump could be the last president to believe in Jesus, he said. (Mr. Biden speaks often about his lifelong Catholic faith, and unlike Mr. Trump, attends church services frequently.) Mr. Orr said he brought a baton and a Taser to Washington but did not get them out. “I know the Lord has my back no matter what happens,” he said.As for the ample evidence that many in the crowd were racist, Mr. Orr said, “We get called white supremacists and all this. I have plenty of colored friends. Some of my best friends are from Mexico.”The spread of falsehoods about the integrity of the election — and now the roots of Wednesday’s rioting — have deeply infiltrated conservative Christian circles. Apocalyptic evangelical beliefs about the end of the world and the coming divine judgment blur with QAnon conspiracy theories that falsely assert the country is dominated by deep-state bureaucrats and pedophiles. Abigail Spaulding, a stay-at-home mother of 15 who traveled to the rally with friends from her church in South Carolina, broke down in tears as she spoke about her fears for her children under a Biden administration. She said her husband had explained to their children that when Mr. Biden is sworn in as president, “they can take the Bible and call it hate speech and throw it out.” And she had other worries about Mr. Biden, drawn from Facebook and Twitter — all of which were false. Religion was on the minds of many who gathered in Washington last week to support President Trump.Credit…Kenny Holston for The New York TimesIn Kalamazoo, Mich., Laura Kloosterman, 34, attended mass on Wednesday and prayed that Congress would decline to certify Mr. Biden’s victory. She had read claims online about flawed voting machines undercounting votes for Mr. Trump — there is no evidence for these claims, which Mr. Trump and right-wing voices online have promoted.Ms. Kloosterman follows the evangelical writer and radio host Eric Metaxas, who has repeatedly claimed the election results were fraudulent. Mr. Metaxas, who punched a protester outside the White House last summer, told Mr. Trump in an interview in late November that he would “be happy to die in this fight,” in a conversation about attempts to overturn the election results. “God is with us,” he added.Other supporters of the president have spent months sowing doubts among Christians about fraud. These false beliefs have forged even stronger connections between white evangelicals and other conservative figures. A group called the Jericho March, which has led a series of demonstrations for “election integrity,” held five days of events in Washington that culminated on Wednesday. Last month the group, which included speakers like Mr. Metaxas and Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, marched around the Capitol seven times, modeling their protest on a biblical battle in which the Israelites marched around the city of Jericho until its walls crumbled, letting their armies take the city.Earlier this week, when Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys, was arrested in Washington on suspicion of burning a Black Lives Matter banner torn from a historic Black church, his supporters raised more than $100,000 for his legal defense on a Christian fund-raising platform called GiveSendGo. “Many people disagree with GiveSendGo allowing campaigns for people or causes that they personally disagree with, much like people disagreed with the way Jesus showed love to the ‘sinners of society,’” the platform’s co-founder, Jacob Wells, said. “We choose not to side at all and that causes a lot of both sides to hate us.”Since the riot, many who were sympathetic to its cause said they were enraged at the removal of Mr. Trump and others from social media platforms like Twitter, and the deplatforming of the upstart conservative social-media site Parler. They viewed it as part of a broader conspiracy to silence Christianity. And they are looking ahead to make sure that their voices are heard.Adam Phillips, 44, a dry wall contractor from Robbinsville, N.C., had work and couldn’t come to Washington on Wednesday — “The Lord just didn’t see it fit,” he said — but he came to two demonstrations since November, the Stop the Steal march and the Million MAGA March.“It has been obvious for a while that Christians are under suppression, they are under scrutiny by everyone,” he said. “All of the things the country was founded on are under attack, they are trying to get the name of God out of everything, especially the name of Jesus.”Elizabeth Dias reported from Washington and Ruth Graham from New Hampshire.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 75 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      The Roots of Josh Hawley’s Rage

