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      A Battle Between Gay Rights and Religious Expression

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      More from our inbox:Why No Gun Control Laws?Gains for DemocracyA National Primary DayThe Supreme Court heard a case concerning a Christian graphic designer who intends to limit her wedding-related services to celebrations of heterosexual unions.Michael A. McCoy for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “When Gay and Religious Freedoms Clash,” by Tish Harrison Warren (Opinion, Dec. 5), about the Supreme Court case involving a web designer who does not want to design websites for same-sex weddings because of her religious convictions:Ms. Warren states that there a distinction to be made between general discrimination against a group and declining to participate in an act one finds immoral.The designer states that she would not refuse to create a website for a gay individual; she simply does not want her services to be used for an event to which she is morally opposed.But where do we draw the line? Can a dry cleaner accept an L.G.B.T.Q. person’s business, but refuse to clean a tuxedo that they will wear to a “gay” wedding? Will your hairdresser choose not to style your hair when you are preparing for a “gay” event?Peggy ThomsonNew YorkTo the Editor:As a heterosexually married former Catholic priest, I have had the joy — under other auspices — to officiate at dozens of same-sex weddings. Some of my clerical colleagues have chided me, some supported me and some even clandestinely cooperated in the ceremony.Yet I find it difficult to insist that a web designer must accept any request to create a website for something that is against his or her conscience. Certainly, if she were asked to create one for a white supremacist group or to support some kind of questionable political stance, most of us liberals would have no problem saying she should not have to do so. I don’t see how this is different, even though I disagree with her beliefs.Surely, there are many competent business owners who support or are at least respectful of any given customer’s choices. It does not seem that all service providers have to accept whatever request comes their way.I would say to my friends who face any such objection to shake the dust from their feet and choose another web designer who respects their choices and loving commitments!Dave PasinskiFayetteville, N.Y.To the Editor:Tish Harrison Warren’s defense of the website designer who wants to discriminate against same-sex couples is distasteful.Although Colorado’s public accommodations law includes both race and sexual orientation as protected classes, Ms. Warren insists that discrimination against same-sex couples must be allowed under religious liberty because Scripture condemns homosexuality.Yes, the Bible declares same-sex sexual contact to be “an abomination,” instructing, “They shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them” (Leviticus 18:22; 20:13). Paul blithely reiterates that people with a same-sex orientation are “worthy of death” (Romans 1:26-32). This is nothing for Ms. Warren to brag about.But then Ms. Warren claims that antiracism civil rights laws are OK because they do not violate religious laws. Yet both the Old and New Testaments promote and countenance slavery, including allowing the rape, beating and torture of slaves. Such passages were touted incessantly to sanctify chattel slavery in this nation. Although Ms. Warren denies the Bible’s role in slavery, by her logic, slavery would be a religious right.Instead of condemning her Bible’s barbaric homophobia, Ms. Warren misguidedly argues that U.S. civil law and citizens should be subject to her cherry-picked Bronze Age morality.Annie Laurie GaylorMadison, Wis.The writer is the co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.To the Editor:Tish Harrison Warren’s advocacy for allowing business owners to refuse to provide services based on their professed religious beliefs is an invitation to invidious discrimination carried out behind a veneer of “pluralism.”A relatively small percentage of Christians continue to oppose interracial marriages, relying on vague biblical language and interpretive texts. The Talmud and resulting Jewish laws for many centuries declare marriages between Jews and non-Jews to be both prohibited and void under Jewish laws.Should we permit business owners to refuse to provide services not only to gay couples, but also to interracial and interreligious couples? Should the owner of a bed-and-breakfast operating out of the owner’s home be permitted to prohibit such couples from staying under their roof, based on religious objections?And what if the claimed religious beliefs are just a pretext for discrimination, and who would make such a determination?Thomas F. WiederAnn Arbor, Mich.To the Editor:Re “Justices Weigh Religion Rights vs. Bias Laws” (front page, Dec. 6):If the Colorado web designer had refused to create sites for divorced people, on the grounds that Jesus specifically condemned divorce in Matthew 5:31-32, would the Supreme Court even hear this case?David CastronuovoRomeTo the Editor:The Supreme Court arguments on Monday were supposed to be about speech, not religion. Nonsense. At a telling point, Justice Samuel Alito asked counsel, “Do you think it’s fair to equate opposition to same-sex marriage with opposition to interracial marriage?” From the colloquy, his own answer emerged clearly: Religious