tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/evangelical-35950/articlesEvangelical – The Conversation2024-01-15T19:02:26Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2039482024-01-15T19:02:26Z2024-01-15T19:02:26ZIs America enduring a ‘slow civil war’? Jeff Sharlet visits Trump rallies, a celebrity megachurch and the manosphere to find out<p>In these days of the 24-hour news cycle, one can never know in advance, but <a href="https://theconversation.com/us-elections-2024-a-biden-vs-trump-rematch-is-very-likely-with-trump-leading-biden-219093">Donald J. Trump seems likely to be the Republican Party candidate</a> for president of the United States in 2024. </p>
<p>With Trump facing four indictments in American courts, the outcome is uncertain. Would the American people vote for an indicted person, or even for a felon? They might, and to understand the persistence of Trump’s loyal following, we need to get behind the headlines and assess the roots of Trump’s power.</p>
<p>Thankfully, <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324006497">The Undertow</a> is not another book on America’s most accomplished attention-seeker. Nor is its author, Jeff Sharlet, focused only on <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-united-states-was-founded-on-allegiance-to-laws-not-leaders-the-jan-6-rioters-turned-that-on-its-head-185687">the ominous events of January 6, 2021</a>, at the US Capitol. </p>
<p>Instead, The Undertow tells how the cultural divisions in American society could allow such a thing as the storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters to happen. (And how, despite everything that’s happened since, he remains the Republican frontrunner for the 2024 presidential race.) Sharlet believes that event is part of a “slow civil war” that threatens the future of the American republic. </p>
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<p><em>Review: The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War – Jeff Sharlet (W.W. Norton)</em></p>
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<h2>American racism</h2>
<p>Sharlet begins with a moving portrayal of singer and actor <a href="https://theconversation.com/harry-belafonte-a-singer-and-actor-but-an-activist-at-heart-204615">Harry Belafonte</a>, best known for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-O_(The_Banana_Boat_Song)">Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)</a>, “a protest song”. He was also a civil rights activist: one of the biggest donors to the cause and a close friend of Martin Luther King. Actor Sidney Poitier described their bond as “almost mystical”.</p>
<p>Sharlet documents Belafonte’s lifelong struggle against racism, through a series of conversations. Belafonte’s inclusion proved timely: he died just a month after The Undertow was published.</p>
<p>Sharlet uses Belafonte to argue racism is at the heart of the American political and social malady. Belafonte, a mainstream performer with cross-race appeal who still suffered intense discrimination, is Sharlet’s bearer of the bad news that racism resides in the core of American identity. Behind the mask of the mainstream entertainer, there was pain – and a struggle for equality, never forgotten and never achieved. </p>
<p>Sharlet captures Belafonte’s late-life reflection:</p>
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<p>it’s been more than four decades now, and the movement he helped make he believes has been stolen, turned into an uplifting story, a Hollywood fable with a happy ending that isn’t yet real.</p>
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<p>Trump embodies the racial underpinning’s of Bellefonte’s lament, the persistent undertow of Whiteness manifest in the phenomenon that is Trumpism. Trump stands for capital “W” Whiteness, Sharlet writes, but Whiteness as a concept must be unpacked. To write this book, Sharlet must enter what he calls “the Trumpocene”: the mental world of cause and effect that Trump’s acolytes operate in. </p>
<p>In practice, Sharlet vacillates over whether Whiteness is truly the determining factor among Trump followers: religion and masculine power also get substantial attention. At various points, he also speculates about whether the subterranean unrest he uncovers reflects military trauma, the effects of “forever wars” in <a href="https://theconversation.com/iraqi-journalist-ghaith-abdul-ahad-watched-saddams-statue-topple-in-2003-his-standout-war-memoir-de-centres-the-west-203962">Iraq</a> and Afghanistan, and the global financial crisis and its impact on the middle class. But he does not go far enough on these latter points.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-sit-ins-in-the-1960s-to-uprisings-in-the-new-millennium-harry-belafonte-served-as-a-champion-of-youth-activism-204520">From sit-ins in the 1960s to uprisings in the new millennium, Harry Belafonte served as a champion of youth activism</a>
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<h2>‘The American religion of winning’</h2>
<p>While race may be at the heart of a contested American identity, Sharlet believes evangelical religion is propelling the narrative of discontent and rebellion. </p>
<p>Or rather, a distorted branch within evangelical religion: the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/prosperity-gospel">prosperity gospel</a>, which teaches that faith and positive thinking attract health, wealth and happiness. Sharlet covers this aspect of his grand narrative with amusing anecdotes and withering analysis. </p>
<p>For prosperity gospellers such as Pastor Rich Wilkerson Jr of Vous (short for Rendevous) megachurch, doctrine means nothing and religious discourse becomes virtually indistinguishable from show business, celebrity culture and commerce. </p>
<p>In fact, Sharlet writes, the church itself was born from a reality television show, <a href="https://youtu.be/CiYLEXT6mpE?si=L0x6S43amaSC3jvC">Rich in Faith</a>, starring Pastor Rich – who “loves talking about Leo [DiCaprio], because he looks like Leo”. Vous was financed by Wilkerson’s father, pastor of Trinity Church, one of the largest megachurches in suburban Miami (where Wilkerson Jr worked until he launched Vous).</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Pastor Rich’s Vous megachurch is popular with celebrities – and he loves talking about ‘Leo’ DiCaprio, whom he resembles.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Wilkerson is portrayed as a very “cool” Christian, with a talent for grabbing headlines and fraternising with celebrity friends. He famously officiated at Kim Kardashian’s 2014 wedding to rapper Kanye West. </p>
<p>Sharlet sat in on a session of Wilkerson’s regular Saturday meeting with his inner circle, “the Vous Crew”, to plan the coming week.</p>
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<p>It’s part logistics meeting, part Bible study. But the Bible is hard, its stories old, so this week they were starting what would be an immersion into one of Rich’s favourites, the bestselling Seven Habits of Highly Successful People.</p>
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<p>For Vous and like-minded megachurches, success is both evidence of being saved and the reason for it. With the Vous Crew, Wilkerson recites a favourite psalm from memory:</p>
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<p>“I love this line,” he said, shaking his head and grinning: “‘Whatever he does’” – a righteous man, that is – “‘prospers’. Prosperity follows him.”</p>
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<p>The American prosperity gospel is a materialist practice full of (sometimes unaware) poseurs, a bit like Trump himself. It is not a matter of faith or morality. </p>
<p>Here, Sharlet is on strong ground. Trump’s self-portrayal is one of “amazing” successes and “tremendous” achievements. His braggadocio at rallies appeals to his acolytes because it operates within “the American religion of winning”. </p>
<p>I would add that the prosperity gospel also washed over President Ronald Reagan, under the spell of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Norman-Vincent-Peale">Reverend Norman Vincent Peale</a> and his bestselling <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-power-of-positive-thinking-9780749307158">The Power of Positive Thinking</a>. </p>
<p>Reagan gave the self-critical, 17th-century Puritan concept of a “<a href="https://www.americanyawp.com/reader/colliding-cultures/john-winthrop-dreams-of-a-city-on-a-hill-1630/">City on a Hill</a>” a self-satisfying gloss. Meant as an exhortation for a Christian community in 17th century Massachusetts to be true to its spiritual purpose, Reagan applied it to America’s material and moral place on the world stage, labelling the nation he led “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/01/is-america-still-the-shining-city-on-a-hill/617474/">the shining city</a>”, in which the nation’s exceptionalism was inherent and self-evident rather than provisional. </p>
<h2>Evangelical religion and QAnon</h2>
<p>The explanation of Trump’s appeal must also reckon with the role of conspiracy theories. Historically speaking, evangelicalism has had a part to play here in the interpretation of Biblical prophecy concerning the End Times, or Second Coming of Christ. </p>
<p>Prophetic Christianity interprets historical events as signifiers of trans-historical narratives. The surface meaning of events obscures their deeper symbolic meaning, which can be inferred only by believers. As the apostle Paul wrote: “We walk by faith, not by sight” (KJV, 2 Corinthians 5:7). </p>
<p>This formulation opens religious prophecy to manipulation by secular forces. Through <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/QAnon">QAnon</a>, the pro-Trump conspiracy theory provides secular breadcrumbs for those seeking answers for the strange condition of the modern American nation-state.</p>
<p>QAnon is rooted in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/gnosticism">Gnostic philosophy</a>, which held that <a href="https://theconversation.com/history-repeats-itself-from-the-new-testament-to-qanon-156915">reality is not what it appears</a> (and was expelled from the mainstream of early Christianity’s canon). </p>
<p>The modern-day version in Gnosticism contends that cryptic messages – intelligible only to the initiated – conceal reality. A pattern of signs, symbols and number sequences, open to fantastical interpretation, magically transforms biblical prophecies and revelation into paranoiac belief and action. </p>
<p>QAnon adherents believe that, with the addition of the conspiracy theories supplied by QAnon, menacing forces and hopeful signs can be effortlessly revealed. Trump, though clearly not a godly man, can be interpreted as the vehicle through which the mysterious and sacred works of creation and redemption may be understood and fulfilled. </p>
<p>At a Trump rally, one supporter, “Dave”, tells Sharlet the message replicated on many T-shirts, “Trump’s Tweets Matter”, is serious, that the tweets are clues:</p>
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<p>“Like Scripture.” Every tweet, every misspelling, every typo, every strange capitalization – especially the capitalizations, said Dave – had meaning. “The truth is right there in what the media think are his mistakes. He doesn’t make mistakes.”</p>
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<p>In its third section, the book begins to resemble a literary equivalent of the 1969 film, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064276/">Easy Rider</a>, with Peter Fonda’s Captain America and Dennis Hopper on a cross-country motorbike quest, looking for America – and never finding it.</p>
<p>Sharlet tells the story of his own journey home to Vermont from California, where he had attended a memorial for <a href="https://theconversation.com/capitol-riots-ashli-babbitt-and-the-far-right-radicalisation-of-women-152930">Ashli Babbitt</a> – the insurrectionist, small businesswoman and army veteran who died in the assault on the Capitol. </p>
<p>He then travels East, attempting to plumb the sinister sentiments of those Americans who backed Trump and still think the election was “stolen”. They mourn Babbitt’s “assassination” – she was shot by a black policeman in the Capitol struggle – more than they do the passing of <a href="https://theconversation.com/george-floyd-deserved-a-better-life-a-new-book-charts-his-trajectory-from-poverty-to-the-us-prison-industrial-complex-and-the-impact-of-his-death-182947">George Floyd</a>.</p>
<p>Sharlet takes us into the dark minds of the gun lovers and militiamen ready to overthrow the deep state and “save” America. En route, we meet the “church of Trump”, exemplified among the adoring followers at his rallies. </p>
<p>Addressing the reader, Sharlet says of one QAnon adherent he meets at a rally, a woman who believes God put Trump in power, the Clintons “eat the children” and that a 2017 Las Vegas massacre by a lone gunman was part of a plan to kill Trump:</p>
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<p>Diane was not fringe. She might have been closer to the new center of American life than you think.</p>
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<p>Sharlet also encounters the spokesmen for the “<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-draw-of-the-manosphere-understanding-andrew-tates-appeal-to-lost-men-199179">manosphere</a>”. That is, the products of a challenged traditional masculinity that breeds anti-feminism. Then we discover QAnon’s weird interpretations, in which the real and the unreal become hopelessly intertwined. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/history-repeats-itself-from-the-new-testament-to-qanon-156915">History repeats itself: From the New Testament to QAnon</a>
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<h2>A slow civil war</h2>
<p>Hope cannot easily spring eternal, so grim are the signs of a slow civil war. Sharlet hints mass protest may be a democratic antidote to the American proto-fascism he fears. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566245/original/file-20231218-27-llfvjk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566245/original/file-20231218-27-llfvjk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566245/original/file-20231218-27-llfvjk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566245/original/file-20231218-27-llfvjk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566245/original/file-20231218-27-llfvjk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566245/original/file-20231218-27-llfvjk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566245/original/file-20231218-27-llfvjk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566245/original/file-20231218-27-llfvjk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>This is presumably why the second chapter of the book, titled “On the side of possibility”, documents <a href="https://theconversation.com/expert-views-of-occupy-wall-street-3891">Occupy Wall Street</a>, the 2011 activist movement for economic justice. </p>
<p>He calls the protesters “fools – but in the holy tradition, the one that speaks not truth to power, but imagination to things as they are”.</p>
<p>In the end, Sharlet can only offer the slender hope that democratic practice, one small step at a time, might prevail through the will of sensible people. This is the existential optimism of cultural despair, an unsettling conclusion. </p>
<p>But what if the problem went deeper than an internal culture war? </p>
<p>The biggest disappointment in The Undertow is its inward-looking perspective. Sharlet is seemingly unwilling to consider whether America’s flaws are shared with similar countries, or whether they lie deeper: in American political and economic structures. </p>
<p>If Trump cannot exist without his following, he also draws upon, exploits and even shapes his followers. His capacity to do that can be better understood in international and comparative perspective.</p>
<p>The cultural discontent charted by Sharlet is not unique to America, but is found to varying degrees in comparable societies. The differences are institutional. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-doppelganger-naomi-klein-says-the-world-is-broken-conspiracy-theorists-get-the-facts-wrong-but-often-get-the-feelings-right-209990">In Doppelganger, Naomi Klein says the world is broken: conspiracy theorists 'get the facts wrong but often get the feelings right'</a>
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<h2>Not unique to America</h2>
<p>I personally know people in Australia like Sharlet’s prosperity gospellers, Trump supporters and conspiracy theorists. Not one of them is anything like an insurrectionist, in temperament or potential. </p>
<p>Of course, others may have the potential for collective violence. Certainly, Australia has experienced white racism – and violent, organised attacks on non-whites. </p>
<p>Anyone who doubts this potential for further violence here need only listen to <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/truecrime">the powerful podcast</a> documenting the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-15/perth-chinese-restaurants-firebombed-in-1980s-terrorism-acts/102689528">attacks on Chinese people in Western Australia </a> by the Australian National Movement in the late 1980s. </p>
<p>Alternatively, follow <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/man-arrested-over-queensland-terorr-shootings-allegedly-sent-end-of-days-messages/xf2hm7twj">the unfolding story</a> of the two policemen and a neighbour, gunned down in an ambush in Southern Queensland in 2022. They were inspired and instructed by an American advocate of “end of days ideology”.</p>
<p>But it is harder to channel racist and religious fanaticism into an attack on the political state in Australia. That may be because evangelical religion is more marginalised in Australia than in the US. </p>
<p>The roots of the American problem lie not in evangelical religion itself but in flawed <a href="https://theconversation.com/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-us-elections-but-were-afraid-to-ask-65158">political institutions</a> that provide an opening for quasi-religious extremism and enhance the ability of ideologically motivated and unscrupulous political aspirants to benefit from those flaws. </p>
<p>These flaws include voluntary enrolment, discriminatory electoral laws, first-past-the-post voting and <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-is-the-american-president-elected-67632">the electoral college system</a> of tallying votes in a presidential election. These and other US institutional circumstances favour special (cashed-up) interests and highly motivated minorities. </p>
<p>Trump’s fervent followers are the most prominent, highly motivated minority. They have a disproportionate influence in American political discourse. </p>