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Roots of Josh Hawley’s RageWhy do so many Republicans appear to be at war with both truth and democracy?Ms. Stewart has reported on the religious right for more than a decade. She is the author of “The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism.”Jan. 11, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETSenator Josh Hawley on Wednesday, as the crowd that would storm the Capitol marched.Credit…Francis Chung/E&E News and Politico, via Associated PressIn today’s Republican Party, the path to power is to build up a lie in order to overturn democracy. At least that is what Senator Josh Hawley was telling us when he offered a clenched-fist salute to the pro-Trump mob before it ransacked the Capitol, and it is the same message he delivered on the floor of the Senate in the aftermath of the attack, when he doubled down on the lies about electoral fraud that incited the insurrection in the first place. How did we get to the point where one of the bright young stars of the Republican Party appears to be at war with both truth and democracy?Mr. Hawley himself, as it happens, has been making the answer plain for some time. It’s just a matter of listening to what he has been saying.In multiple speeches, an interview and a widely shared article for Christianity Today, Mr. Hawley has explained that the blame for society’s ills traces all the way back to Pelagius — a British-born monk who lived 17 centuries ago. In a 2019 commencement address at The King’s College, a small conservative Christian college devoted to “a biblical worldview,” Mr. Hawley denounced Pelagius for teaching that human beings have the freedom to choose how they live their lives and that grace comes to those who do good things, as opposed to those who believe the right doctrines.The most eloquent summary of the Pelagian vision, Mr. Hawley went on to say, can be found in the Supreme Court’s 1992 opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Mr. Hawley specifically cited Justice Anthony Kennedy’s words reprovingly: “At the heart of liberty,” Kennedy wrote, “is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” The fifth century church fathers were right to condemn this terrifying variety of heresy, Mr. Hawley argued: “Replacing it and repairing the harm it has caused is one of the challenges of our day.”In other words, Mr. Hawley’s idea of freedom is the freedom to conform to what he and his preferred religious authorities know to be right. Mr. Hawley is not shy about making the point explicit. In a 2017 speech to the American Renewal Project, he declared — paraphrasing the Dutch Reformed theologian and onetime prime minister Abraham Kuyper — “There is not one square inch of all creation over which Jesus Christ is not Lord.” Mr. Kuyper is perhaps best known for his claim that Christianity has sole legitimate authority over all aspects of human life.“We are called to take that message into every sphere of life that we touch, including the political realm,” Mr. Hawley said. “That is our charge. To take the Lordship of Christ, that message, into the public realm, and to seek the obedience of the nations. Of our nation!”Mr. Hawley has built his political career among people who believe that Shariah is just around the corner even as they attempt to secure privileges for their preferred religious groups to discriminate against those of whom they disapprove. Before he won election as a senator, he worked for Becket, a legal advocacy group that often coordinates with the right-wing legal juggernaut the Alliance Defending Freedom. He is a familiar presence on the Christian right media circuit.The American Renewal Project, which hosted the event where Mr. Hawley delivered the speech I mentioned earlier, was founded by David Lane, a political organizer who has long worked behind the scenes to connect conservative pastors and Christian nationalist figures with politicians. The choice America faces, according to Mr. Lane, is “to be faithful to Jesus or to pagan secularism.”The line of thought here is starkly binary and nihilistic. It says that human existence in an inevitably pluralistic, modern society committed to equality is inherently worthless. It comes with the idea that a right-minded elite of religiously pure individuals should aim to capture the levers of government, then use that power to rescue society from eternal darkness and reshape it in accord with a divinely-approved view of righteousness.At the heart of Mr. Hawley’s condemnation of our terrifyingly Pelagian world lies a dark conclusion about the achievements of modern, liberal, pluralistic societies. When he was still attorney general, William Barr articulated this conclusion in a speech at the University of Notre Dame Law School, where he blamed “the growing ascendancy of secularism” for amplifying “virtually every measure of social pathology,” and maintained that “free government was only suitable and sustainable for a religious people.”Christian nationalists’ acceptance of President Trump’s spectacular turpitude these past four years was a good measure of just how dire they think our situation is. Even a corrupt sociopath was better, in their eyes, than the horrifying freedom that religious moderates and liberals, along with the many Americans who don’t happen to be religious, offer the world.That this neo-medieval vision is incompatible with constitutional democracy is clear. But in case you’re in doubt, consider where some of the most militant and coordinated support for Mr. Trump’s postelection assault on the American constitutional system has come from. The Conservative Action Project, a group associated with the Council for National Policy, which serves as a networking organization for America’s religious and economic right-wing elite, made its position clear in a statement issued a week before the insurrection.It