objections to same-sex marriage are “honorable,” while objections to interracial marriage are not.In the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision, Chief Justice Roger Taney wrote that African Americans “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” Fast forward 165 years, and Justice Alito’s message is plain: L.G.B.T.Q. people have no rights that conservative religious people are bound to respect.James H. StarkHartford, Conn.The writer is a professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut School of Law.Why No Gun Control Laws? Kenny Holston for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “As Shootings Continue, ‘the Votes Aren’t There’ for a Gun Control Law” (news article, Dec. 4) and the disheartening subheadline, “Any new limits will likely have to wait two years for Congress”:Are we truly helpless to stop the incessant mass shootings in America? Why aren’t the votes there for gun control? Who exactly is voting against the will of the American people? Should not these members of Congress be called out for their intransigence in the face of such wholesale slaughter?The mass killings will continue until the country at least minimizes the firepower available for these tragedies, but nothing can change until either the minds or the members of Congress who continually block gun control measures change.With each mass killing, newspapers should begin publishing the voting record on gun control by the politicians in the state affected by that day’s massacre. Would such an act really be journalistically too political for the sake of our children?David SimpsonRindge, N.H.Gains for DemocracyA demonstration in Beijing last month against strict coronavirus measures. The recent unrest has been the boldest and most widespread in China since the pro-democracy movement of 1989.Kevin Frayer/Getty ImagesTo the Editor:The demonstrations for democracy and against Covid restrictions in China, and the huge protests for women’s rights and democratic freedoms in Iran, indicate that democratic values are trending.The victory of democratic forces in the Brazilian elections and the better-than-expected showing of Democrats in our own point to the same conclusion: The appeal of democratic values remains robust and is a powerful antidote to authoritarianism.Resistance to authoritarianism takes many forms: Voters vote, citizens demand rights in the face of brutal crackdowns, and in Ukraine people stand against invasion. But it is all part of the pro-democracy movement, worldwide.Edmund McWilliamsWhite Oaks, N.M.The writer is a retired Foreign Service officer.A National Primary DayThe crowd cheers before Joe Biden takes the stage after being declared the winner of the South Carolina primary in Columbia, S.C., in February 2020.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Reordered Primaries Create New Gambits for the Political Chessboard” (news article, Dec. 4):Asking which state(s) should go first in primary voting is the wrong question. We should instead ask: Why aren’t all state primaries on the same day? That would avoid the farce of candidates pandering to local interests, only to reverse their positions (or “pivot”) when they move on to the next state. To have honest candidates, we should have an honest process.These are candidates for national office. There should be national election rules and a national primary day.Michael T. FerroEndwell, N.Y. More

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      The Empty Gestures of Disillusioned Evangelicals

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      There have been encouraging signs lately of influential evangelicals inching away from Donald Trump.The Washington Post last month quoted a self-pitying essay by Mike Evans, a former member of Trump’s evangelical advisory board, who wrote: “He used us to win the White House. We had to close our mouths and eyes when he said things that horrified us.” Religion News Service reported that David Lane, the leader of a group devoted to getting conservative Christian pastors into office, recently sent out an email criticizing Trump for subordinating his MAGA vision “to personal grievances and self-importance.” On Monday, Semafor quoted Bob Vander Plaats, a prominent Christian conservative activist in Iowa, saying that evangelicals weren’t sure that Trump could win.Even Robert Jeffress, a Dallas televangelist whom Texas Monthly once described as “Trump’s Apostle,” is holding off on endorsing him again, telling Newsweek that he doesn’t want to be part of a Republican civil war.Because I see the ex-president as a uniquely catastrophic figure — more likely to lose in 2024 than the current elite Republican favorite Ron DeSantis, but also more likely to destroy the country if he prevails — I’ve eagerly followed the fracturing of his evangelical support. But Russell Moore, the editor in chief of Christianity Today, told me he doesn’t yet take evangelical distancing from Trump seriously. After all, he pointed out, we’ve been in a similar place before.At the start of Trump’s first campaign for president, few important evangelical figures backed him. “What changed was an increase in the number of grass-roots evangelical voters who started to support Donald Trump,” Moore said. “It’s not that the leaders embrace a candidate and therefore their followers do. It’s really the reverse.”Moore is the rare evangelical leader who has consistently opposed Trump, a stance that nearly cost him his former job as