<p>A small fraction of these Trump supporters can achieve exaggerated media exposure far more easily in the US than in Australia. But many of their discontents cannot be assuaged within the existing political and economic structures of their society. Older, less educated, rural, white, downwardly mobile: they are among the losers in the global economic system. </p>
<p>Whether the causes are cultural, political or both, the culture wars continue. The two-party standoff of Republicans and Democrats in the struggle over Trump’s presidential legacy endures. The inward-looking agenda of both Trump’s supporters and his critics – including Sharlet – has international implications. </p>
<p>Foreign observers will not be reassured by the compelling stories Sharlet tells. They will not be assured of America’s future role as a reliable world bastion of liberal democracy. Nor can they be assured the United States will remain the politically stable centre of an increasingly unstable global economic system.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203948/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Tyrrell received funding from the Australian Research Council's grant schemes on five occasions from 1996 to 2015. </span></em></p>The Undertow tells how the cultural divisions in American society could allow events like the Capitol storming to happen – and how, despite this, Trump is the Republican frontrunner for president.Ian Tyrrell, Emeritus Professor of History, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2154082023-11-06T13:34:33Z2023-11-06T13:34:33ZAs Ohio and other states decide on abortion, anti-abortion activists look to rebrand themselves as not religious<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557473/original/file-20231103-20-fp6fav.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Roman Catholic nuns pray with anti-abortion activists across the street from a Planned Parenthood clinic in New York in September 2023.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/roman-catholic-nuns-pray-with-a-group-of-anti-abortion-news-photo/1655599179?adppopup=true">Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Abortion has become an increasingly polarized, political issue in the United States since 2022, when the <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2021/19-1392">Supreme Court overturned</a> <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1971/70-18">Roe v. Wade</a>, which guaranteed the constitutional right to an abortion. This decision threw the question of abortion rights back to states. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/politics/elections/2023/08/24/ohio-abortion-issue-on-the-november-7-2023-ballot-election-results/70672454007/">Ohio voters</a> will cast ballots on Nov. 7, 2023, to determine abortion rules in their state, joining <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/12/magazine/abortion-laws-states.html">six other states</a> that have put the decisions before voters in ballot initiatives since 2022. </p>
<p>Currently, Ohio’s constitution does not mention abortion. Ohio residents will <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/10/31/1209593353/abortion-ohio-issue-1-vote-election-roe-dobbs">vote on “Issue 1,”</a> which would amend the state constitution to explicitly protect an individual’s right to get an abortion. The amendment would still allow the state to prohibit abortion after a <a href="https://www.acog.org/advocacy/facts-are-important/understanding-and-navigating-viability">fetus is considered viable</a>, with an exception when the health of the pregnant person is at stake. </p>
<p>The initiative is supported by a coalition of abortion-rights organizations, collectively called <a href="https://ohioansunitedforreproductiverights.win/">Ohioans United for Reproductive Justice</a>. </p>
<p>Some anti-abortion activists in Ohio <a href="https://www.ncregister.com/cna/ohio-abortion-supporters-outraise-pro-life-side-3-to-1-ahead-of-november-referendum">have said that Issue 1</a> is “too radical” for the state. But an October 2023 <a href="https://www.bw.edu/news/2023/fall/10-bw-ohio-pulse-poll-shows-ohio-voters-favor-issues-1-and-2">survey showed</a> that 58% of likely Ohio voters support Issue 1.</p>
<p>I am an <a href="https://annewhitesell.com">American politics scholar</a> who focuses on how groups outside of government attempt to influence policy. </p>
<p>Since the <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2021/19-1392">Supreme Court overturned</a> the federal right to get an abortion, I have interviewed 45 anti-abortion activists across the country and collected Facebook data from approximately 190 organizations. I wanted to better understand how anti-abortion groups are working in a post-Roe v. Wade world to ban abortion.</p>
<p>Prominent anti-abortion groups continue to reference religion, and specifically Christianity, in their arguments against abortion. But I found that these activists also recognize that framing abortion as a human rights issue may appeal to a broader audience. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557476/original/file-20231103-21-jr0953.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman wearing a yellow shirt holds a rosary around her neck and appears to pray with her eyes closed." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557476/original/file-20231103-21-jr0953.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557476/original/file-20231103-21-jr0953.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557476/original/file-20231103-21-jr0953.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557476/original/file-20231103-21-jr0953.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557476/original/file-20231103-21-jr0953.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557476/original/file-20231103-21-jr0953.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557476/original/file-20231103-21-jr0953.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Anti-abortion activists pray in New York in August 2022 outside a Planned Parenthood clinic.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/anti-abortion-activists-pray-in-front-of-the-planned-news-photo/1413322749?adppopup=true">Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Perceptions of the anti-abortion movement</h2>
<p>Religious objections to abortion center around the sanctity of human life and the belief that humans are made in God’s image. To end a human life, including the life of a fetus, is to play God.</p>
<p>According to a <a href="https://apnorc.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/December-Topline-with-MIP-final.pdf">2019 poll</a>, 77% of Americans believe religion has some or a lot of influence on U.S. abortion policy. </p>
<p>In my interviews, anti-abortion rights activists said they understood that the public views <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p082467">their movement</a> as anti-woman and driven by conservative Christians. More recently, the movement has adopted <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1554477X.2021.1925478">pro-woman messaging</a> to counter the perception that they do not support women. </p>
<p>These organizations are increasingly choosing to speak less about religion and more about human rights and science to combat the narrative that the <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/universitypress/subjects/sociology/sociology-general-interest/pro-life-activists-america-meaning-motivation-and-direct-action?format=HB&isbn=9780521660440">anti-abortion movement</a> is solely a Christian movement.</p>
<p>This movement does have a religious history – the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23052569">U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops</a> created the predecessor of one of the most well-known anti-abortion organizations, the <a href="https://www.nrlc.org/">National Right to Life Committee</a>, in 1966. </p>
<p>In the 1980s, <a href="https://www.operationrescue.org/">Operation Rescue</a>, which blockaded abortion clinics and had thousands of their activists arrested, brought an evangelical religious fervor to the anti-abortion movement. </p>
<p>Stopping abortion was seen as a <a href="https://doi.org/10.5744/florida/9780813044972.003.0009">Christian duty</a>, even if it meant resorting <a href="https://press.umich.edu/Books/O/Opposition-and-Intimidation2">to violence</a>.</p>
<h2>The changing role of religion</h2>
<p>The religious environment in the U.S. has changed in recent decades, however. </p>
<p>While evangelicals remain a <a href="https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/324410/religious-group-voting-2020-election.aspx">powerful voting bloc for Republicans</a>, the percentage of Americans identifying as Christian has declined over the <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/09/13/how-u-s-religious-composition-has-changed-in-recent-decades/">past 50 years</a> from 90% to 63%. At the same time, the percentage of Americans who identify as religiously unaffiliated has increased from 5% to 29%. </p>
<p>In 2020, <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/341963/church-membership-falls-below-majority-first-time.aspx">less than half of Americans</a> belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque – marking an all-time low in affiliation with a religious institution since 1940. </p>
<p>For anti-abortion activists, this means fewer people may connect to their religious appeals. One activist I interviewed put it bluntly: “Why talk the Bible to people, many people, who say the Bible is a fairy tale?”</p>
<h2>What anti-abortion organizations say</h2>
<p>My research shows that anti-abortion organizations in the U.S. fall into one of three camps. Some are openly religious. Others may have religious staff, but refrain from using religion in their advocacy. A small proportion outright reject the use of religion.</p>
<p>I analyzed how anti-abortion organizations use Facebook to promote their work. At least on this social media platform, most anti-abortion organizations do not use religious language.</p>
<p>Between June 2022 and September 2023, 193 anti-abortion groups posted 44,639 times on Facebook. Approximately 11% of these Facebook posts made explicit religious references, ranging from Bible verses to prayer requests. </p>
<p>Some organizations use religious references in nearly all of their Facebook posts, while other groups make only passing references to religion. </p>
<p>Texas Right to Life, for example, posted 770 times between June 2022 and September 2023, and 50% of its posts mentioned religion. In contrast, the group Ohio Right to Life posted 586 times in the same time period. Only 8.7% of their posts mention religion.</p>
<p>More than 15% of the 193 anti-abortion organizations in my sample, however, make no religious references in their Facebook posts from June 2022 through September 2023. </p>
<p>Indeed, the majority of the 45 activists from anti-abortion groups I spoke with said they kept their religious beliefs separate from their activism.</p>
<p>As one anti-abortion activist told me, when someone finds out “you believe that all life is created in the image of God, they completely dismiss you.”</p>
<h2>Other findings</h2>
<p>Most of the activists I interviewed said their organization does not have a formal stance on religion. Approximately one-quarter of the 45 activists I interviewed, however, said their organizations are explicitly Christian. </p>
<p>When asked about the choice to frame anti-abortion arguments around faith, one advocate said, “We 100% present the faith and the theological argument of things. Yeah, part of our culture is being Catholic.”</p>
<p>This advocate continued: “We understand that we also have a responsibility before God on these subjects, so we’re not going to shy away from that.” </p>
<p>A few interviewees stressed that they are not religious. One described herself as an “atheist, vegan pro-lifer.”</p>
<p>Instead of using religion to bolster their arguments against abortion, <a href="https://www.democratsforlife.org/index.php">these activists</a> frame abortion as a <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/anti-abortion-lgbtq-groups-roes-reversal-human-rights-victory-rcna35716">human rights issue</a>. For them, any loss of human life is tragic, whether it is from abortion, war or the death penalty.</p>
<p>This kind of framing could help the anti-abortion movement shift conversations about abortion away from religious beliefs.</p>
<h2>Ohio’s vote</h2>
<p>People in all six states that have voted on abortion since 2022 have affirmed broader abortion rights. But <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/02/us/abortion-ballot-ohio-vote.html">Ohio is the first red state</a> to vote on adding a right to abortion to the state’s constitution.</p>
<p>Local anti-abortion groups like Cincinnati Right to Life are pushing back <a href="https://www.facebook.com/100064698580681/posts/697161332450480">against Issue 1,</a> saying, for example, that the amendment is too wide-reaching, and that “Issue One will only hurt women & children and not help them.” </p>
<p>Ohio Right to Life has framed Issue 1 as a matter of safety in their <a href="https://www.facebook.com/100064601747509/posts/689319569898095">Facebook posts</a>. </p>
<p>Ohio voters will be the ones to decide which way to move the issue forward.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215408/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anne Whitesell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>An analysis of anti-abortion rights groups in the US shows that while some specifically turn to Christianity to explain their positions, others are looking at broader, human rights arguments.Anne Whitesell, Assistant Professor, Political Science, Miami UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2004122023-02-27T13:24:45Z2023-02-27T13:24:45ZHow Jimmy Carter integrated his evangelical Christian faith into his political work, despite mockery and misunderstanding<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512065/original/file-20230223-28-k80qo3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=32%2C24%2C5406%2C3612&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Former President Jimmy Carter has decided to spend his remaining time at home with his family and receive hospice care.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/JimmyCarterHospiceExplainer/3f1f640bf1fd4ec38d84c98340fdb6f1/photo?Query=jimmy%20carter%202023&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=29&currentItemNo=18">AP Photo/John Bazemore, File</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“I am a farmer, an engineer, a businessman, a planner, a scientist, a governor, and a Christian,” Jimmy Carter said while introducing himself to national political reporters when <a href="http://www.4president.org/speeches/carter1976announcement.htm">he announced his campaign to be the 39th president</a> of the United States in December 1974.</p>
<p>As journalists and historians consider Carter’s legacy, this prelude to Carter’s campaign offers insight into how he wanted to be known and how he might like to be remembered.</p>
<p>After studying Carter’s presidential campaign, presidency and post-presidency for years, which included examining more than 25,000 archival documents, media sources, oral histories and interviews, I wrote “<a href="https://lsupress.org/books/detail/jimmy-carter-marathon-media/">Jimmy Carter and the Birth of the Marathon Media Campaign</a>.” Along the way, I had the opportunity to interview former President Carter in October 2014, when we discussed his life, his presidency and his legacy. </p>
<p>Based upon this experience, one observation is certain – Carter was a man of faith committed to a vision of the nation that aligned with his views of Jesus’ teachings. </p>
<h2>A campaign cloaked in a message of love and justice</h2>
<p>In the fall of 1975, after his initial announcement failed to elicit much national attention for his candidacy, the still relatively unknown Georgia governor published the campaign biography, “<a href="https://www.uapress.com/product/why-not-the-best/">Why Not the Best?</a>”</p>
<p>Within the book, he told the story of his wholesome childhood on his family’s peanut farm in Archery, Georgia, and of achieving his childhood dream through his appointment to the Naval Academy in 1943. </p>
<p>He wrote of his dedication to his family as a loyal son, husband and father and his duty-bound career transition to manage his family-owned peanut farm, warehouse and store after his father <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/02/20/jimmy-carter-nuclear-reactor-navy/">Earl Carter’s premature death</a> from pancreatic cancer in 1953. He also shared his lifelong commitment to community and public service. </p>
<p>Moreover, he offered himself as a public servant who could bridge the chasm between the American people and the government that had emerged after the revelations of presidential corruption amid Vietnam and Watergate. </p>
<p>“Our government can and must represent the best and the highest ideals of those of us who voluntarily submit to its authority. In our third century, we must meet these simple, but crucial standards,” he wrote in the <a href="https://www.uapress.com/product/why-not-the-best/">campaign biography</a>. </p>
<p>Though Carter cloaked his campaign in Jesus’ teachings about love and justice, most national reporters did not give Carter’s faith much attention until he became the Democratic Party’s front-runner in advance of the North Carolina primary in 1976.</p>
<h2>‘Lust in my heart’</h2>
<p>When national reporters finally turned their attention to his faith, what campaign director Hamilton Jordan referred to as Carter’s “<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Jimmy_Carter_in_Search_of_the_Great_Whit.html?id=YEGPAAAAIAAJ">weirdo factor</a>,” the <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=gHNAAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA967&lpg=PA967&dq=jimmy+carter">evangelical politician acknowledged</a> that he had “spent more time on my knees in the four years I was governor … than I did in all the rest of my life.” </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512070/original/file-20230223-28-g60o0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A number of people gather around a table, taking notes, as the person at the head of the table speaks." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512070/original/file-20230223-28-g60o0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512070/original/file-20230223-28-g60o0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512070/original/file-20230223-28-g60o0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512070/original/file-20230223-28-g60o0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512070/original/file-20230223-28-g60o0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512070/original/file-20230223-28-g60o0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512070/original/file-20230223-28-g60o0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Jimmy Carter meets with news editors at the White House on April 15, 1977.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/PresidentJimmyCarter/088bda28886f4ec894452646737ff8d7/photo?Query=jimmy%20carter%20press&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=2316&currentItemNo=37">AP Photo/Charles Bennett</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Carter continued to share his understanding of the gospel with journalists and their audiences in a plain-spoken manner, even though it was not always advantageous to his political fortunes. For instance, after continued probes about his faith that summer from Playboy Magazine correspondent Robert Scheer, <a href="https://lsupress.org/books/detail/jimmy-carter-marathon-media/">Carter launched into a sermon on pride, lust and lying</a> that would haunt him later. </p>