called for members of the Senate to “contest the electoral votes” from Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and other states that were the focus of Republicans’ baseless allegations. Among the signatories was Cleta Mitchell, the lawyer who advised Mr. Trump and participated in the president’s call on Jan. 2 with Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state. Cosignatories to this disinformation exercise included Bob McEwen, the executive director of the Council for National Policy; Morton C. Blackwell of The Leadership Institute; Alfred S. Regnery, the former publisher; Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council; Thomas Fitton of Judicial Watch; and more than a dozen others.Although many of the foot soldiers in the assault on the Capitol appear to have been white males aligned with white supremacist movements, it would be a mistake to overlook the powerful role of the rhetoric of religious nationalism in their ranks. At a rally in Washington on Jan. 5, on the eve of Electoral College certification, the right-wing pastor Greg Locke said that God is raising up “an army of patriots.” Another pastor, Brian Gibson, put it this way: “The church of the Lord Jesus Christ started America,” and added, “We’re going to take our nation back!”In the aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection, a number of Christian nationalist leaders issued statements condemning violence — on both sides. How very kind of them. But few if any appear willing to acknowledge the instrumental role they played in perpetuating the fraudulent allegations of a stolen election that were at the root of the insurrection.They seem, like Mr. Hawley himself, to live in a post-truth environment. And this gets to the core of the Hawley enigma. The brash young senator styles himself not just a deep thinker who ruminates about late-Roman era heretics, but a man of the people, a champion of “the great American middle,” as he wrote in an article for The American Conservative, and a foe of the “ruling elite.” Mr. Hawley has even managed to turn a few progressive heads with his economic populism, including his attacks on tech monopolies.Yet Mr. Hawley isn’t against elites per se. He is all for an elite, provided that it is a religiously righteous elite. He is a graduate of Stanford University and Yale Law School and he clerked for John Roberts, the chief justice. Mr. Hawley, in other words, is a successful meritocrat of the Federalist Society variety. His greatest rival in that department is the Princeton debater Ted Cruz. They are résumé jockeys in a system that rewards those who do the best job of mobilizing fear and irrationalism. They are what happens when callow ambition meets the grotesque inequalities and injustices of our age.Over the past few days, following his participation in the failed efforts to overturn the election, Mr. Hawley’s career prospects may have dimmed. Two of his home state newspapers have called for his resignation; his political mentor, John C. Danforth, a former Republican senator from Missouri, has described his earlier support for Mr. Hawley as “the biggest mistake I’ve ever made”; and Simon & Schuster dropped his book. On the other hand, there is some reporting that suggests his complicity in efforts to overturn the election may have boosted his standing with Mr. Trump’s base. But the question that matters is not whether Mr. Hawley stays or goes, but whether he is simply replaced by the next wannabe demagogue in line. We are about to find out whether there are leaders of principle left in today’s Republican Party.Make no mistake: Mr. Hawley is a symptom, not a cause. He is a product of the same underlying forces that brought us President Trump and the present crisis of American democracy. Unless we find a way to address these forces and the fundamental pathologies that drive them, then next month or next year we will be forced to contend with a new and perhaps more successful version of Mr. Hawley.Katherine Stewart (@kathsstewart) is the author of “The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 163 Shares139 Views

      in Elections

      ‘Let’s Talk About “Personal Responsibility”’: A Year of Tough Conversations in the Comments

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main story‘Let’s Talk About “Personal Responsibility”’: A Year of Tough Conversations in the CommentsOpinion writers reflect on what readers had to say in 2020.Dec. 30, 2020, 5:26 a.m. ETCredit…Matt ChaseThis has been a tumultuous 12 months, a harrowing ride through the pandemic and elections, racial injustices and civic turmoil. Through it all, in your comments, you’ve shared your fears, frustrations and anger, but also hope, humor and much wisdom. In the process, you helped document this extraordinary year.We took a look at some of our most popular and moving pieces of 2020 and asked the authors to pick just one comment that resonated with them (not an easy task, given the quality of your contributions) and respond to it. Some chose comments that sparked deeper debate or helped hone perspective; others chose one that evoked a visceral response — in a few cases, even tears.Your voices are a vital part of our community at Opinion. Thank you for a year of thoughtful, engaging conversation. We look forward to more in 2021.