president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. (He left the Convention in 2021 over its handling of sexual abuse and white nationalism in the church.) Moore suspects that if the base of the Christian right, which over the last six years has forged a quasi-mystical connection with the profane ex-president, decides to stick with Trump, the qualms of their would-be leaders will evaporate. “I just don’t read a lot into reluctance anymore, because I’ve seen reluctance that immediately bounces back, after ‘Access Hollywood,’ for instance, or after Jan. 6,” said Moore.What matters, then, are the sentiments of ordinary evangelicals. A recent survey by the Public Religion Research Institute found right-leaning white evangelical voters closely divided in their Republican primary preferences: 49 percent want Trump to be the nominee, while 50 percent want someone else. But Moore thinks most rank-and-file evangelicals aren’t focused on presidential politics yet, so it’s too soon to know which direction they’ll go.The last six years, said Moore, has changed the character of conservative evangelicalism, making it at once more militant and more apocalyptic — in other words, more Trump-like. For some people, Trump may even be the impetus for their faith: a Pew survey found that 16 percent of white Trump supporters who didn’t identify as born-again or evangelical in 2016 had adopted those designations by 2020.“I see much more dismissal of Sermon on the Mount characteristics among some Christians than we would have seen before,” Moore said, referring to Jesus’ exhortation to turn the other cheek and love your enemies. There is instead, Moore said, “an idea of kindness as weakness.” Pastors have spoken to Moore about getting blowback from their congregants for preaching biblical ideas about mercy, with people saying, “That doesn’t work anymore, in a culture as hostile as this.”Russell Moore, editor in chief of Christianity Today, says he doesn’t yet take evangelical distancing from Donald Trump seriously.Melissa Golden/ReduxMeanwhile, said Moore, some of those inspired by Jesus’ radical compassion are leaving the church. There have always been evangelicals who become disillusioned, said Moore, often because they “didn’t believe in the supernatural anymore, or couldn’t accept moral teachings of the church anymore.” But now, he said, “I find more and more young evangelicals who think the church itself is immoral.” Speaking of the new, pro-Trump recruits to evangelicalism, Moore said, “If the trade-off is getting more of them and losing some of the really best of our young people because they’re associating Jesus with this, that’s not a good trade.”The trade, of course, is much like the one the Republican Party made in choosing to subordinate itself to Trump. Contrary to Evans’s lament, no one had to close his mouth and eyes. The Republicans chose to because they wanted power, and their critique now is largely about power lost.I spoke to Moore before Trump called for the “termination” of the Constitution but after he’d dined with two of America’s most virulent antisemites. I asked if that meeting had been a turning point for any Christian Trump supporters. It’s landing, he said, only with “people who already had concerns about Trump.” The born-again Trump critics are mostly just worried about whether he can get elected, which is one reason he still can.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

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      Politician, Thy Name Is Hypocrite

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      What’s worse — politicians passing a bad law or politicians passing a bad law while attempting to make it look reasonable with meaningless window dressing?You wind up in the same place, but I’ve gotta go with the jerks who pretend.Let’s take, oh, I don’t know, abortion. Sure, lawmakers who vote to ban it know they’re imposing some voters’ religious beliefs on the whole nation. But maybe they can make it look kinda fair.For instance Mark Ronchetti, who’s running for governor in New Mexico, was “strongly pro-life” until the uproar following the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe. Now, his campaign website says he’s looking for a “middle ground” that would allow abortions “in cases involving rape, incest and when a mother’s life is at risk.”That’s a very popular spin. The public’s rejection of the court’s ruling, plus the stunning vote for abortion rights in a recent statewide referendum in Kansas, has left politicians looking for some way to dodge the anti-choice label. Without, um, actually changing. “I am pro-life, and make no apologies for that. But I also understand that this is a representative democracy,” said Tim Michels, a Republican candidate for Wisconsin governor, when he embraced the rape-and-incest dodge.Mehmet Oz, who’s running for Senate in Pennsylvania, used to support abortion access back when he wanted the world to call him “Dr. Oz.” But now that his day job is being a conservative Republican, he’s “100 percent pro-life.” Nevertheless, he still feels there should be an exception for cases of … rape and incest.We’ve come a long — OK, we’ve come at least a little way from the time, a decade ago, when Todd Akin, the Republican Senate candidate in Missouri, argued it was impossible for a woman to get pregnant from “legitimate rape.” And Akin did lose that race.The backtracking can get pretty creative — or desperate, depending on your perspective. In