<p>“I try not to commit a deliberate sin. I recognize that I’m going to do it anyhow, because I’m human and I’m tempted … I’ve looked on a lot of women with lust,” Carter, believing he was off the record, said in attempting to clarify his religious views. “<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Playboy_Interview.html?id=EXNmAAAAMAAJ%22%22">I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times</a>.” </p>
<p>Carter referred to <a href="https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Matthew-5-28/">Matthew 5:28</a>, the biblical passage in which Jesus shares this interpretation of the Seventh Commandment, with the words: “But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.”</p>
<p>Uninterrupted, Carter continued his salty explanation of the verse: “Christ says don’t consider yourself better than someone else because one guy screws a whole bunch of women while the other guy is loyal to his wife.”</p>
<p>“We have heard Jesus’ words all our lives ever since we were 3, 4 years old, and we knew what it meant,” Carter later explained to me. “But, obviously, the general public, when I said, ‘lust in my heart,’ that was a top headline, it looked like I was – like I spent my time trying to seduce other women. Rosa(lynn) knew that wasn’t true.” </p>
<p>Though Carter’s comments were “<a href="https://lsupress.org/books/detail/jimmy-carter-marathon-media/">on solid theological ground</a>,” according to many people of faith, up-and-coming leaders of the religious right, such as televangelist Jerry Falwell, castigated Carter. And, in the end, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=UXuKo8zOdD0C&printsec=copyright#v=onepage&q&f=false">many folks agreed</a> with well-regarded columnist Mary McGrory – the interview “should have been an off-the-record conversation with God, not one taped by Playboy.”</p>
<h2>Crisis of confidence</h2>
<p>Despite the erosion of support among the emerging religious right after the Playboy gaffe, Carter remained steadfast in his commitment to his Christian values and a faith-inspired vision for the nation that advanced human rights at home and abroad. He called it a “<a href="https://www.jimmycarterlibrary.gov/assets/documents/speeches/inaugadd.phtml">new beginning</a>.” </p>
<p>Carter beseeched his American brethren to chart a new course during his inaugural address in January 1977: “Our commitment to human rights must be absolute, our laws fair, our natural beauty preserved; the powerful must not persecute the weak, and human dignity must be enhanced.” </p>
<p>Carter had achieved what Time magazine hailed as one of the most astonishing “<a href="http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19770103,00.html">political miracles</a>” in the nation’s history because of his rapid ascension from a virtual unknown politician to the presidency. But many citizens, suffering from an emerging <a href="https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jimmycartercrisisofconfidence.htm">crisis of confidence</a> in the American dream and faith in its institutions and leaders, had already begun to tune out Carter’s political sermons about the looming energy crisis, stagflation and international conflicts.</p>
<p>Moreover, in the coming years, they would become indignant toward the man who had condemned the corruption of his predecessors and promised to never tell a lie on the campaign trail, yet remained loyal to one of his oldest advisers, the Office of Management and Budget Director Bert Lance, who was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1977/08/11/archives/lancegate.html">accused of unethical banking practices</a>. </p>
<h2>Long-lasting commitment to public service</h2>
<p>In the end, Carter stood accused of failing to live up to his campaign promises from the vantage point of many American citizens amid domestic crises and foreign conflicts.</p>
<p>Amid news coverage of these events and his dwindling public support, Carter lost his reelection campaign, and his administration was hailed by many journalists, political insiders and average Americans alike as a “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1983/10/17/white-house-cooling-to-the-idea-of-running-against-mondale/4e7bdbe7-ef4c-4eae-8e6d-e5186507c0ff/">failed presidency</a>.” </p>
<p>Nevertheless, Carter remained committed to his religious convictions. “I have spoken many times of love, but love must be aggressively translated into simple justice,” he invoked his audience when he <a href="https://www.jimmycarterlibrary.gov/assets/documents/speeches/acceptance_speech.pdf">accepted the Democratic nomination</a> in July 1976. </p>
<p>For the remainder of his life, he attempted to model the translation of Jesus’ love into action through his life of public service. His post-presidential commitments involved <a href="https://www.cartercenter.org/">The Carter Center’s</a> initiatives of fighting disease and seeking international peace and his private efforts of building homes for <a href="https://www.habitat.org/volunteer/build-events/carter-work-project">Habitat for Humanity</a> and teaching <a href="https://jimmycarter.info/plan-your-visit/president-carters-teaching-schedule-marantha-baptist-church/">Sunday school</a>. </p>
<p>In the end, Carter will leave this world with <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2015/08/20/politics/jimmy-carter-iran-hostages/index.html">only one acknowledged regret</a>: “I wish I’d sent one more helicopter to get the hostages and we would have rescued them and I would have been re-elected,” he said referring to the April 1980 military rescue attempt of the 53 U.S. hostages <a href="https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2021/11/29/the-iran-hostage-crisis/">held by Iranian revolutionaries</a>. </p>
<p>In Carter’s final days, his words from his presidential <a href="https://www.jimmycarterlibrary.gov/assets/documents/speeches/farewell.phtml">farewell address</a>, which remain true today, are worth remembering:</p>
<p>“The battle for human rights – at home and abroad – is far from over. … If we are to serve as a beacon for human rights, we must continue to perfect here at home the rights and values which we espouse around the world: A decent education for our children, adequate medical care for all Americans, an end to discrimination against minorities and women, a job for all those able to work, and freedom from injustice and religious intolerance.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200412/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lori Amber Roessner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A media scholar who studied Carter and interviewed him explains how he attempted to translate Jesus’ teachings into action through his life of public service.Lori Amber Roessner, Professor in the School of Journalism and Electronic Media, University of TennesseeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1650642021-09-23T12:30:23Z2021-09-23T12:30:23ZHow the world’s biggest Islamic organization drives religious reform in Indonesia – and seeks to influence the Muslim world<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422463/original/file-20210921-5916-rj44er.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C7%2C4881%2C3266&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A gathering during the 73rd anniversary of the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), in Jakarta, Indonesia in 2019.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/participants-are-seen-at-the-bung-karno-stadium-during-a-news-photo/1090184470?adppopup=true">Eko Siswono Toyudho/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>After its return to power in Afghanistan, the Taliban are again imposing their <a href="https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2021/09/08/taliban-perpetuate-muslim-worlds-failed-governance-paradigm/">religious ideology</a>, with restrictions on <a href="https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-afghanistan-womens-rights-kabul-taliban-eee5a8c73dd5d58acfda008582ef77bb">women’s rights</a> and other repressive measures. They are presenting to the world an image of Islam that is intolerant and at odds with social changes. </p>
<p>Islam, however, has multiple interpretations. A humanitarian interpretation, focusing on “rahmah,” loosely translated as love and compassion, has been emphasized by a group <a href="https://siapabilang.com/buku-islam-otoritarianisme-dan-ketertinggalan/photo/">I have studied</a> – Nahdlatul Ulama, which literally means “Reawakening of the Islamic Scholars.”</p>
<p>Nahdlatul Ulama, or NU, was founded in <a href="https://www.baytarrahmah.org/media/2021/Yahya-Cholil-Staquf_Transcript_Regent-University_9-11_Commemoration-Speech.pdf">1926 in reaction</a> to the Saudi conquest of Mecca and Medina with their rigid understanding of Islam. It follows <a href="https://brill.com/view/book/9789004435544/BP000016.xml">mainstream Sunni Islam</a>, while embracing Islamic spirituality and accepting Indonesia’s cultural traditions.</p>
<p>Functioning in Indonesia, the country with the largest Muslim population, Nahdlatul Ulama is the world’s biggest Islamic organization with about <a href="https://www.religiousfreedominstitute.org/publication/indonesia-religious-freedom-landscape-report">90 million members and followers</a>. In terms of membership, the organization hugely outstrips that of the Taliban – yet this face of Islam has not been sufficiently recognized on the international stage.</p>
<p>In 2014, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/27/world/asia/indonesia-islam-nahdlatul-ulama.html">NU responded</a> to the rise of the Islamic State group and its radical ideology by initiating an <a href="http://sr.sgpp.ac.id/post/humanitarian-islam-fostering-shared-civilizational-values-to-revitalize-a-rules-based-international-order">Islamic reform</a>. Since then, it has elaborated on this reform that it calls “<a href="https://baytarrahmah.org/humanitarian-islam/">Humanitarian Islam</a>.”</p>
<h2>Humanitarian Islam</h2>
<p>During the past seven years, NU’s general secretary, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-make-the-islamic-world-less-radical-11610665933">Yahya Cholil Staquf</a>, has organized several meetings of the organization’s Islamic scholars with a reformist agenda. They made public declarations for reforming Islamic thought on controversial issues, including political leadership, equal citizenship and relations with non-Muslims.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.baytarrahmah.org/media/2021/God-Needs-No-Defense_Reimagining-Muslim-Christain-Relations-in-the-21st-Century.pdf">The Nahdlatul Ulama declarations include crucial decisions</a> that differentiate “Humanitarian Islam” from other interpretations. First of all, they reject the notion of a global caliphate, or a political leadership that would unite all Muslims. The concept of a caliphate has been accepted by both <a href="http://www.lettertobaghdadi.com">mainstream Islamic scholars</a>, such as those in <a href="https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-islam-and-the-foundations-of-political-power.html">Al-Azhar</a> – Egypt’s world-renowned Islamic institution – and radical groups, such as the Islamic State group and al-Qaeda.</p>
<p>Moreover, the NU declarations emphasize the legitimacy of modern states’ constitutional and legal systems, and thus reject the idea that it is a religious obligation to establish a state based on Islamic law.</p>
<p>Additionally, these declarations stress the importance of equal citizenship by refusing to make a distinction between Muslims and non-Muslims as legal categories.</p>
<p>They call for a deeper cooperation among Muslims, Christians and followers of other religions to promote world peace.</p>
<p>Nahdlatul Ulama has taken practical steps for realizing these aims. For example, it has established a working relationship <a href="https://worldea.org/news/thomas-k-johnson-on-humanitarian-islam-and-the-ethics-of-religious-freedom-podcast/">with the World Evangelical Alliance</a>, which claims to represent 600 million Protestants, to promote intercultural solidarity and respect.</p>
<p>These NU declarations may sound insufficient from a Western liberal point of view, since they do not touch upon some issues such as LGBTQ rights. To better understand the importance of NU’s perspective and its limits requires an examination of the Indonesian context.</p>
<h2>Indonesia’s tolerant Islam</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422462/original/file-20210921-15-i1g5b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Yahya Staquf, secretary general of Indonesia's Muslim organization, Nahdlatul Ulama." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422462/original/file-20210921-15-i1g5b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422462/original/file-20210921-15-i1g5b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422462/original/file-20210921-15-i1g5b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422462/original/file-20210921-15-i1g5b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422462/original/file-20210921-15-i1g5b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422462/original/file-20210921-15-i1g5b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422462/original/file-20210921-15-i1g5b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Yahya Cholil Staquf, general secretary of Nahdlatul Ulama.</span>
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<p><a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/comparative-politics/islam-authoritarianism-and-underdevelopment-global-and-historical-comparison?format=PB">My research</a> on 50 Muslim-majority countries finds that Indonesia is notable because it is one of the few democracies among them.</p>
<p>Indonesia’s foundational credo, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Pancasila">Pancasila</a>, means “five principles” and basically refers to the belief in God, humanitarianism, Indonesia’s national unity, democracy and social justice. </p>
<p>About 88% of Indonesia’s population of 270 million are Muslim. Both Nahdlatul Ulama and <a href="https://maarifinstitute.org">Muhammadiyah</a>, the country’s second-biggest Islamic organization, have been respectful of these principles. Like NU, Muhammadiyah also has tens of millions of followers, and these two organizations often <a href="https://libforall.org/ini-iis-book/">cooperate against radical Islamist groups</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.bu.edu/pardeeschool/profile/robert-hefner/">Robert Hefner</a>, a leading expert on Indonesia, documents in <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691050478/civil-islam">his 2000 book “Civil Islam”</a> how NU and Muhammadiyah made important contributions to the country’s democratization in the late 1990s. During this process, the leader of NU, Abdurrahman Wahid, became Indonesia’s first democratically elected president in 1999. </p>
<p>Wahid, who died in 2009, left a religious legacy, too. During my conversations, senior <a href="https://baytarrahmah.org/c-holland-taylor-biography/">NU members</a> repeatedly referred to Wahid’s reformist ideas as the main source of inspiration for Humanitarian Islam.</p>
<h2>Indonesia’s intolerant Islam</h2>
<p>Not all Islamic theories and practices in Indonesia are tolerant toward diversity. The country’s Aceh province has enforced certain rules of Islamic criminal law, including the punishment of caning for those who sell or drink alcohol.</p>
<p>Another example of religious and political intolerance is the country’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/execution-for-a-facebook-post-why-blasphemy-is-a-capital-offense-in-some-muslim-countries-129685">blasphemy law</a>, which resulted in the 20-month imprisonment of the capital city Jakarta’s Chinese Christian governor, <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/12/6/415/htm">Basuki Purnama</a> in 2017-2018, for a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/09/world/asia/indonesia-governor-ahok-basuki-tjahaja-purnama-blasphemy-islam.html">statement about a verse</a> in the Quran.</p>
<p>In January 2021, the story of a Christian female student being pressured by the school principal to wear a Muslim headscarf went <a href="https://www.facebook.com/elianu.hia/videos/3444961562268596">viral on Facebook</a>. In two weeks, the Indonesian government responded with a decree that banned <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/05/world/asia/indonesia-schools-head-scarves.html">public schools from making any religious attire compulsory</a>.</p>
<p>In short, there is a tug-of-war between tolerant and intolerant interpretations of Islam in Indonesia. Even within NU, there exist disagreements between conservatives and reformists.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, Nahdlatul Ulama reformists are becoming more influential. One example is the current minister of religious affairs, <a href="https://en.qantara.de/content/future-proofing-islam-indonesia-g20-presidency-to-focus-on-the-soul-of-islam">Yaqut Cholil Qoumas</a>, a leading NU member and the younger brother of NU’s reformist general secretary. He was one of the <a href="https://www.hudson.org/research/16679-indonesian-government-forbids-state-schools-from-requiring-muslim-headscarves">three ministers who signed </a> the joint decree banning the imposition of headscarves on students in February.</p>
<p>NU’s Humanitarian Islam movement might be crucial to promote tolerance among Indonesia’s Islamic majority. But can it have an effect beyond Indonesia?</p>
<p>[<em>Explore the intersection of faith, politics, arts and culture.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/this-week-in-religion-76/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=religion-explore">Sign up for This Week in Religion.</a>]</p>
<h2>Influencing the Middle East</h2>