‘It was an act of kindness to tell me this’ — Jennifer SeniorMary in Dallas on “Happiness Won’t Save You” (Nov. 24):My 47 year old son died of suicide a few weeks ago. I think about it for the majority of my waking hours, and I often dream about it. I read everything I can find to try to understand it enough to forgive him and myself. Reading this article, and many of the comments added by readers, is like getting a message from my son. I am very grateful.Jennifer: Thank you for this beautiful note, which made me cry when I read it. It was an act of kindness to tell me this. It let me know my work has meaning, and I don’t always feel that way. And it was an act of generosity, too, letting those who are quietly suffering know that they are by no means alone in their grief.I received many letters after this piece appeared. The most common, by far, was from people whose loved ones had died by suicide. At first, I was surprised. But in hindsight, I should not have been: As I wrote in the story, the irremediable pain of the suicidal is all too frequently passed along to those they leave behind. Writing, commenting, talking — these are some of the only ways survivors have to work their tortured emotions through. I can only hope that, as Roxane Cohen Silver’s work has shown, you will one day come to terms with your loss, even if you can’t make sense of it.I am so, so sorry about your son, Mary.‘By all means, let’s talk about “personal responsibility”’ — Nicholas KristofCarol in Berkeley, Calif., on “Who Killed the Knapp Family?” (Jan. 9):So long as poverty is seen as an individual or cultural failing (e.g. the culture of poverty which was linked to race, even though the evidence was nonexistent) we will not treat this with the seriousness it deserves. Yes, every individual has responsibility for their lives. But pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps, after we take away not only your boots but your capacity to buy or make boots is unfair and is also emblematic of how poverty is understood. We need to understand that collectively this costs us all — both morally and financially. The solution is collective. It is jobs that pay a living wage, it is opportunities for upward mobility for oneself and one’s children, it is training for these jobs and it is a real safety net. Will some people still be poor? Will they self destruct? Of course. But the numbers will be far smaller. And we will be far richer as a society.Nick: This observation by Carol struck me as exactly right. One of America’s mistakes over the last half century was to go too far down the track of extolling “personal responsibility” and haranguing people to lift themselves up by their bootstraps. When an infant in three counties in the United States has a shorter life expectancy than an infant in Bangladesh, that’s not because the American newborn is making “bad choices”; it’s because we as a country are. So by all means, let’s talk about “personal responsibility” — it’s real — but also about our collective responsibility to help America’s children and give them a fighting chance to succeed.‘America’s daughters — my own teenager among them — received quite a political education’ — Michelle CottleWoman in Iowa on “Elizabeth Warren Had a Good Run. Maybe Next Time, Ladies.” (March 4):I have no idea how to face my 7-yr-old daughter tonight who keeps asking if Warren won. She watched me caucus for Warren in Iowa and is highly curious why we don’t have many female leaders in our country. It doesn’t help that she knows about female political leaders and activists from India, my birth country, including her great-grandmother who was an activist herself.I am personally devastated that after all the women’s marches and pink hats and what not, the “liberal” party comes up with two bitter bickering old white men, both of whom have personally mansplained to Warren at different times in her career.Michelle: I heard this kind of heartbreak and frustration from more than one reader, and it got me every time. America’s daughters — my own teenager among them — received quite a political education these past four years, much of it dismaying. But witnessing the up-and-coming generations of kick-ass women demand better and push for progress offered both reassurance and inspiration. And while Joe Biden certainly isn’t changing the face of the presidency, his choice of Kamala Harris as a running mate means there will be a Madame Vice President for the first time ever. This is another step forward. Our daughters are watching.‘We have to acknowledge and confront these existing problems’ — Wajahat Ali8theist in Stowe, Vt., on “What Makes You Think 2021 Will Be Better?” (Dec. 16):I think you’re missing a key story here. We are all driven by some variable sense of hope or doom relative to what’s to come. The on-the-ground things won’t change much. In fact with climate change raging and right wing bubbles getting tighter and the economy worsening from Covid fall out, things will actually get worse. But to know that we are no longer at the will and whim of a terrible leader, that our global allies are back in the trenches with us, and to know the man and woman running the country are genuinely trying to make this county better. That hope helps me sleep, plan, spend and invest with more confidence.Wajahat: I agree that the Biden-Harris administration will bring forth principled, experienced leadership that replaces the corrupt cruelty and buffoonery of Trump’s presidency, which has revealed and exalted the worst demons of our country. I refuse to be a cynic, and remain hopeful. However, to ensure that we move this country toward progress and success, we have to acknowledge and confront these existing problems with fierce dedication and resolve. We can and should exhale; we’ve earned it. But there’s no rest for me yet. Much work must be done.