New Hampshire, Don Bolduc, who’s running for the Senate, was strongly anti-choice before he won the Republican primary. (“Killing babies is unbelievably irresponsible.”)Now, Bolduc the nominee feels a federal abortion ban “doesn’t make sense” and complains that he’s not getting the proper respect for his position. Which is that it’s a state issue. And that his opponent, Senator Maggie Hassan, should “get over it.”These days, it’s hard to sell an across-the-board rule that doesn’t take victims of forced sex into account. In Ohio recently, Senate candidate J.D. Vance tried to stick to his anti-abortion guns, but did back down a smidge when questioned about whether that 10-year-old Ohio rape victim who was taken out of state for an abortion should have been forced to have a baby.And then Vance quickly changed the subject, pointing out that the man accused of raping her was an “illegal alien.” This is an excellent reminder that in this election season there is virtually no problem that Republicans can’t find a way of connecting to the Mexican border.As sympathetic as all rape victims are, the exemption rule would not have much impact. No one knows exactly what proportion of pregnancies are caused by rape and incest, but the number “looks very, very small,” Elizabeth Nash of the Guttmacher Institute told me.And what about, say, a young woman who’s already a teenage mother, working the night shift at a fast-food outlet, whose boyfriend’s condom failed? No suggestion for any special mercy there. You can’t help thinking the big difference is a desire to punish any woman who wanted to have sex.Another popular method of dodging the abortion issue is fiddling with timelines. Blake Masters, the ever-fascinating Arizona Senate candidate, originally opposed abortion from the moment of conception. (“I think it’s demonic.”) Now his revamped website just calls for a national ban once a woman is six months pregnant.And we will stop here very, very briefly to mention that the number of six-month abortions is infinitesimal.Whenever this issue comes up, I remember my school days, which involved Catholic education from kindergarten through college. Wonderful world in many ways, but there wasn’t much concern about keeping religion out of public policy. Especially when it came to abortion. Any attempt to stop the pregnancy from the moment of conception on was murder.That’s still Catholic dogma, you know. Politicians who think they can dodge the issue with their rape-and-incest exceptions appear to ignore the fact that as the church sees it, an embryo that’s the product of a rape still counts as worthy of protection.It took me quite a while to get my head around the abortion issue and I have sympathy for people who have strong religious opposition to ending a pregnancy.Some folks who hold to that dogma try to encourage pregnant women to have their babies by providing counseling, financial support and adoption services, all of which is great as long as the woman in question isn’t being forced to join the program.But anti-abortion laws are basically an attempt to impose one group’s religion on the country as a whole. It’s flat-out unconstitutional, no matter how Justice Samuel Alito feels.And the rape-or-incest exception isn’t humanitarian. It’s a meaningless rhetorical ploy intended to allow politicians to have it both ways.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

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      The Growing Religious Fervor in the American Right

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      Rituals of Christian worship have become embedded in conservative rallies, as praise music and prayer blend with political anger over vaccines and the 2020 election.They opened with an invocation, summoning God’s “hedge of thorns and fire” to protect each person in the dark Phoenix parking lot.They called for testimonies, passing the microphone to anyone with “inspirational words that they’d like to say on behalf of our J-6 political prisoners,” referring to people arrested in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, whom they were honoring a year later.Then, holding candles dripping wax, the few dozen who were gathered lifted their voices, a cappella, in a song treasured by millions of believers who sing it on Sundays and know its words by heart:Way maker, miracle worker, promise keeperLight in the darkness, my GodThat is who you are …This was not a church service. It was worship for a new kind of congregation: a right-wing political movement powered by divine purpose, whose adherents find spiritual sustenance in political action.The Christian right has been intertwined with American conservatism for decades, culminating in the Trump era. And elements of Christian culture have long been present at political rallies. But worship, a sacred act showing devotion to God expressed through movement, song or prayer, was largely reserved for church. Now, many believers are importing their worship of God, with all its intensity, emotion and ambitions, to their political life.At events across the United States, it is not unusual for participants to describe encountering the divine and feel they are doing their part to install God’s kingdom on earth. For them, right-wing political activity itself is becoming a holy act.These Christians are joining secular members of the right wing, including media-savvy opportunists and those touting disinformation. They represent a wide array of discontent, from opposing