<p>This reform movement’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/01/world/asia/indonesia-islam.html">reception in the Middle East</a>, the historical center of Islam, is important if it is to have a global impact. Humanitarian Islam has been mostly ignored by scholars and governments of Middle Eastern countries, who generally see it as <a href="https://www.hudson.org/research/16463-the-battle-for-the-soul-of-islam">a competitor of their own attempts to influence the Muslim world</a>. As a nongovernmental initiative, Humanitarian Islam is different from Middle Eastern efforts to shape the Muslim world, which are mostly government-led schemes.</p>
<p>With its reformist emphasis, Humanitarian Islam may appeal to some young <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-48703377">Middle Eastern Muslims</a> who are <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43981745">discontent</a> with their countries’ <a href="https://theconversation.com/irans-secular-shift-new-survey-reveals-huge-changes-in-religious-beliefs-145253">political and conservative</a> interpretations of Islam.</p>
<p>In order to reach a Middle Eastern audience, the Humanitarian Islam movement is launching <a href="https://arabic.baytarrahmah.org">an Arabic-language version</a> of its English website. Whether this Indonesian initiative can have an impact in the Middle East and become a truly global movement for Islamic reform remains to be seen.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418525/original/file-20210830-33-yznmc8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418525/original/file-20210830-33-yznmc8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418525/original/file-20210830-33-yznmc8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418525/original/file-20210830-33-yznmc8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418525/original/file-20210830-33-yznmc8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418525/original/file-20210830-33-yznmc8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418525/original/file-20210830-33-yznmc8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>Want to learn about Islam and Muslims in America? Read our series of six articles on Understanding Islam on <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/understanding-islam-108919">TheConversation.com</a>. Or we can deliver them to your inbox over a week if you <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/understanding-islam-79">sign up for our email newsletter course</a></em></p>
<p></p><hr><p></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165064/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ahmet T. Kuru does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Nahdlatul Ulama is the world’s biggest Islamic organization, initiating a reform movement, which it is calling ‘Humanitarian Islam.’Ahmet T. Kuru, Professor of Political Science, San Diego State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1624072021-06-22T12:14:06Z2021-06-22T12:14:06ZWhite Gen X and millennial evangelicals are losing faith in the conservative culture wars<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407077/original/file-20210617-19-fd3gfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C7%2C1010%2C717&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Younger evangelicals are openly questioning the religious and political traditions of their parents and grandparents.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/ReligionPaulaWhite/d34a2fc5ce034461ac2a52c3d81efdcf">Julie Bennett/AP</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since the 1970s, white American evangelicals – a large subsection of Protestants who hold to a literal reading of the Bible – have often managed to get specific privileges through their political engagement primarily through supporting the Republican Party.</p>
<p>In the 1980s, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/03/22/reagan-tied-republicans-white-christians-now-party-is-trapped/">President Ronald Reagan symbolically consolidated the alliance</a> by bringing religious freedom and morality into public conversations that questioned the separation of church and state. In 2003, President George W. Bush signed the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jesus/evangelicals/bushand.html">Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act</a> into law. In October 2020, President Donald Trump <a href="https://theconversation.com/where-the-politicisation-of-the-us-supreme-court-could-lead-149025">appointed a conservative Christian, Amy Coney Barrett</a>, to the Supreme Court, and went on to win <a href="https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/324410/religious-group-voting-2020-election.aspx">80% of the white evangelical vote in the following month’s election</a>. </p>
<p>Trump went so far as to appoint a <a href="https://www.ncronline.org/news/politics/key-evangelical-players-trumps-advisory-board">faith consultant board</a> composed of influential evangelical leaders. They included Paula White, a well-known pastor and televangelist; and James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, a leading organization in evangelical efforts to embed “family values” into politics. These panel members heralded <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2020/october/of-course-evangelicals-should-vote-for-trump.html">gestures by Trump</a>, such as signing the “Presidential Executive Order Promoting Free Speech and Religious Liberty,” which targeted enforcement of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-much-does-the-johnson-amendment-curtail-church-freedom-73165">Johnson Amendment</a>, a 1954 tax law requiring houses of worship to stay out of politics in order to remain tax-exempt. </p>
<p>Although it’s debated what specifically <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/12/evangelical-christian/418236/">constitutes an evangelical</a>, many agree that they are conservatives who are highly motivated by culture war issues like abortion, same-sex marriage and sexuality. </p>
<p>But even though evangelicals are often presented as <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/01/12/evangelicals-donald-trump-capitol-riot-voter-fraud/6644005002/">monolithic in the media</a>, current research signals <a href="https://www.eerdmans.com/Products/7695/evangelicals.aspx">a more complex picture</a>. </p>
<p>Over the past six years, I have been working with an interdisciplinary team of scholars at the <a href="https://www.aarweb.org/">American Academy of Religion</a> to analyze generational shifts in evangelicalism and religion more broadly in the United States. We are finding that some of the younger evangelicals are openly questioning their religious and political traditions. In short, the majority of <a href="https://religioninpublic.blog/2018/01/29/the-graying-of-white-evangelicalism/">white evangelicals are aging</a> and a portion of younger evangelicals are engaging in both religion and politics differently. </p>
<h2>Leaving the faith versus reforming from within</h2>
<p>My research consists of hours of participant observation within younger evangelical faith communities, along with 50 in-depth, qualitative interviews with individuals who were raised in the politically charged evangelicalism in the southeastern United States, a region dominated by evangelicals. </p>
<p>Taken together, this research indicates increasing disaffection among white millennial and Gen X evangelicals with the cultural and political preoccupations that have strongly motivated their parents and grandparents. There is a growing number of “<a href="https://religionandpolitics.org/2019/04/09/the-rise-of-exvangelical/">Exvangelicals</a>” who disavow their previous stances on same-sex marriage, race and sexuality. </p>
<p>Evangelicals, often citing the biblical text, typically maintain that marriage is <a href="https://www.prri.org/spotlight/americans-are-broadly-supportive-of-a-variety-of-lgbtq-rights/">between one man and one woman</a>. <a href="https://sites.duke.edu/ncsweb/files/2020/10/Racial-Diversity-in-U.S.-Congregations-1998-2019.pdf">Over 75% tend to worship in racially segregated congregations</a> and <a href="https://religionnews.com/2019/08/29/which-religions-support-gun-control-in-the-us/">favor gun rights and ownership</a> more than other faith groups. </p>
<p>But my interviewees tend toward intense critiques of their previous religious tradition, as well as rejecting the evangelical faith completely.</p>
<p>This data parallels other scholarship unearthing racialized structures within white, American evangelicalism like the <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/White-Too-Long/Robert-P-Jones/9781982122867">work of</a> sociologist <a href="https://www.prri.org/staff/robert-p-jones-ph-d/">Robert P. Jones</a> and religious studies scholar <a href="https://africana.sas.upenn.edu/people/anthea-butler">Anthea Butler</a>. Likewise, historian <a href="https://calvin.edu/directory/people/kristin-kobes-du-mez">Kristen Kobes Du Mez</a> <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469661179/white-evangelical-racism/">examines how hypermasculinity is</a> embedded in <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/9781631495731">American evangelicalism</a>. </p>
<h2>Expanding religion and politics</h2>
<p>My research reveals communities of younger evangelicals who are expanding their religious boundaries and rethinking their stances on culture war issues, as well as questioning the merits of the culture war.</p>
<p>These younger evangelicals are trying to reform their communities from within the tradition as loyal but highly critical members. Sometimes these groups are called “emerging evangelicals” or “progressive Christians,” with some debating whether “evangelical” as a label is redeemable. </p>
<p>I observed several younger evangelicals working within their religious communities to encourage acceptance of those outside of the Christian tradition as co-religionists on similar faith paths. They herald interfaith interactions as positive. One interviewee proudly detailed to me how her church partnered with the local imam and Muslim community to educate each other on their religious practices and volunteered together at a local food bank. This kind of attitude typically is resisted by their older evangelical counterparts, as I learned in <a href="https://irstudies.org/index.php/jirs/article/view/237/203">previous research</a>. Many traditional evangelicals believe that their faith is the sole path to religious redemption, and interfaith cooperation might harm their followers. </p>
<p>Additionally, some younger evangelicals tend toward adopting spiritual resources outside of the Christian tradition. Whether incorporating meditation techniques or yoga, my interviewees highlighted the ways in which they are exploring their religious and spiritual beliefs. </p>
<p>This contrasts with older evangelicals who perceive their tradition as providing all necessary resources for spiritual growth and reject any outside or Eastern influences. One interviewee noted that she had to change evangelical churches after her evangelical church prohibited her from being both a church member and a local yoga instructor. </p>
<h2>Losing interest in the culture war</h2>
<p>Many of the younger evangelicals in my study stated that their stances on culture war issues were significantly different from the evangelical majority of the past 50 years, which aligns with <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/05/04/though-still-conservative-young-evangelicals-are-more-liberal-than-their-elders-on-some-issues/">the findings of a 2017 Pew Research Center poll</a>. This survey found that younger generations of millennials are more liberal than older evangelicals on numerous political issues. </p>
<p>My interviewees cited an acceptance and welcoming of those who identify as LGBTQ into their communities as both members and leaders. They support and ally with the objectives of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. In sum, they are actively dismantling many of the insider/outsider distinctions established by older white evangelicals and transforming what it means to be a politically engaged evangelical in America.</p>
<p>Furthermore, many of the people that I spoke with cited a culture war fatigue. Some believe that evangelicalism’s multi-decade investment in campaigning for these conservative stances and alliance with the Republican Party actually harmed the evangelical tradition instead of empowering it, while others are simply trying to opt out of the culture war and focus on their faith instead. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="President Donald Trump takes his seat next to National Rifle Associations (NRA) Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Officer Wayne LaPierre, right, and Pastor Paula White, left, of the New Destiny Christian Center, at a 2017 White House meeting." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407078/original/file-20210617-25-1ibr9fk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407078/original/file-20210617-25-1ibr9fk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407078/original/file-20210617-25-1ibr9fk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407078/original/file-20210617-25-1ibr9fk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407078/original/file-20210617-25-1ibr9fk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407078/original/file-20210617-25-1ibr9fk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407078/original/file-20210617-25-1ibr9fk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Influential figures like Paula White, left, helped rally evangelical support for Donald Trump, who in turn rewarded them with advisory and other roles in his administration.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/ReligionPaulaWhite/d34a2fc5ce034461ac2a52c3d81efdcf">Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP</a></span>
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<p>Interviewees also told me that often their views are creating <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10050341">familial conflict</a>, since their parents and grandparents cannot understand why any evangelical would not be committed to the older generations’ conservative political causes. </p>
<h2>Political conversion</h2>
<p>Research to date, including my own, has yet to measure how widespread these shifts of attitude and belief among young white evangelicals may be. But there is other evidence of internal unraveling. </p>
<p>Take a recent announcement by Beth Moore, an influential evangelical speaker and author, that she <a href="https://religionnews.com/2021/03/09/bible-teacher-beth-moore-ends-partnership-with-lifeway-i-am-no-longer-a-southern-baptist/">has decided to leave</a> the Southern Baptist Convention – the largest evangelical group in the U.S. – and end her relationship with a prominent evangelical publisher. </p>
<p>Or consider the <a href="https://religionnews.com/2021/06/02/leaked-russell-moore-letter-blasts-sbc-conservatives-sheds-light-on-his-resignation/">recent departure</a> of pastor Russell Moore, the former president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, who resigned from his position over the denomination’s handling of racial issues. These developments indicate a growing internal struggle over who can legitimately claim authority for the evangelical tradition. </p>
<p>The last several decades of American politics have been dominated by culture war issues, with white evangelicals in positions of national power. But as my research is documenting, a political transformation seems to be underway. With younger, white evangelicals rethinking their alliances and continued participation in the culture wars, it is possible that conservative politicians may not be able to count on white evangelical support for much longer. </p>
<p>This could have broader implications for the American political landscape. Without evangelical support and influence, the issues that are often at center stage could drastically change. </p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This article has been updated to clarify Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s faith as a conservative Christian and pastor Russell Moore’s title.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162407/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Terry Shoemaker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Growing numbers of young evangelicals and ‘Exvangelicals’ are pro-LGBTQ, support #BlackLivesMatter – or are fed up altogether with mixing faith and politics.Terry Shoemaker, Lecturer, School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies, Arizona State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1585132021-04-08T12:04:01Z2021-04-08T12:04:01ZFaith in numbers: Trump held steady among believers at the ballot – it was the nonreligious vote he lost in 2020<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393848/original/file-20210407-19-1mu1vfi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C0%2C3967%2C2430&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">White evangelicals continued to back Trump in 2020 in significant numbers.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/voter-fills-out-his-ballot-with-christ-on-the-crucifix-news-photo/1229449053?adppopup=true">Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For all <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/10/trump-religious-voters-411248">the predictions</a> and talk of a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-loss-support-biden-evangelicals-election-polls-religion-2020-11">slump in support among evangelicals</a>, it appears Donald Trump’s election loss was not at the hands of religious voters.</p>
<p>As an <a href="https://www.eiu.edu/polisci/faculty.php/hendrickson.php?id=rpburge&subcat=">analyst of religious data</a>, I’ve been crunching <a href="https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/E9N6PH">data released in March 2021</a> that breaks down the 2020 U.S. presidential election results by faith. And by and large there was very little notable change in the vote choice of religious groups between 2016 and 2020 – in fact, for most faiths, support for Trump ticked up slightly. Instead, it was among those who do not identify with any religion that Trump saw a noticeable drop.</p>
<p><iframe id="7DQAz" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/7DQAz/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Despite exit poll data initially pointing toward a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/exit-polls-president.html">drop in white evangelical support</a> for Trump in 2020, the latest data shows this not to be the case. The data is based on the <a href="https://cces.gov.harvard.edu/">Cooperative Election Study</a>, which has become the gold standard for assessing vote choice because of its sample size and its ability to accurately represent the voting population of the United States.</p>
<p>In fact, with 80% of white evangelicals backing Trump in 2020, support actually ticked up from the 78% who voted for him four years earlier.