‘Let me challenge you on the subject of unemployment’ — Bret StephensBruce L in Sharon, Mass., on “Groupthink Has Left the Left Blind” (Nov. 17):One can’t keep trying to rationalize Trump or Trumpism by pointing to the fact that unemployment was low — it is not like under a Democrat the rate would have been much different. Trump is unworthy of the office and trying to conceive of a rationale as to why he gets out the vote other than the love of a pseudo macho man who spews hate (“he tells it like it is”) is plain wrong — if I can be so black and white.Bret: Thanks for this note, Bruce. I agree completely with your broad point about Trump’s unfitness for office. But let me challenge you on the subject of unemployment. If, as many prominent economists predicted in 2016, the U.S. economy had taken a nosedive in Trump’s first years in office, would his critics, including you, not have blamed him? I doubt it. I don’t think it’s fair to have it both ways: Blaming Trump when things go wrong, while refusing to give him credit when things go right. Trump inherited a reasonably good economy, but — until the pandemic — it got better in nearly every respect, including wage growth for the bottom half. That’s a fact that needs to be acknowledged for the sake of intellectual honesty.In my five-plus years of covering Trump as a columnist, I’ve tried to give him credit where I think it’s due. I feel I owe that to every politician I’ve ever covered. I hope that makes my overall verdict about his presidency — the most disastrous in U.S. history since James Buchanan’s — that much more stinging.‘Our own innocence isn’t the point.’ — Margaret RenklJRC in N.Y.C. on “An Open Letter to My Fellow White Christians” (June 8):Not buying it at all. I was born white into a Christian family. Didn’t do it on purpose. And feel no guilt for it. I’ve never oppressed anyone. Or abused anyone. My faith? Just means I treat everyone I meet with love and respect. I’m not responsible for what Christians did three or four hundred years ago, for goodness sake. All any of us can be responsible for is how we wake up in the morning every day and treat people with loving kindness. That is what being a white Christian is. And a black Christian is. And an Asian and Latin American Christian is.Margaret: I understand why people who have done no harm and feel no malice bristle when grouped with those who cause enormous harm and who feel actual malice. But implicating Christianity in white supremacy is not the same thing as implicating every white Christian, and that’s why the column mentions by name many who are working for positive change.I chose this comment because the writer lives in New York, not in the South, but the argument here echoes what Southerners often say in the context of race generally: I didn’t own slaves. I didn’t make anyone sit at the back of the bus. Why should I feel guilty for atrocities committed by earlier generations?My response to that question is the same as my response to this commenter: Our own innocence isn’t the point. We live in a culture that remains saturated with racism, and so we are morally obliged to recognize the ways in which we have benefited from that system and to work passionately for its reform. It’s true that Christians should treat everyone we meet with love and respect, as this commenter does. But surely that’s not enough in a country where these senseless murders keep playing out right in front of our eyes. I’m convinced it would not be enough for Jesus Christ. Why is it enough for so many of my fellow white Christians?‘As if we have nothing to learn from the rest of the world’ — Paul KrugmanHolly in Canada on “The Cult of Selfishness Is Killing America” (July 27):Here’s the thing: We are in the middle of a global pandemic, not an American pandemic, so the U.S. has the world to look to for examples on how to best control this virus if necessary. In Canada, we were given guidance based on science, advancing stages based on rates of infection in each province so we could safely reopen our economy. The difference is trust, trust that our governments, both federal and provincial, will protect us over petty politics. We have a duty to one another and we are reminded of that duty by our leaders. If you are not willing to do what it takes to protect your entire community, not just your tribe, then you are destined to fail.Paul: This gets at one of my enduring gripes about the way we discuss policy in America — namely, as if we have nothing to learn from the rest of the world. It’s not just the presumption of American superiority — I still run into people who are sure that we have the world’s highest life expectancy, when we actually die a lot younger than people in other rich countries. It’s the way we don’t learn from policy successes abroad. It’s not just the pandemic: Every other advanced country has universal health care, yet we talk as if that’s an unattainable goal. These days, nations are the laboratories of democracy, but we’re too insular to learn from their experience.