vaccine mandates to promoting election conspiracy theories. For many, pandemic restrictions that temporarily closed houses of worship accelerated their distrust of government and made churchgoing political.At a Trump rally in Michigan last weekend, a local evangelist offered a prayer that stated, “Father in heaven, we firmly believe that Donald Trump is the current and true president of the United States.” He prayed “in Jesus’ name” that precinct delegates at the upcoming Michigan Republican Party convention would support Trump-endorsed candidates, whose names he listed to the crowd. “In Jesus’ name,” the crowd cheered back.The infusion of explicitly religious fervor — much of it rooted in the charismatic tradition, which emphasizes the power of the Holy Spirit — into the right-wing movement is changing the atmosphere of events and rallies, many of which feature Christian symbols and rituals, especially praise music.With spiritual mission driving political ideals, the stakes of any conflict, whether over masks or school curriculums, can feel that much larger, and compromise can be even more difficult to achieve. Political ambitions come to be about defending God, pointing to a desire to build a nation that actively promotes a particular set of Christian beliefs.“What is refreshing for me is, this isn’t at all related to church, but we are talking about God,” said Patty Castillo Porter, who attended the Phoenix event. She is an accountant and officer with a local Republican committee to represent “the voice of the Grassroots/America First posse,” and said she loved meeting so many Christians at the rallies she attends to protest election results, border policy or Covid mandates.“Now God is relevant,” she said. “You name it, God is there, because people know you can’t trust your politicians, you can’t trust your sheriffs, you can’t trust law enforcement. The only one you can trust is God right now.”Religious music, prayer and symbols are often featured at political rallies like a November 2020 event in Atlanta in support of President Donald J. Trump.Dustin Chambers/BloombergPeople bowed their heads in prayer at a rally held by former President Trump in March in Commerce, Ga.Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesThe parking-lot vigil was sponsored by a right-wing voter mobilization effort focused on dismantling election policy. Not everyone there knew the words to “Way Maker,” the contemporary Christian megahit. A few men, armed with guns and accompanied by a German shepherd, stood at the edge of the gathering, smoking and talking about what they were seeing on Infowars, a website that traffics in conspiracy theories. Others, many of whom attended charismatic or evangelical churches, sang along. The Intersection of Evangelicalism and U.S. PoliticsPolitical Rise: In the early 1970s, many evangelicals weren’t active in politics. Within a few years, they had reshaped elections for a generation.A Fervor in the American Right: Rituals of Christian worship have become embedded in conservative rallies, as praise music and prayer blend with political anger.The Pandemic: A wariness of the Covid-19 vaccine among evangelicals is not just about faith or a mistrust of science — it’s also political.Climate Change: In a conversation with The Times, an evangelical climate scientist reflected on the grimly politicized state of science.Trump’s Pull: To the outside observer, the relationship between white evangelicals and Donald J. Trump can seem mystifying.Worship elements embedded into these events are recognizably evangelical. There is prayer and proclamation, shared rituals and stories. Perhaps the most powerful element is music. The anthems of the contemporary evangelical church, many of which were written in just the last few years, are blending with rising political anger, becoming the soundtrack to a new fight.Religious music, prayer and symbols have been part of protest settings throughout American history, for diverging causes, including the civil rights movement. Music is personal, able to move listeners in ways sermons or speeches cannot. Singing unites people in body and mind, and creates a sense of being part of a story, a song, greater than yourself.The sheer dominance of worship music within 21st-century evangelical culture means that the genre has been used outside church settings by the contemporary left as well. “Way Maker,” for example, was sung at some demonstrations for racial justice in the summer of 2020.The use of music is now key to movement-building power on the right.Demonstrators at the trucker protest in Canada called on God to metaphorically topple the walls of Parliament, a biblical reference to the story of Jericho.James Park for The New York TimesMarchers looped around Parliament in Ottawa during the trucker rally to protest covid mandates.Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesAt the protest that paralyzed the Canadian capital in February, a group of demonstrators belted out “I raise a hallelujah, my weapon is a melody” from a hit from the influential California label Bethel Music. Amid the honks of trucks, they called on God to metaphorically topple the walls of Parliament, recalling the biblical story of how God crumbled the walls of Jericho, and to end vaccine mandates.At a recent conference in Arizona promoting anti-vaccine messages and election conspiracy theories, organizers blasted “Fresh Wind,” from the global church Hillsong, and a rock-rap novelty song with a chorus that began “We will not comply.”A growing belief among conservative Christians is that the United States is on the cusp of a revival, one where spiritual and political change are bound together.