Trump also saw two-point increases in the vote of nonwhite evangelicals, white Catholics, Black Protestants and Jews compared with four years ago.</p>
<p>These differences are not statistically significant, and as such it would be wrong to say it definitively shows Trump gained among religious groups. But it indicates that among the largest religious groups in the U.S., voting patterns in the November 2020 vote seemed to hold largely steady with four years earlier. Trump did not manage to win significantly larger shares, nor was winner Joe Biden able to peel away religious voters from the Trump coalition.</p>
<h2>Losing the nonreligious</h2>
<p>However, there are some interesting and statistically significant trends when you break down the data further. Nonwhite Catholics shifted four points toward Donald Trump. This fits with what we saw in places like the <a href="https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/miamidadecountyflorida/PST045219">heavily Hispanic</a> and <a href="https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/metro-area/miami-metro-area/">Catholic</a> Miami-Dade County, Florida, where Trump’s <a href="https://www.nwfdailynews.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/11/04/elections-compare-florida-vote-president-2016-2020/6156532002/">overall vote share improved</a> from 35% to 46% between 2016 and 2020.</p>
<p>Trump also managed to pick up 15 percentage points among the Mormon vote. On first glance this would appear a large jump. But it makes sense when you factor in that around <a href="https://religioninpublic.blog/2018/07/25/mormon-voting-patterns-in-the-2016-election-a-comprehensive-analysis/">15% of the Mormon vote</a> in 2016 <a href="https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/utah-mormon-vote-mcmullin">went to Utah native and fellow Mormon Evan McMullin</a>, who ran in that year’s election as a third-party candidate. Without McMullin in 2020, Trump picked up Mormon voters – as did Joe Biden, who did slightly better than Hillary Clinton had among Mormons.</p>
<p>There is also some weak evidence that the Republican candidate picked up some support among smaller religious groups in the U.S., like Hindus and Buddhists. Trump increased his share among these two groups by four percentage points each. But it is important to note that these two groups combined <a href="https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/">constitute only about 1.5% of the American population</a>. As such, a four-point increase translates to only a very small fraction of the overall popular vote.</p>
<p>What is clear is that Trump <a href="https://religioninpublic.blog/2021/04/06/the-2020-vote-for-president-by-religious-groups-the-nones/">lost a good amount of ground among the religious unaffiliated</a>. Trump’s share of the atheist vote declined from 14% in 2016 to just 11% in 2020; the decline among agnostics was slightly larger, from 23% to 18%. </p>
<p>Additionally, those who identify as “<a href="https://religionnews.com/2019/07/03/rise-of-the-nothing-in-particulars-may-be-sign-of-a-disjointed-disaffected-and-lonely-future/">nothing in particular</a>” – a group that represents 21% of the overall U.S. population – were not as supportive of Trump in his reelection bid. His vote share among this group dropped by three percentage points, while Biden’s rose by over seven points, with the Democrat managing to win over many of the “nothing in particulars” who had backed third-party candidates in the 2016 election.</p>
<p>Looked at broadly, Trump did slightly better among Christians and other smaller religious groups in the U.S. but lost ground among the religiously unaffiliated. What these results cannot account for, however, is record turnout. There were nearly <a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/voter-turnout-in-presidential-elections">22 million more votes</a> cast in 2020 than in 2016. So while vote shares may not have changed that much, the number of votes cast helped swing the election for the Democratic candidate. A more detailed breakdown of voter turnout is due to be released in July 2021 by the team that administers the Cooperative Election Study; that will bring the picture of religion and the 2020 vote into clearer focus.</p>
<p>[<em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/158513/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ryan Burge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Trump saw a decline in support among atheists, agnostics and voters not affiliated with any religion in the 2020 election.Ryan Burge, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Eastern Illinois UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1526402021-01-26T13:26:08Z2021-01-26T13:26:08ZThink US evangelicals are dying out? Well, define evangelicalism …<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380524/original/file-20210125-17-6jd5w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3494%2C2326&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Not flagging, merely changing stripes.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/congregants-at-first-baptist-dallas-church-celebrate-news-photo/1161614870?adppopup=true"> The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The death spiral of evangelicalism has long been <a href="https://religionnews.com/2020/03/15/why-white-evangelicals-are-at-odds-with-america/">written about in both the religious</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/opinion/sunday/the-decline-of-evangelical-america.html">mainstream press</a>.</p>
<p>The assumption is that evangelicalism has <a href="https://www.salon.com/2017/03/14/americans-are-getting-more-secular-all-the-time-which-is-one-reason-why-trump-voters-are-so-angry/">weathered the storms of secularization</a> and <a href="https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/what-happened-to-evangelicals">politicization</a> poorly. Journalist Eliza Griswold, writing for <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/on-religion/millennial-evangelicals-diverge-from-their-parents-beliefs">The New Yorker</a>, chalks this up to the theological rigidity of evangelicals: that they have been structurally incapable of changing course quickly enough to stem the tide.</p>
<p>Others have suggested that the <a href="https://www.salon.com/2019/07/08/former-evangelical-republican-warns-the-religious-rights-support-of-trump-will-harm-christianity_partner/">alliance between white evangelicalism and Republicanism</a> is largely to blame for the decline of evangelicals. They <a href="https://www.tennessean.com/story/opinion/2020/11/01/evangelicals-embrace-trump-hurts-credibility-christians/6110934002/">believe that</a> becoming so intertwined with the polarizing figure of former President Donald Trump has marginalized evangelicals in the public arena, making it even less likely for them to win over new converts. </p>
<p>While the share of Americans who identify as evangelical by religious tradition does seem to <a href="https://www.pewforum.org/2019/10/17/in-u-s-decline-of-christianity-continues-at-rapid-pace/">be falling</a> – from 19% to 16% for white evangelicals, according to a recent Pew survey – that does, I believe, obscure a bigger and possibly more important story.</p>
<p>Looking at the data from a slightly different angle suggests that the share of Americans who self-identify as evangelicals has not changed in any meaningful way over the past decade. In fact, larger shares of Americans have said that they have had a born-again experience in 2018 than at any point since 1972, according to the General Social Survey. Moreover, as <a href="https://www.eiu.edu/polisci/faculty.php/hendrickson.php?id=rpburge&subcat=">someone who analyzes religious data</a>, I believe the link with politics may in fact be a central reason evangelicals are not declining significantly as a share of the U.S. population.</p>
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<h2>Evangelicalism is not toxic</h2>
<p>In both the <a href="https://gss.norc.org/">General Social Survey</a>, which has been asking questions about religion since 1972, and the <a href="https://cces.gov.harvard.edu/">Cooperative Congressional Election Study</a>, which interviews tens of thousands of Americans every year, respondents are asked if they consider themselves “born-again” or “evangelical.” In 2008, 1 in 3 people who responded to the CCES said that they do see themselves as evangelical. In 2019, that number was 34.6%. In the GSS, the share who said that they had experienced a “<a href="https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org/variables/1077/vshow">born-again experience</a>” has risen four percentage points during the same period.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>These self-identification measures are so important because they allow researchers a window into the mind of the average person. If the term “evangelical” has become as radioactive as <a href="https://www.rawstory.com/2019/03/evangelical-christianitys-brand-used/">many people suggest</a>, then it would seem reasonable that smaller percentages of the public would willingly take on the label – but they are not. Just the opposite, in fact.</p>
<p>But just because the share of Americans who identify as an evangelical has not changed in a statistically meaningful way doesn’t mean that the composition of that group has not. A crucial part of this story is that the term “evangelical” has, I believe, become somewhat detached from its theological roots and morphed into a term that seems to capture political sensibilities as well.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.npr.org/2015/12/19/458058251/are-you-an-evangelical-are-you-sure">political scientist John Green notes</a>, “[evangelicals have] become very strongly associated with Republican and conservative politics, because since the days of Ronald Reagan up until today, that group of believers have moved in that direction politically.”</p>
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<p>There’s evidence of this move from the theological to the political. <a href="https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=hdl:1902.1/14003">In 2008</a>, 59% of evangelicals said that they attended church at least once a week. Just 16% said that they attended services “seldom” or “never.” </p>
<p>By 2019, those percentages had shifted significantly. The share who were weekly attenders declined a full seven percentage points, to 52%. On the bottom end of the spectrum, nearly a quarter of self-identified evangelicals said that they attended church “seldom” or “never” (24.2%). The share who never attended nearly tripled from 2.7% in 2008 to 7.3% <a href="https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/WOT7O8">in 2019</a>.</p>
<p>The implication is that for many of those who self-identified as “evangelical,” it is not just about devotion to a local church, but to a general orientation to the world. As Republicanism and the religious right have <a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429494901">become more enmeshed</a>, it seems logical to assume that these less religiously devout people may consider their evangelicalism to be a question of political identity, rather than religious beliefs and customs. </p>
<p>And this is apparent from another angle, as well. Respondents were asked to describe how important religion is in their daily lives. <a href="https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=hdl:1902.1/14003">In 2008</a>, over 80% of evangelicals said that religion was “very important” to them. But, as each year passed, that share began to decline. <a href="https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/WOT7O8">By 2019</a>, 73.7% of evangelicals said that religion is “very important” – a decline of over seven percentage points in just 11 years.</p>
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<p>Religious evangelicals may look at these numbers and think, “This is not what the term evangelical means.” The assumption is that the term describes those who place high value on the teachings of the Bible and strive to evangelize other people into their faith. However, that understanding of the term seems to be fading, replaced with a more amorphous concept that <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691161303/the-politics-of-evangelical-identity">melds together religious doctrine and an affinity for conservative politics</a> that experts are only beginning to understand now. For instance, in her book “From Politics to Pews,” scholar <a href="https://www.polisci.upenn.edu/people/standing-faculty/michele-margolis">Michele Margolis</a> <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/F/bo28246146.html">argues</a> that people are choosing their religious affiliation based on their political partisanship with greater frequency now than in prior decades.</p>
<p>No one gets to claim ownership over a word – especially one that is so fraught as the term “evangelical.” The data offer some insight into how the definition might be evolving, not how it is defined in theological texts and social science manuscripts.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/152640/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ryan Burge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The number of self-described evangelicals as a share of US population has held steady for the past decade. What is different is that they appear to identify less with church and more with politics.Ryan Burge, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Eastern Illinois UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1495842020-11-06T13:31:55Z2020-11-06T13:31:55ZHow Reagan’s notions of a ‘good society’ resonate with Trump supporters today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367796/original/file-20201105-22-5odadn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=112%2C8%2C2881%2C1943&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ronald Reagan with his Democratic challenger Walter Mondale soon after a debate in 1984.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/ReaganvsMondaleDebate1984/ddcfd177e17d4453b41556bf1b73c265/photo?Query=reagan%201984%20voters&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=10&currentItemNo=4">AP Photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>If a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/16/world/the-federal-deficit-balloons-to-a-record-3-1-trillion-even-as-the-pain-for-jobless-workers-sharpens.html">ballooning federal deficit</a>, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/camilomaldonado/2019/10/10/trump-tax-cuts-helped-billionaires-pay-less-taxes-than-the-working-class-in-2018/?sh=4d3bbbf33128">tax breaks for the wealthy</a>, <a href="https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/#:%7E:text=These%20estimates%20bracket%20the%20Census,perfect%20equality%20to%20complete%20inequality">rising income inequality</a>, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/09/01/trump-systemic-racism-ebof-vpx.cnn">structural racism</a> and <a href="https://www.cnsnews.com/article/washington/melanie-arter/rep-hakeem-jeffries-cowboy-diplomacy-will-not-work-iran">cowboy diplomacy</a> sound familiar, it’s because <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2020/08/13/important-issues-in-the-2020-election/">they were big issues in the 2020 presidential race</a>. </p>
<p>But they’re not new. They also dominated the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/United-States-presidential-election-of-1984">1984 contest</a> between Ronald Reagan and his Democratic challenger, Walter Mondale.</p>
<p>Then, as now, Americans faced a bevy of social, economic and political issues that, depending on presidential leadership, would define who they were as a nation. And then, as now, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB115896771393771865">millions voted out of concern for their personal finances</a> rather than address the challenges roiling much of the country. </p>
<p>My research on <a href="https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/sin-evil-world-reagan-trump-news-media/">Ronald Reagan, religion and the news media</a> explores how the 40th president deployed religious ideas to shift Americans’ notions of a good society. Many leaders have <a href="https://theconversation.com/trumps-use-of-religion-follows-playbook-of-authoritarian-leaning-leaders-the-world-over-140050">invoked God</a> to justify their policies and cement their power.</p>
<p>Reagan was more successful than most, but <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election/trump-god-religion-economy-minnesota-mankato-speech-today-jobs-a9675111.html">President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence</a> use a similar strategy. </p>
<h2>God, Mammon and America</h2>
<p>Reagan’s vision of politics, economics and religion replaced the worldview introduced by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Seeking relief for Americans during the Great Depression, FDR launched a series of federal programs called the <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/franklin-d-roosevelt-and-the-new-deal-william-e-leuchtenburg?variant=32154019430434">New Deal</a>. These programs provided jobs, social security and provisions for labor unions. </p>
<p>FDR’s policies reflected the economic and political realities of the 1930s and 1940s. But they also tapped into the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Social-Gospel">Social Gospel</a>, a vein of American religion that advocated for social as well as individual salvation through justice and systemic change. </p>