‘Was it possible to cover this territory without making readers want to throw themselves out a window?’ — Gail CollinsScott O’Pottamus in Right Here On The Left on “Vote for Trump’s Worst!” (Aug. 5):Ms. Collins,How dare you make light of the tragedy that is our Trump Administration! It is offensive that you find humor in a situation that is devoid of both light and humor. Why can’t you just write a column telling us how awful this so-called President Trump is? Why must you search for a light moment when you could instead choose to dwell on the darkness, rot, slime, and stench of this awful Administration?Stop being funny, Madame! Be morose, please! Dagnabbit!Gail: I get a lot of letters along your line, Scott, so I appreciate the chance to comment. It goes back to a time when I was working for one of the New York tabloids as a city politics columnist. At that time, said politics were really, really bad and involved a lot of indictments. One day as I was posting another enraged column, I wondered, was it possible to cover this territory without making readers want to throw themselves out a window? That’s sorta been my mission ever since, and Trump has made it pretty easy.‘I’m always worried about my role as an amplifier’ — Charlie WarzelLindaP in Boston on “Protesting for the Freedom to Catch the Coronavirus” (April 19):Why the outsized coverage? Why have I — and I’m sure many like me, who follow the news rabidly — felt these protests were a wave across the country? They have not been presented as large rallies, true. Nor have they been reported as “at most, hundreds.” Seems to me this entire nonsensical, dangerous movement would have been best left ignored. How many more now have doubt in the science, in what is safe, where doubt did not exist before because of the media coverage? This is almost as disturbing as the protests.Charlie: I really appreciate this type of criticism from readers as it is the kind that sharpens my own thinking on what I choose to write about and how I frame it. As somebody who covers a lot of fringe-y subjects, I’m always worried about my role as an amplifier. I think that — broadly speaking — the press is pretty uncritical about what we deem newsworthy when, in reality, it is all a choice.For this particular column, I actually agonized a bit over whether to give this protest movement the oxygen it was looking for. Ultimately, I saw the group’s tactics as important and felt that, even though the protests were small, they were indicative of something larger in American political culture that deserves understanding. My hope was, with the right context, that exploration would be useful. But I really appreciate that readers are asking these hard questions and challenging me on it. Frequently, they bring up something that I hadn’t considered and that informs how I tackle similar subjects on the next go-round.‘Sometimes I think religion must be the last remaining taboo’— Linda GreenhouseJM in Palm Springs, Fla., on “Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s Choice” (Dec. 3):I’ve been waiting for you to weigh in on this. I say if churches want to disregard our laws go ahead and do so, but not with exemption from federal taxes. Why should we, the taxpayers, subsidize the overtly political actions of thousands of religious groups? Republicans have effectively ended I.R.S. oversight and prosecution through intimidation and loss of funding. This nation needs to decide if we are a secular society in which one is free to practice whatever faith one chooses or a religious state which imposes its notions on our laws and their faithful execution. As you suggest, this insignificant action is freighted with dire implications for the future. We ignore it at our peril.Linda: I’m always heartened — who wouldn’t be? — by a reader who says, “I’ve been waiting to hear what you think.” JM clearly knows I’ve been writing a lot about the Supreme Court’s religion cases and understands why I’m concerned about the court’s increasing deference to religion above all else, such as the right not to be discriminated against. I don’t think this trend gets enough attention — sometimes I think religion must be the last remaining taboo — so I plan to keep at it.