“We are seeing a spiritual awakening taking place,” said Ché Ahn, the pastor of Harvest Rock Church in Pasadena, who became a hero to many when his church successfully sued Gov. Gavin Newsom of California for banning indoor worship during the pandemic. “Christians are becoming more involved, becoming activists. I think that is a good thing, because the church has been slumbering.”The explicit use of evangelical worship for partisan protest took root in the early pandemic lockdowns, notably after California banned indoor church services and singing. Sean Feucht, a worship leader from Northern California, ran a failed campaign for Congress in 2020, and then launched a series of outdoor events, titled “Let Us Worship,” to defy pandemic restrictions. Thousands of Christians flocked to his events, where prayer and singing took on a new valence of defiance.When Mr. Feucht staged a worship event on the National Mall last Sept. 11, Mr. Trump contributed a video in which he praised Mr. Feucht for “uniting citizens of all denominations and backgrounds to promote faith and freedom in America.” Even before the pandemic, he and other worship leaders were courted by Mr. Trump, who identified celebrities within the charismatic movement as natural allies.A “Let Us Worship” service, one of a series of events started by Sean Feucht to defy pandemic restrictions.  Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesMr. Feucht performing at a service. At events like this, music can move listeners in ways that sermons or speeches cannot. Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesSince the fall, rallies and protests against Covid restrictions have expanded to include other conservative causes. On the San Diego waterfront in January, local activists who opposed vaccine and mask mandates held a worship protest called “Freedom Revival,” which combined Christian music with conservative speakers and booths promoting gun ownership and ballot initiatives that opposed medical mandates.Shaun Frederickson, one of the organizers, who has resisted the San Diego municipal government’s Covid response and called it “propaganda,” said it was wrong to understand the event simply as protesting Covid-related mandates. It was about something deeper, he said in an interview: the idea that Christian morality is the necessary foundation for governance in a free republic.“Christians are the ones that are responsible for granting you and myself the right and authority over government,” he said. “Our motivation with the worship was to entertain people that need to be entertained, while we are going to hit them heavy with truth.”At the revival, as worship music played gently, Mr. Frederickson, in a cardigan and cuffed skinny jeans, urged the crowd to not believe “the lie” of the separation of church and state.Among the speakers was Heidi St. John, a home-schooling advocate running for Congress in Washington State. She praised Moses’ mother — “she did not comply!” — and exhorted people to leave their churches if their pastors were too politically “timid.”Mr. Ahn, the pastor, who also spoke at the event, said he did not see it simply as a worship service or a political rally. “It is both,” he said. “My understanding of Jesus’ kingdom is that he is Lord, not just over the church, but every aspect of society. That means family, education, arts, entertainment, business for sure, and government.”Worship is increasingly becoming a central feature of right-wing events not aimed at exclusively Christian audiences.ReAwaken America events, hosted by an Oklahoma talk-show personality and entrepreneur, are touted as gatherings of “truth-seekers” who oppose pandemic precautions, believe that the 2020 election was stolen, distrust Black Lives Matter and want to explore “what really happened” on Jan. 6. Most of the events are hosted by large churches, and the primary sponsor is Charisma News, a media outlet serving charismatic Christians.In February, a ReAwaken event at Trinity Gospel Temple in Canton, Ohio, opened with a set of worship music from Melody Noel Altavilla, a songwriter and worship leader at Influence Church in Anaheim, Calif. “Your presence fills the temple when we worship you,” Ms. Altavilla sang. The music soared in the darkened sanctuary.In an interview, Ms. Altavilla said she was excited to be asked to perform because it was a chance to “create space for God” at a secular event.She said she felt increasingly called to political action as part of her duty as a Christian. She recalled a biblical account in which men singing and praying went ahead of the Israelite army into battle. “Imagine if the armies in the Old Testament said, ‘No, Lord, this is too political, the worshipers can’t go out in front of the soldiers,’” she said.Compared with 2016, Trump rallies are taking on the feel of worship events, from the stage to the audience. When Mr. Trump held his first rally of the year in Florence, Ariz., in January, he descended via helicopter into a jubilant crowd.People on a highway bridge in Yavapai County, Ariz., cheered a cross-country demonstration by truckers and other motorists in February against pandemic measures.Meridith Kohut for The New York TimesA rally held by former President Trump in March in Georgia. Support for Mr. Trump brought together charismatic