<p>FDR’s <a href="http://greyenlightenment.com/the-differences-between-neoclassical-liberalism-and-welfare-liberalism/">welfare liberalism</a> lasted through the 1970s, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/1973_Nervous_Breakdown.html?id=UGq3_Fa6P_YC">when social turmoil and economic recessions</a> made many Americans fear for their financial well-being as well as the nation’s. But Ronald Reagan’s message of hope and <a href="https://ipa.org.au/ipa-review-articles/reagans-hope">his belief in America’s divine destiny</a> helped him win the 1980 presidential race. </p>
<p>Reagan linked <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2011/10/11/the-myth-of-american-exceptionalism/">American exceptionalism</a>, particularly its role as a “<a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691181592/as-a-city-on-a-hill">shining city on a hill</a>” to <a href="http://www.faireconomy.org/the_politics_of_privatization">neoliberal ideas</a> including a limited government, tax cuts and reduced social services. At its heart, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/05/history-of-neoliberal-meaning/528276/">neoliberalism</a> views every aspect of civic, social and cultural life in terms of the market economy.</p>
<p>According to Reagan, God blessed democracy, free markets and religious liberty. Therefore, Americans should, too.</p>
<h2>It’s the economy, stupid</h2>
<p>In September 1983, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/william-raspberry-dies-washington-post-columnist-wrote-about-social-issues-including-race-poverty/2012/07/17/gJQAS210qW_story.html">William Raspberry</a>, at the time one of the country’s few Black columnists, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=4vT6DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT113&lpg=PT113&dq=#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9CForget%20war%20and%20peace%2C%20forget%20fairness%2C%20forget%20the%20federal%20deficit.%20None%20of%20it%20matters%20for%20this%20election.%20The%20only%20thing%20that%20matters%20is%20whether%20individual%20voters%20think%20their%20personal%20finances%20are%20more%20likely%20to%20improve%20under%20a%20Mondale%20administration%20or%20a%20second%20Reagan%20term.%E2%80%9D&f=false">wrote in The Washington Post</a>, “Forget war and peace, forget fairness, forget the federal deficit. None of it matters for this election. The only thing that matters is whether individual voters think their personal finances are more likely to improve under a Mondale administration or a second Reagan term.”</p>
<p>Raspberry predicted the rise of “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=4vT6DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT113&lpg=PT113&dq=william+raspberry+pocketbook+selfishness&source=bl&ots=ePfuiqVWrl&sig=ACfU3U0qhQTfFSj7akJwTRbpLK4xTbLXEQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwivzLmhj-zsAhV8kHIEHeuXDOEQ6AEwBHoECAEQAg#v=onepage&q=%20pocketbook%20selfishness&f=false">pocketbook selfishness</a>” after seeing a Washington Post-ABC poll that revealed many voters would put their own interests above those of the nation. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Religion-and-Journalism/Radde-Antweiler-Zeiler/p/book/9781138304963">A majority of respondents said</a> that Democratic candidate Walter Mondale was more likely than Reagan to “reduce the threat of nuclear war” and “be fairer to all segments of the population.” They agreed with Mondale’s political views and felt the “national economy was getting worse under Reagan.” But they still backed the incumbent. They explained their support by saying that Reagan would ensure they were “better off financially.” </p>
<p>Noting that voters typically explained their choice of candidates as a product of aligned views, Raspberry surmised, “Reagan has made greed an acceptable attitude.”</p>
<p>A Washington Post feature story <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1984/10/07/fairness-issue-loses-potency-this-is-one-of-an-occasional-series-about-issues-affecting-the-presidential-campaign/7386968f-895e-4311-addf-d1a1a2b096dc/">put Midwestern names and faces to the poll</a>. Several suburban housewives explained why they were voting for the incumbent. Sue Daniels of Mequon, Wisconsin, for example, said: “I’m going for Reagan because now I’m one of the haves and he’s gonna take a little less from me and give a little less to some of the people who don’t have. Mondale’s going to give my money to everybody, whether they’re down and out because they’re lazy or because they’re not.”</p>
<h2>Vision of moral growth</h2>
<p>Voters knew Mondale’s policies were “fairer” than Reagan’s, but many did not seem to care. </p>
<p>Those who did care were public service workers whose income and benefits were <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1984/10/07/fairness-issue-loses-potency-this-is-one-of-an-occasional-series-about-issues-affecting-the-presidential-campaign/7386968f-895e-4311-addf-d1a1a2b096dc/">affected by federal cutbacks</a>, and low-income citizens who <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Religion-and-Journalism/Radde-Antweiler-Zeiler/p/book/9781138304963">knew that Reagan’s policies penalized them</a>. <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Religion-and-Journalism/Radde-Antweiler-Zeiler/p/book/9781138304963">According to the Post’s reporters</a>, “the strongest feelings on the fairness issue are heard in the black community on (Milwaukee’s) Northside.” </p>
<p>Local statistics underscored why: <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Religion-and-Journalism/Radde-Antweiler-Zeiler/p/book/9781138304963">failing schools, packed soup kitchens, and swelling welfare rolls</a>. But, <a href="https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/radio-address-nation-welfare-reform">according to Reagan</a>, whose views were mainstreamed by the news media, many Americans were on government assistance. That’s why he wanted to cut taxes. If the IRS collected less money, then the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1981/02/19/reagan-calls-for-414-billion-in-spending-cuts-for-fiscal-1982/e78afaa9-3560-485c-b24f-66564141b40a/">budget for social services would be reduced</a>, which would force welfare recipients to find jobs. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/republican-party-platform-1984">In the neoliberal worldview</a>, Reagan was doing a favor for the millions on welfare. He was fostering their moral and religious growth by making them find jobs and become responsible citizens. </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<h2>Making America Great Again</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367799/original/file-20201105-13-1386vv5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367799/original/file-20201105-13-1386vv5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367799/original/file-20201105-13-1386vv5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367799/original/file-20201105-13-1386vv5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367799/original/file-20201105-13-1386vv5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367799/original/file-20201105-13-1386vv5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367799/original/file-20201105-13-1386vv5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367799/original/file-20201105-13-1386vv5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Trump speaking at a Make America Great Again rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, in 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/Trump/26bdbf0a2f66449f82b8b262cf05ad20/photo?Query=trump%20make%20america%20great&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=314&currentItemNo=31">AP Photo/Mike Roemer</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Trump and his supporters <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-trumps-washington/is-trump-the-second-coming-of-reagan">like to compare him to Ronald Reagan</a>; both were former Democrats, entertainers and, in their third act, bedrock conservatives. Trump even <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/04/maga-trump-claims-voter-fraud-434099">borrowed Reagan’s campaign slogan</a>, shortening “Let’s Make America Great Again” to the “Make America Great Again” meme.</p>
<p>On Tuesday, some <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/results-president.html">69 million voters</a> likely agreed that Trump was making America great, when they cast votes for his second term. </p>
<p>The majority of those voters are not white supremacists, evangelicals or members of QAnon. They are <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-big-chunk-of-white-americans-with-degrees-and-people-of-color-are-behind-trump/">white, Black and brown men and women</a> who believe that Trump is a good businessman and that his economic policies will help them. </p>
<p>In the <a href="https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/editorials/2020/10/31/editorial-donald-trump-joe-biden-mike-pence-kamala-harris-presidential-candidate-endorsement/stories/202010310021">words of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette</a>, which endorsed the president, “Isn’t the real question whether he has been taking the country, and the economy of this region, in the right direction these last four years? Can we separate the man from the record?” </p>
<p>Americans may disagree on whether the country’s pre-COVID-19 economic boom was a result of Trump’s policies or those put in place by the Obama administration. But, as I see it, one thing is clear: The nation’s commitment to greed and selfishness remains strong. </p>
<p>Reagan’s spiritual neoliberalism, sanctioned and sanctified by God’s blessings and accepted even by some atheists, secularists and non-Christians, still holds many Americans in thrall. </p>
<p>Joe Biden and the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/results-president.html">73 million-plus Americans</a> who voted him will need to counter that worldview with a different vision of what it means to be a good American in a good society.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149584/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Diane Winston does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A religion scholar explains how Ronald Reagan invoked religion and shifted the American notion of a good society – a vision that might resonate with the politics of today.Diane Winston, Associate Professor and Knight Center Chair in Media & Religion, USC Annenberg School for Communication and JournalismLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1345082020-03-29T11:42:45Z2020-03-29T11:42:45ZCoronavirus: Trump and religious right rely on faith, not science<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323690/original/file-20200327-146689-15zte57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=50%2C22%2C1809%2C1022&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Christian pastor Shawn Bolz has recently said the U.S. economy would surge despite the conronavirus. He has said: 'Even now several vaccines are coming out as well as a natural dying out of the virus itself.' There is no known vaccine for COVID-19. He is pictured here at an event in April 2016.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Bolz Ministries)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the <a href="https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019">coronavirus pandemic</a> spreads globally, many governments have forbidden large gatherings. Some groups have been slow to heed the call, however. </p>
<p>This month in the United States, several neo-charismatic preachers <a href="https://www.ncronline.org/news/people/white-house-takes-low-key-approach-churches-ignore-coronavirus-advice">decided not to cancel their church meetings and events</a>. Some have since said they would move their meetings online. </p>
<p>Others appeared to minimize the physical health threats of the virus or emphasized how atonement, spiritual preparation or protection is strengthened through church tithing or donations. </p>
<p>These initial and ongoing response of some of these leaders have highlighted dangerous worldviews that stress the authority of Christian charismatic personal prophecy and sees in calamitous events signs of Christ’s final triumph. </p>
<h2>Religious leaders emboldened by Trump?</h2>
<p>According to religion researchers at the University of Southern California, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/01/todays-pentecostals-arent-tongues-talking-hicks-they-are-slick-australian-exports">Pentecostalism is</a> the <a href="https://crcc.usc.edu/spirit-and-power-the-growth-and-global-impact-of-pentecostalism/">fastest growing religious movement in the world</a>. The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/01/todays-pentecostals-arent-tongues-talking-hicks-they-are-slick-australian-exports">neo-charismatic movement</a> is often referred to as the “third wave” of Pentecostalism. In this movement, evangelical churches which are not part of the established Pentecostal tradition, embrace the “Pentecostal experience,” distinguished by its emotional expressiveness, spontaneity in worship, speaking or praying in “unknown tongues” and healing. Participants often characterize themselves as “spirit-filled” Christians. </p>
<p>As the number of <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html">coronavirus infections grows in the U.S.</a>, ideas advanced by neo-charismatic leaders may have dire consequences. </p>
<p>Some of these religious leaders may become more emboldened by President Donald Trump’s recent comments. Trump said he wanted to have the U.S. economy back <a href="https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1242537995103846400">on track and Christian churches packed on Easter</a>, before r<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/29/us/politics/trump-coronavirus-guidelines.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage">eluctantly taking the advice of U.S. health officials</a> and extending social isolation at least through the month of April. <em>Fox News</em> anchor Bill Hemmer called this vision of Americans in churches an “<a href="https://pjmedia.com/trending/great-american-resurrection-trump-wants-america-open-and-rarin-to-go-by-easter/">American resurrection</a>.” </p>
<p>Some of the neo-charismastic leaders may be increasing public tolerance for <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/24/politics/trump-easter-economy-coronavirus/index.html">Trump’s approach</a>. Others have echoed Trump — including an <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/questioning-the-clampdown-11584485339">editorial in the <em>Wall Street Journal</em></a> — and have suggested the economy should be the top priority. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, among other religious leaders, the president’s desire for “<a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/beautiful-thing-trump-hopes-to-see-packed-churches-on-easter-sunday">packed churches</a>” at Easter prompted widespread criticism, with the executive director of Massachusetts Council of Churches saying the president is “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/25/trump-coronavirus-easter-christian-leaders-respond">co-opting Easter for capitalism</a>.”</p>
<h2>Defying social distancing directives</h2>
<p>In early March, L.A.-based Christian pastor <a href="https://bolzministries.com/">Shawn Bolz</a>, who has almost 50,000 twitter followers, told <em>Fox News</em> the “<a href="https://www.foxnews.com/faith-values/coronavirus-christian-pastor-shawn-bolz">Lord showed me the end of the coronavirus</a>.” On his Facebook page, Bolz wrote that several vaccines are coming out. There is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/26/coronavirus-vaccine-when-will-it-be-ready">currently no vaccine for COVID-19</a>.</p>
<p>Bolz also recently claimed on a Christian website that the economy would surge, that Donald Trump would win another electoral term, that “God’s going to turn the tide of this thing” and the U.S. would “hit one of the greatest times … of economic stability.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323263/original/file-20200326-132969-1yo9v3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323263/original/file-20200326-132969-1yo9v3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323263/original/file-20200326-132969-1yo9v3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323263/original/file-20200326-132969-1yo9v3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323263/original/file-20200326-132969-1yo9v3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323263/original/file-20200326-132969-1yo9v3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323263/original/file-20200326-132969-1yo9v3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">President Donald Trump has called for full churches at Easter. Here he is pictured at the White House with Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Pastor Jack Graham, Paula White-Cain and Vice President Mike Pence.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Evan Vucci</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>On March 15, Rodney Howard-Browne, <a href="https://www.revival.com/river/about">a Pentecostal pastor at the River at Tampa Bay Church</a>, told his church to greet each other with a handshake, saying that <a href="https://nypost.com/2020/03/17/evangelical-pastor-mocks-pansies-wont-close-church-for-coronavirus/">his church would not close</a> until the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Rapture-the">“Rapture,” or the meeting of all Christian believers with God in heaven</a>.</p>