‘I completely sympathize with your situation’ — David BrooksMark in Missouri on “No, Not Sanders, Not Ever” (Feb. 28):As a member of Gen Z, the points Brooks makes are exactly why I and many of my generation support Bernie and his cause. I don’t want to implement communism, I just want to be able to get a job that actually pays me enough to pay off my student loans, not have 50 percent of my income go toward rent, and be able to retire. I don’t care about keeping my doctor or having to wait in lines to see one, I just don’t want to pay $1,500 plus for an X-ray.But please, continue to tell us that we don’t know what we want, sabotage who we support, and continue to marginalize us. Keep alienating the soon-to-be largest voting block in the U.S. while you’re starting to retire and depend on the social systems; I’m sure that will end great for you.David: Mark, I completely sympathize with your situation. Millennial and Gen Z workers are getting hammered by high housing, school and health care costs. I just think you’re more likely to get relief under a Biden presidency than you would if Sanders had won the nomination. In the first place, it’s highly unlikely Sanders would have been elected. Democrats were beaten in 2020 in congressional and state legislative races across the country. The only Democrat who could have won the presidency was Biden, in my view, precisely because he overperformed among suburban moderates who’d given Trump a chance in 2016. Beating Trump was Job 1, and Sanders was ill suited to that task.Second, even if Sanders had been elected, passing bills requires the ability to compromise. In his decades in Congress, he has not been a productive legislator because of his unwillingness to do that. He never would have won over even moderate Democrats like Joe Manchin, let alone the bipartisan group we just saw write the Covid relief compromise. My column started from the assumption that we live in an evenly divided, pluralistic society. We need leaders who can flourish within that complex system, not leaders who undermine the legitimacy of that system or overturn it through some imaginary mass uprising that will never come.Thanks so much for taking the time to respond.‘What’s so gutting is the element of random chance in our downfall.’ — Michelle GoldbergDupuis in Paris on “Can Mitch McConnell Be Stopped?” (Sept. 19):The old Republican world is actually the one dying. Justice Ginsburg’s ideals will prevail sooner or later. Be confident that the U.S. some day will become again a country the world envies. It might take time and patience but compassion and understanding will survive and thrive again. U.S. citizens will find the peaceful means to resist and win the battle for a better country.Michelle: I think I used to believe this — that, as Martin Luther King Jr. said, the “arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I don’t think I do anymore. I certainly don’t think the United States will ever again be the envy of the world; I’m not even sure how it survives as a functioning democracy. And part of what’s so gutting is the element of random chance in our downfall. Yes, our current predicament is the culmination of long-term structural forces. But had 80,000 votes in three states gone the other way in 2016, the Supreme Court would be a force for justice rather than reaction for the foreseeable future. Had Ginsburg lived a little longer, we could have saved Roe v. Wade and many other laws protecting civil rights, workers’ rights and the environment. But she died, and so, I suspect, did the America I once expected my children to inherit.‘It is to appreciate the magnitude of relief we’re experiencing’ — Frank BruniAllison in Colorado on “After That Fiasco, Biden Should Refuse to Debate Trump Again” (Sept. 30):Last night, I think I was too gobsmacked by the spectacle to form coherent thoughts about the debate, but this morning I feel overwhelmed with grief. Tears are welling in my eyes as I fathom another four years of Trump in the White House. It is, quite simply, unbearable even to imagine.Frank: To read this now is to be reacquainted, in the most poignant way, with how titanically much this election meant to the tens of millions of Americans who, like me, felt that Trump was a very grave danger and, almost minute by minute, a soul-corroding insult to basic American decency. It is to appreciate the magnitude of relief we’re experiencing at the end of this terrifying and tumultuous year. It is to be grateful: Sometimes, at a crucial time, we get the second chance we so acutely need.‘I am used to being on the receiving end of harsh words’ — Jennifer Finney BoylanNorma Manna Blum in Washington, D.C., on “Time Won’t Let Me Wait That Long” (Dec. 9):Beautiful Boylan:I love it when I don’t quite understand what moves me so in the shared experiences of a stranger. Ergo, today’s column which made, willy nilly, the tears to flow. And then, I went out into the nearly deserted streets of East Hollywood and walked about trying to make sense of who we are in our present isolation and incomprehension.And then to home to wrap my old Timex watch in a copy of your column and bury the small parcel in my garden. Perhaps one day someone will find my gift and understand that what I was trying, dying, to say is “I was here. And I tried. And I am still trying.”Jenny: It may be that I am used to being on the receiving end of harsh words, especially when I mention trans issues. Or maybe I just like making people cry. But every last comment on this column about my visit to a clock-repair store was generous and sweet. I wonder if the topic — the way time has frozen in 2020, and our yearning for our clocks to start ticking again — just hit a nerve. Or maybe people are more sentimental than I thought. In this comment, Norma Blum spoke of burying her watch, wrapped in this column, in her garden. In response, it was my turn to get all teary for a change.I am so grateful for my readers at Times Opinion, and look forward to hearing more of their reactions in 2021.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More