Christians, media-savvy opportunists and secular believers of disinformation. Dustin Chambers for The New York Times“I lay the key of David upon you,” Anthony Kern, a candidate for the Arizona State Senate who was photographed on the Capitol steps on Jan. 6, 2021, proclaimed to the crowd from the stage, paraphrasing a biblical passage about power given by God. “That means the governmental authority is upon you, men and women.”Standing in the crowd, Kathy Stainbrook closed her eyes and raised her arms high in worship. She had come from Shasta County, Calif., with a group of Christian women involved in the Shasta County Freedom Coalition, a collection of right-wing groups that has included a militia, according to its website, and has supported an effort to recall a Republican county supervisor. The coalition also promotes “biblical citizenship” classes.A friend of Ms. Stainbrook’s, Tami Jackson, who was also in the crowd, said she had come to see politics as an inherently spiritual struggle.She said she wanted to be a part of “staking claim” to what God was doing. “This is a Jesus movement,” Ms. Jackson said. “I believe God removed Donald for a time, so the church would wake up and have confidence in itself again to take our country back.”If Americans would repent of Covid policies and critical race theory and abortion, Ms. Stainbrook said, God would bless future generations for good. She recalled lyrics in a song by Kari Jobe, “The Blessing”: “May his favor be upon you, and a thousand generations.”“How did Paul and Barnabas escape jail?” Ms. Stainbrook said, referring to an account in the Acts of the Apostles. “They just worshiped, and chains fell off and the doors fell open.”Her words were drowned out by shouts of “Hallelujah” around her. More

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      White Evangelicals Shun Morality for Power

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      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

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      Trump’s New Civil Religion

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyTrump’s New Civil ReligionThe storming of the Capitol is a creation myth for a political movement.Mr. Onishi is a professor of religious studies.Jan. 19, 2021, 3:00 p.m. ETCredit…Mike Theiler/ReutersSince the presidential election was called for Joe Biden on Nov. 6, President Trump has cultivated the myth that the election was stolen. Despite his claims of voter fraud and election mismanagement after dozens of courtroom losses, it’s become clear over the past few months that there is no real legal basis for contesting the election results.But myths are often invulnerable to reality. As the “Stop the Steal” mantra spread from the White House to the mouths of conservative members of Congress and the halls of Republican-controlled state houses, and throughout conservative social media, something insidious and predictable happened: Senators such as Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley announced they would object to the results of the election on Jan. 6 because so many Americans doubted the validity of its outcome. The myth became the basis for contesting the facts.A myth becomes reality through ritual, when its story is dramatized and its adherents brought to collective participation in it. When Trump supporters took hold of the Capitol, temporarily halting the counting of the Electoral College votes, they brought the fiction down upon the levers of government through temporary mob rule.It is tempting to think of this insurrection as akin to Pearl Harbor or Sept. 11, but doing so places an act of domestic terrorism in the historical lineage of attacks from external actors. If we are going to reckon with the import and legacy of Jan. 6, we must look inward.After the Civil War, Reconstruction saw the passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, which abolished slavery and granted equal citizenship to Black Americans. In the years after the war, the nation witnessed Black Americans’ integration into Southern political life. Local chapters of the Union League and other organizations mobilized Black voters and fostered Black candidates for local and state elections. In 1868 South Carolina had a Black-majority state legislature; in 1870 Hiram Revels of Mississippi became the first Black American to serve in the United States Senate. For a short while, it seemed that liberty and justice for all was an attainable legal goal.However, in the late 1860s and early 1870s, white Southerners developed the notion of the Confederacy as the Lost Cause in order to combat the radical changes taking root in Dixie. The Lost Cause is sometimes referred to as revisionist history, but I would call it something else: collective memory in the form of Confederate civil religion.According to proponents of the Lost Cause, the South was the victim of an invasion by “Yankee vandals,” as Caroline Janney, a University of Virginia historian, phrases it. In response, they framed themselves as occupying the moral high ground in the conflict — a class of honorable and loyal families who defended their soil and way of life in the face of undue Northern aggression. To make their case, they had to argue that slavery was not the real issue of the war, but rather a pretext for a political and economic power grab.Like the myth of the stolen election, these claims are historically untenable. But the historical realities are less important to the myth