<p>Howard-Browne has shared anti-vaccination information on social media and has also circulated Trump’s comments regarding his hope to “<a href="https://twitter.com/rhowardbrowne/status/1242634041989398529">pack the churches on Easter</a>.” </p>
<p><a href="https://rlp.hds.harvard.edu/faq/prosperity-gospel">Prosperity gospel</a> preacher <a href="https://www.kcm.org/">Kenneth Copeland</a> told a Christian magazine that the fear of the coronavirus was a sin. He said when people fear they give the devil a pathway to their bodies. </p>
<p>On Twitter he told his 432,000 followers: “No weapon meant to hurt you will succeed … No disease. NO VIRUS. … Believe it. Receive it. Speak it in Jesus’ Name!”</p>
<p>Copeland, <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/kenneth-copeland-jet-inside-edition_n_5cf822fee4b0e63eda94de4f?ri18n=true">who is wealthy</a> also told people to <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/coronavirus-shutdowns-place-financial-strain-on-churches">continue tithing to the church even if they lose their jobs due to the coronavirus</a>.</p>
<h2>When science prevailed</h2>
<p>Florida-based Paula White-Cain, chair of the president’s evangelical advisory board and the person who <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2017/07/donald-trump-oval-office-prayer-circle-explained">prayed over President Trump before his swearing in</a> addressed her many followers on March 17 regarding coronavirus in a Facebook update.</p>
<p>White-Cain asked viewers to spend 15 days at home physically distancing to help flatten the curve. But she also asked her followers to pray to be spiritually saved and to continue to support her ministry by giving a <a href="https://twitter.com/hemantmehta/status/1239980685982666753">donation such as US$91</a>. The figure of 91 recalls <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalms+91&version=NABRE">Psalm 91</a>, a favoured text for the protection of believers in times of trouble. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323665/original/file-20200327-146678-zjp6uq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=60%2C18%2C3965%2C2649&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323665/original/file-20200327-146678-zjp6uq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323665/original/file-20200327-146678-zjp6uq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323665/original/file-20200327-146678-zjp6uq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323665/original/file-20200327-146678-zjp6uq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323665/original/file-20200327-146678-zjp6uq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323665/original/file-20200327-146678-zjp6uq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Paula White-Cain, the religious advisor to President Trump, has so far advised her followers to stay home for 15 days. Here White-Cain is pictured at the benediction at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, in 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Initially, <a href="http://www.guillermomaldonado.org/">Guillermo Maldonado</a>, pastor of a megachurch in Miami and has more than 100,000 Twitter followers, told his congregation on March 15 not give in to the “demonic spirit of fear,” of the coronavirus, to continue attending meetings and to not “<a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article241209151.html">heed warnings from officials to avoid crowded spaces</a>.” </p>
<p>But Maldonado had a change of heart and on his blog writes that “<a href="http://www.guillermomaldonado.org/blog/covid-19-encounter-updates">safety is our No. 1 priority</a>.” His ministry will now follow requests from the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/">Centers for Disease Control and Prevention</a>. </p>
<h2>A belief in supernatural abilities?</h2>
<p>Mike Bickle, a Kansas City pastor, said in a YouTube sermon on March 22 that the virus is part of the enemy’s agenda — that enemy being Satan — to stop “stadium Christianity” in the U.S. and worldwide. Bickle said, “there are 20 stadium events planned in 2020 across our nation … and the enemy says, ‘Enough! I’m going to stop this!’” </p>
<p>These neo-charismatic leaders’ battle with the virus is one they consider to be “spiritual warfare,” where they confront and take authority over the “spirit of fear” and over the disease in the name of Jesus. </p>
<p>Some part of of their responses could be attributed to their “<a href="http://www.7culturalmountains.org/apps/articles/default.asp?articleid=62371&columnid=">victorious eschatology</a>.” This idea refers to the belief that the church will rise in victory before the return of Christ — something that would be heralded by apocalyptic signs.</p>
<p>In this context, these neo-charismatic leaders may believe Christians will be endowed with supernatural abilities, working miracles and healing people from diseases, also having the responsibility of converting souls to the Christian message. </p>
<p>Many of these preachers are writing end-time scenarios. There have been several scenarios presented which interpret stories from the Bible which they use as an authority and as a way to legitimize their beliefs — many of which could have deadly consequences.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/134508/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>André Gagné receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. </span></em></p>Some neo-charismatic religious leaders have downplayed the coronavirus.André Gagné, Associate Professor, Department of Theological Studies; Full Member of the Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance, Concordia UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1274372019-12-08T18:49:11Z2019-12-08T18:49:11ZEvangelical churches believe men should control women. That’s why they breed domestic violence<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305533/original/file-20191206-39032-zogduu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C53%2C6000%2C3934&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Evangelical church teachings create fertile ground for domestic violence, its justification and its concealment.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of our Gender and Christianity series.</em></p>
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<p>Jane* was a member of Australia’s evangelical Christian community, and throughout her marriage she heard many sermons on honouring a husband’s authority. </p>
<p>These sermons focused on a wife <a href="https://www.bible.com/bible/111/EPH.5.21-25.NIV">submitting</a> to her husband’s authority in everything, from finances to where and when she worked. He was to be respected as head of the family, because this was “God’s plan”.</p>
<p>For three decades, Jane’s husband abused her under the guise of this notion of authority. He isolated her, denied her money and the use of a car. He yelled at her, kicked and punched her, told her she was mad and threatened to kill her.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/forceful-and-dominant-men-with-sexist-ideas-of-masculinity-are-more-likely-to-abuse-women-125873">Forceful and dominant: men with sexist ideas of masculinity are more likely to abuse women</a>
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<p>Jane is a case study participant in my research, and she told me that when she went to her church leaders for support, they asked her what <em>she</em> was doing wrong. When she attempted to escape the abuse after the first decade of marriage, they told her to continue attending church with her husband.</p>
<p>Then, they told her to move back into the family home and resolve her marital issues, and that this would be the last time they gave her counselling on the matter.</p>
<p>Jane’s story is a <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-23/when-women-are-believed-the-church-will-change/9782184">familiar one</a> – an <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-18/domestic-violence-church-submit-to-husbands/8652028">ABC investigation</a> last year showed how conservative Christian churches both enable and conceal domestic violence. </p>
<p>My ongoing research shows this is exacerbated by what’s taught in evangelical church communities, creating fertile ground for domestic violence, its justification and its concealment.</p>
<h2>A literal reading of the Bible</h2>
<p>Evangelical Christians <a href="https://epc.org/wp-content/uploads/Files/1-Who-We-Are/B-About-The-EPC/WCF-ModernEnglish.pdf">believe</a> biblical scripture is “truth” that “requires our unreserved submission in all areas of life”. They consider scripture to be “inspired by the Holy Spirit”, so “it is the supreme and final authority on all matters on which it speaks”.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/on-gender-and-sexuality-scott-morrisons-blind-spot-may-come-from-reading-the-bible-too-literally-102843">On gender and sexuality, Scott Morrison's 'blind spot' may come from reading the Bible too literally</a>
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<p>The effect of evangelical Christianity on women’s vulnerability to domestic violence is yet to be measured through a comprehensive survey in Australia. But the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-22/what-i-want-the-church-to-know-about-domestic-violence-victims/10401752">extensive reporting</a> on domestic violence in the evangelical Sydney Anglican Diocese challenges harmful and stubborn attitudes that place religious doctrine over the safety of women.</p>
<p>This resistance to cultural change is also shown by teachings on the permanence of the marriage covenant, another way women are potentially trapped in violent marriages.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305564/original/file-20191206-39018-19y0a7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305564/original/file-20191206-39018-19y0a7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305564/original/file-20191206-39018-19y0a7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305564/original/file-20191206-39018-19y0a7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305564/original/file-20191206-39018-19y0a7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305564/original/file-20191206-39018-19y0a7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305564/original/file-20191206-39018-19y0a7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The authority of men and the subordination of women are considered ‘permanently binding’ principles.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rod Long/Unsplash</span></span>
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<h2>A backlash against 1980s Christian feminism</h2>
<p>In the 1980s, Christian feminists began to challenge the exclusivity of male leadership in the church, as well as aspects of theology, including the assumption God was <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/204019/beyond-god-the-father-by-mary-daly/">masculine in nature</a>. </p>
<p>The feminist movement that had been gaining momentum in wider society during the 1960s and 1970s underpinned this revolt against male privilege in the church.</p>
<p>In fervent response, <a href="https://cbmw.org/about/danvers-statement/">evangelical factions</a> of the Christian church began to double down on men’s authority over women.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/islam-and-feminism-are-not-mutually-exclusive-and-faith-can-be-an-important-liberator-77086">Islam and feminism are not mutually exclusive, and faith can be an important liberator</a>
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<p>In fact, <a href="https://www.desiringgod.org/books/recovering-biblical-manhood-and-womanhood">evangelical Christian leaders</a> who believed in the infallibility of biblical scripture, began to blame Christian feminists for creating more <a href="https://cbmw.org/about/danvers-statement/">divorce, sexual abuse and promiscuity</a>.</p>
<p>This backlash resulted in a renewed call for women to stop any resistance to their husband’s authority, a call still echoing almost 40 years later.</p>
<h2>Male authority in God’s plan</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.cbeinternational.org/sites/default/files/pp291_5tgoc_2.pdf">Traditional understandings</a> about male headship, both in the family and the Church, were promoted as being ordained by God. This meant the authority of men and the subordination of women were considered to be “permanently binding” principles. </p>
<p>Conservative evangelical Christians enthusiastically embraced this as a form of resistance against the feminist movement, and still support these “permanently binding” principles today. </p>
<p>Sadly, there are no statistics on the prevalence of domestic violence in the Australian Christian community, but it’s addressed in international research. More Australian research is needed urgently. </p>
<p>In a <a href="https://restored.contentfiles.net/media/resources/files/churches_web.pdf">survey of churchgoers</a> in Cumbria, England, one in four respondents had experienced at least one of the nominated abusive behaviours - such as being kicked, punched, threatened with a weapon, isolated or sexually coerced - in their current relationship. And more than 40% of respondents had experienced at least one in a current or previous relationship. </p>
<p>The researchers noted evangelical churches were reluctant to participate in the survey, perhaps indicating the reluctance of these churches to address domestic violence in their own communities. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-catholic-church-is-headed-for-another-sex-abuse-scandal-as-nunstoo-speak-up-111539">The Catholic Church is headed for another sex abuse scandal as #NunsToo speak up</a>
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<p>According to <a href="https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1P3-1885092701/christian-women-in-ipv-relationships-an-exploratory">research</a> carried out in North America, the rates of domestic violence in evangelical communities is considered to be at least as high as rates in other churches. But other US research conducted a few years later suggests the rate could be even higher in <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/j.2161-007X.2013.00034.x">evangelical churches</a> because they are more likely to create an environment endorsing gender inequality.</p>
<p>Considering <a href="https://www.ourwatch.org.au/getmedia/0aa0109b-6b03-43f2-85fe-a9f5ec92ae4e/Change-the-story-framework-prevent-violence-women-children-AA-new.pdf.aspx">gender inequality</a> is a well-known driver of domestic violence and abuse, peddling women’s subordination as being ordained by God is placing the safety of conservative Christian women at risk. </p>
<h2>Changing a toxic culture</h2>
<p>The culture of male privilege in evangelical Christian communities can be changed with <a href="https://theconversation.com/women-priests-could-help-the-catholic-church-restore-its-integrity-its-time-to-embrace-them-118115">more women positioned</a> as senior ministers. This move can disrupt notions that men have authority over women, and mean problems that affect women might no longer be overlooked. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/women-priests-could-help-the-catholic-church-restore-its-integrity-its-time-to-embrace-them-118115">Women priests could help the Catholic Church restore its integrity. It's time to embrace them</a>
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<p>These communities can also benefit from more education to understand that violence, with visible injuries, isn’t the only form of domestic abuse. If church leaders and their congregations can recognise abuse in all its forms, they can take more appropriate steps to offer support to victims.</p>
<p>Most importantly, congregations benefit from hearing sermons that admonish domestic violence and advise victims to seek support and prioritise their safety, rather than sermons demanding women obey their husbands even in abusive circumstances. This would help stop Christian perpetrators using the Bible as an excuse for their behaviour. </p>
<p>When perpetrators use their Christian beliefs to justify abuse, women like Jane are not only facing long-term physical and mental harm, but they are being denied a spiritual journey that can bring peace and friendship within a like-minded community.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Names have been changed to protect privacy.</em></p>
<p><em>The National Sexual Assault, Family & Domestic Violence Counselling Line – 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) – is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week for any Australian who has experienced, or is at risk of, family and domestic violence and/or sexual assault.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/127437/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Evangelical Christian churches say a man’s authority is in God’s plan.Vicki Lowik, CQUniversity AustraliaAnnabel Taylor, Professor, CQUniversity AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1076042018-11-28T11:43:51Z2018-11-28T11:43:51ZHow the Salvation Army’s red kettles became a Christmas tradition<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247557/original/file-20181127-76752-1qd5p5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Salvation Army is among the top few U.S. charities.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/55015963@N05/5162833707/">CityOfFortWorth</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Tinseled trees and snowy landscapes are not the only signs of the upcoming holiday season. Red kettles, staffed by men and women in street clothes, Santa suits and Salvation Army uniforms, also telegraph Christmastime. </p>