than the narrative, rituals and symbols that developed in conjunction with the Lost Cause.As Charles Reagan Wilson, a Southern historian, has shown, Lost Cause mythology was enacted through the rituals of Confederate civil religion: the funerals of Confederate soldiers, the celebration of Confederate Memorial Day, the pilgrimages made to the hundreds of Confederate monuments that had been erected by the dawn of World War I. The rituals and symbols instilled in the younger generation the nobility of the Confederacy and the moral vacancy of its enemies. Together, they supported a religious myth that for many Southerners supplanted the historical record. The men who died in battle became its martyrs. The generals became its patron saints.The civil components of the Lost Cause were combined with Christian mythology. The South played the part of Christ in the Christian drama — crucified, yet unrisen. The saints in this Lost Cause theology were the heroes of the Confederacy — most notably Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. A scholar of Southern religion, Paul Harvey, put it this way: “Key to this mythology was the exalting of southern war heroes as Christian evangelical gentlemen. Evangelists of the New South era immortalized the Christian heroism of the Confederate leaders and soldiers and dovetailed them into revivals of the era.” No matter one’s denominational affiliation, it offered a story and a set of high holy days every white Southerner could celebrate.The Lost Cause is an example of how collective memory works. Collective memory is not concerned with historical accuracy; its preoccupation with the past is based on a desire to mobilize a vision for the present and create a prospect for the future. Heather Cox Richardson argues persuasively in her recent book “How the South Won the Civil War” that even though the Union defeated the Confederacy on the battlefield, the South won the war by creating a Southern identity that led to the emergence and re-emergence of the Ku Klux Klan and the institution of Jim Crow laws, and then spread west to provide fuel for the Chinese Exclusion Act and acts of violence against Native Americans — all on the basis of resentment, myth and symbol, rather than facts or truth.Make America Great Again is a politics of grievance complete with its own myths and symbols. Mr. Trump’s rallies have been the ritual locus of his brand of nationalism. They create a collective effervescence in attendees that leaves them seething at their political enemies and ready to follow the president down any authoritarian road he takes them. Moreover, Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry have shown that Mr. Trump’s religious support comes from Christian nationalists who believe the United States was built for and by white Christians.Like the Lost Cause, MAGAism is buttressed by religious narratives and imagery, and its gospel is spread through houses of worship every Sunday. For some evangelicals, Mr. Trump is a divinely ordained savior uniquely able to save the nation from ruin at the hands of godless socialists, Black Lives Matter activists and antifa. So it’s no surprise that as insurrectionists stormed the Capitol, they waved a mix of Confederate, Christian and Trump flags.MAGAism also has an eschatology based on conspiracy. As Marc-André Argentino, who studies QAnon, told me by email, for many Trump supporters, including growing numbers of white evangelicals, Jan. 6 figures as “the start of the long awaited period of tribulation that will announce the arrival of the promised golden age.” In other words, Jan. 6 is both a beginning point and a sign of the end, a rebirth for the dangerous delusions of extremists who see violence as an appropriate means for finishing what they started in order to usher in a new world.The lasting legacy of the Jan. 6 insurrection is the myth and symbol of Mr. Trump’s lost cause. He has successfully nurtured a feeling in the 74 million Americans who voted for him that they can trust neither their government nor the electoral process. By encouraging them to question the validity of votes in some of the Blackest cities in the country, such as Detroit, and stoking anger that such constituencies would have the power to swing an election, he convinced them that the process is rigged, thus giving his supporters the moral high ground. This creates the foundation for a collective memory based on a separate national identity held together by the tragic stealing of his presidency and the evil of his opponents.The Lost Cause provides a blueprint for winning the war, even though Mr. Trump has lost this election. After Mr. Biden’s inauguration, if prominent Republican figures encourage their followers to accept the results, but not defeat; if they pick up Mr. Trump’s leadership mantle by fostering resentment and the desire for revenge through their Twitter feeds; if they perpetually call into question the legitimacy of the U.S. government through an army of evangelical pastors less concerned with reality than with disseminating the myths and symbols of Make America Great Again as a vehicle for Christian nationalism, it’s not hard to see how they will become heirs of the Lost Cause. That should frighten us all.Bradley Onishi (@BradleyOnishi) is a professor of religious studies at Skidmore College and the creator, producer and writer of the podcast “The Orange Wave: A History of the Religious Right Since 1960.”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