<p>The Salvation Army is among America’s top-grossing charities. In 2018, its 25,000 <a href="https://www.salvationarmyusa.org/usn/story/the-salvation-armys-2018-holiday-fundraising-season-raises-4337-million/">bell-ringers helped raise</a> US$142.7 million. That was part of the charity’s $3.8 billion year-end revenue from bequests, grants, sales, in-kind donations and investments as well as direct contributions.</p>
<p>William Booth, an English evangelist, <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/activists/william-booth.html">founded the Salvation Army</a> in 1878 as a religious outreach to London’s poor. How a British evangelical church became an American icon is an <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674003965">ongoing interest</a> of mine. </p>
<h2>Entry into the United States</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247609/original/file-20181127-76770-1yhn1zq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247609/original/file-20181127-76770-1yhn1zq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=842&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247609/original/file-20181127-76770-1yhn1zq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=842&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247609/original/file-20181127-76770-1yhn1zq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=842&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247609/original/file-20181127-76770-1yhn1zq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1058&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247609/original/file-20181127-76770-1yhn1zq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1058&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247609/original/file-20181127-76770-1yhn1zq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1058&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-Domestic-News-England-WILLIAM-BOOTH/918d8477b3e6da11af9f0014c2589dfb/1/0">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Booth, who called himself “The General,” fashioned his army on Britain’s military. From the start, his “soldiers” wore uniforms, and they described their mission in martial terms. Salvationists <a href="http://the-east-end.co.uk/">marched through the streets of London’s East End</a>, a neighborhood of poor immigrants, with brass bands and female preachers. Booth and his followers also pursued “sinners” and frequently preached in bars, brothels and theaters. </p>
<p>Booth’s plan was to send his army worldwide, and his first stop was the United States. One of his early recruits had migrated to Philadelphia and <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674003965">wrote to Booth</a> about the residents’ need for salvation. In 1880, a small party of British Salvationists <a href="http://www.castlegarden.org/">debarked at Castle Garden</a>, New York’s first immigration center. The group immediately started singing hymns set to popular melodies and marching through lower Manhattan. </p>
<p>During the next few days, the <a href="http://creatingdigitalhistory.wikidot.com/harry-hill-s">English “soldiers” tacked up posters</a>, similar to ads for commercial entertainment, for a prayer service at Harry Hill’s, a popular dance hall, theater and saloon. Not only was the venue thick with drunkards, prostitutes and pleasure seekers; its unlikeliness as a religious meeting place <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674003965">guaranteed press attention</a>. </p>
<p>Such unexpected behavior did bring the Salvation Army to the public’s attention. Their boisterousness, even in service of saving souls, was criticized by New York’s clergy and <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674003965">ridiculed in newspapers and magazines</a>. That the Salvation Army featured female preachers at a time when most Protestant groups did not ordain women only added to its notoriety. </p>
<p>But the army did not surrender. Pressing their “invasion” beyond New York City, the soldiers traveled first to Philadelphia and later nationwide. Their exuberance attracted young people and women to the cause. </p>
<p>Young people liked the notion of a military crusade for religious purposes, and women joined because the Salvation Army <a href="https://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/Books/W/Women-in-God-s-Army">offered them positions of leadership and authority</a>. In fact, <a href="https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/people/booth-maud-ballington">William Booth’s daughter-in-law, Maud Ballington,</a> followed by his two daughters, <a href="http://www.newfrontierchronicle.org/emma-booth-tucker-the-consul/">Emma</a> and <a href="https://www.learningtogive.org/resources/booth-evangeline">Evangeline</a>, headed the American Salvation Army from 1887 to 1950. </p>
<h2>Kettles for Christmas dinner</h2>
<p>In both Britain and the U.S., Salvationists saw their mission as twofold: converting sinners and assisting the needy. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674003965">In the Salvation Army’s perspective</a>, the two went hand in hand, which is why members opened shelters for addicts, alcoholics and prostitutes. Yet they also sought to aid “down and outers,” their name for the needy. Among their early outreaches were Christmas dinners for the urban poor. But finding funds for food and gifts was difficult.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247560/original/file-20181127-76764-1jt5lo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247560/original/file-20181127-76764-1jt5lo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247560/original/file-20181127-76764-1jt5lo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247560/original/file-20181127-76764-1jt5lo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247560/original/file-20181127-76764-1jt5lo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247560/original/file-20181127-76764-1jt5lo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247560/original/file-20181127-76764-1jt5lo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Salvation Army mini Red Kettle and bell at Delnor-Wiggins Pass State Park.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/130946855@N03/24815413578/in/photolist-DNRtUf-DN3nKL-H196PR-21T3LGJ-q38Vgg-pSoPmx-ZAgYZg-GZfFQk-21T3SNS-GZfGDV-tEy6R-dBpJiW-GZgphP-ZQraxh-DN3kim-H18NqT-21RLYbC-21VTJNH-ZAgSyv-21T4Ncq-21RM7J9-ZzsKtx-ZQrHmN-ZzsEZT-DN3juC-DN1JuL-H19eXp-DNRw7G-21QWDKq-91w3jw-aYjpPz-aYjqsZ-aXp7uB-aYjqAv-aYjprF-aYjpFc-aYjqQP-21QW69y-21VUPKe-DN2JyS-ZQqV9s-H19d7a-DNRhf3-21VSKB8-ZztVya-GZfozt-GZgmZn-DN1KCs-21WLJ1P-H18PC2">Robin Wendell/Flickr.com</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By 1891, Salvationists had outposts nationwide. In San Francisco, Salvation Army Captain Joseph McFee was eager to serve a Christmas feast for a thousand of the city’s poorest residents. Frustrated by his lack of success, <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674003965">he decided to improvise</a>. Grabbing a crab pot from the local wharf, he hung it from a tripod at a busy intersection. Above the pot was a sign: “Fill the Pot for the Poor – Free Dinner on Christmas Day.” McFee’s campaign was a success. </p>
<p>Word spread and the kettles soon <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674003965">provided Christmas dinners</a> for thousands nationwide. </p>
<p>The kettle also helped <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674003965">rehabilitate the Salvation Army’s image</a>. Instead of seeing Salvationists as an unruly pack of religious rebels, many Americans recognized their work with the poor. At a time when neither state nor federal governments provided a social safety net, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Marching_to_Glory.html?id=-YjZAAAAMAAJ">the Salvation Army offered</a> meals, beds, work and medical facilities to destitute men and women. </p>
<p>But it was the Salvationists’ service in World War I that sealed the deal. Eager to support the American war effort, Salvation Army leaders sent “Sallies,” the popular nickname for army women, to the French front. The Sallies set up huts where they <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/donut-girls-wwi-helped-fill-soldiers-bellies-and-get-women-vote-180962864/">fried donuts</a>, sewed buttons, wrote letters and otherwise “mothered” the troops.</p>
<p>The women’s faith, fortitude and friendship touched many young soldiers. <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674003965">One wrote in his letter home:</a> </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“These good women create an atmosphere that reminds us of home, and out of the millions of men over there not one ever dreams of offering the slightest sign of disrespect or lack of consideration to these wonderful women.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>By the war’s end, the Salvation Army had become a symbol of American humanitarianism, and fundraising was much easier. But after the 1920s, the army’s evangelical crusade took a back seat to social service delivery, at least in their public relations. It was easier to raise money for helping the poor than for converting them. </p>
<h2>Despite challenges, an American icon</h2>
<p>Today, many contributors do not realize the <a href="http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=806872">Salvation Army is a church</a>, a fact that has caused many Salvation Army leaders consternation. </p>
<p>And, much like other churches, its growth has stalled. Since 2000, it only has <a href="http://www.startribune.com/salvation-army-s-good-deeds-grow-from-little-known-church/466176253/">approximately 90,000 members</a>. Nonetheless, it continues to deliver social services nationwide. <a href="https://salvationarmyannualreport.org/static/36845fa7755ec36c180bbe6779224317.pdf">In 2017</a>, according to its own records, the army served over 50 million meals, operated 141 rehabilitation centers and provided shelter for almost 10 million people. It also provided adult and child day care, job assistance, disaster relief, medical care and community centers. </p>
<p>But like any other long-established institution, the Salvation Army has its challenges. Most recently, LGBT groups <a href="https://www.aclu.org/news/nyclu-sues-salvation-army-religious-discrimination-against-employees-government-funded-social">alleged</a> <a href="https://www.advocate.com/religion/2017/12/08/salvation-army-we-meet-human-need-without-discrimination">discrimination</a> in service provision and in hiring. </p>
<p>The Salvation Army has <a href="https://salvationarmynorth.org/about-us/what-we-believe/lgbt-statement/">responded</a> with its own statements of how it is “open and inclusive to all people.” </p>
<p>It also faces new problems, ranging from a <a href="http://www.fox13news.com/news/local-news/salvation-army-concerned-by-lack-of-bell-ringers">shortage</a> of bell ringers in some cities to <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/illinois/articles/2017-12-25/salvation-army-looks-to-update-to-cashless-kettles">fewer kettle contributions</a> as <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/illinois/articles/2017-12-25/salvation-army-looks-to-update-to-cashless-kettles">people carry less cash</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247562/original/file-20181127-76758-1caufn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247562/original/file-20181127-76758-1caufn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247562/original/file-20181127-76758-1caufn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247562/original/file-20181127-76758-1caufn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247562/original/file-20181127-76758-1caufn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247562/original/file-20181127-76758-1caufn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247562/original/file-20181127-76758-1caufn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Guys and Dolls’ musical.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/poughkeepsiedayschool/6482386599/in/photolist-aSPVGc-7kQFev-7kQCbX-aT36yv-7kQAZr-7kUC9Q-29cx2TY-38h3vN-dMAC6f-Yi851X-9JXvvk-29cx6Yb-9JXVLv-F9LLDg-28UZwhx-EcoB8K-F7sBX7-F1zFar-EGcgWJ-EcoUGc-Ec4nC7-9JXWBc-F1A17K-EcoTbX-2ahY7jv-F7t8MN-Ec4TSW-F9Mgtk-EcpgJT-F1AmWF-EYhTxE-F1Ajo4-F7tfY1-9JXS7n-9JXYcP-5kQ9cN-27xcfum-Ex1RyM-5p3ZD1-5kQ9TW-9JXSM8-9JXSAc-9K1M2d-aT35aK-5C7K2E-5kQ9EG-9JXxsg-9K1jmL-9JXtQZ-9K1tZC">Poughkeepsie Day School/Flickr.com</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet the Salvation Army remains a familiar symbol for religious and philanthropic outreach. Each year, when high school and college actors perform “Guys and Dolls,” the Salvation Army graces American stages. This popular musical, inspired by a real-life Salvationist, <a href="http://www.youngsalvationist.org/2015/06/01/the-angel-of-broadway/">captures the missionaries’ zealous dedication</a>. And this holiday season, Grammy-award nomimated singer-songwriter Ellie Goulding <a href="https://www.salvationarmyusa.org/usn/story/ellie-goulding-to-kick-off-129th-salvation-army-red-kettle-campaign/">kicked off the 2019 Red Kettle Campaign</a> during the Dallas Cowboys’ Thanksgiving Day game halftime show. </p>
<p>Salvation Army Captain Joseph McFee’s legacy lives on – providing inspiration to millions of Americans, whether they care about religion or not. </p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-salvation-armys-red-kettles-became-a-christmas-tradition-107604">piece first published</a> on November 28, 2018.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/107604/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Diane Winston does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Around this time of the year, the Salvation Army’s red kettles become visible as part of holiday giving. How this British evangelical organization came to the US is interesting history.Diane Winston, Associate Professor and Knight Center Chair in Media & Religion, USC Annenberg School for Communication and JournalismLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/993862018-07-11T10:16:38Z2018-07-11T10:16:38ZDonald Trump’s evangelical supporters: the wrong kind of hope<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226933/original/file-20180710-70060-dws84o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=68%2C80%2C1856%2C2470&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">jwcm d</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://imgur.com/gallery/jwcm93d">Imgur/zazyzaya</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Do you remember that Barack Obama poster? The one of him looking into the middle distance, as if gazing upon a future only he could see, the word “HOPE” spelled out across his chest in blue – the colour of clear days and sunny skies? It was in Obama’s speech <a href="http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=76988">at the 2004 Democratic Conference</a> – the one that catapulted him to the presidency four years later – that he first made the audacious promise that the country had the power to choose hope over cynicism. Farewell to the grim ironies of the 20th century, hello to the brave promise of the new millennium. </p>
<p>But <a href="http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=76988">Obama’s hope</a> was always a vague one: something to do with slaves, immigrants, soldiers and mill workers. He said it was “something more substantial” than “blind optimism” but didn’t go into the details. It was simply what you harness in the face of difficulty and uncertainty. The thing that keeps you believing that the future will be better than today. </p>
<p>The general public is accustomed to thinking about hope in political terms. That is the American eschatology (the belief in the nation’s ultimate destiny) – that through democracy the country will enter the promised land. Indeed, hope is, at its essence, faith in the future. And people tend to talk about hope, as Obama famously did, assuming a shared understanding of what it means. It is not a loaded term. It is a light one – bright, buoyant, chirpy.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226308/original/file-20180705-122265-9ny2l2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226308/original/file-20180705-122265-9ny2l2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226308/original/file-20180705-122265-9ny2l2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226308/original/file-20180705-122265-9ny2l2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226308/original/file-20180705-122265-9ny2l2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226308/original/file-20180705-122265-9ny2l2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226308/original/file-20180705-122265-9ny2l2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A supporter holds the poster of Barack Obama by Sheppard Fairey aloft at an Obama rally held the day before the 2012 election in Madison, Wisconsin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/madisonwinov-5a-supporter-holds-iconic-poster-118017088?src=_TEw7ANDEFJRAr_or6zDUA-1-0">Shutterstock/JuliHansen</a></span>
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<h2>‘No real hope without God’</h2>
<p>Or so I thought. John Fea, author of Believe Me: <a href="https://www.eerdmans.com/Products/7641/believe-me.aspx">The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump</a> has a different take. For him – an evangelical historian of American politics – hope is not the vague optimism of Obama, but the precise hope of Christian theology. Hope rests on the truth of Jesus Christ. It is, as Christian political philosopher Glenn Tinder <a href="https://www.eerdmans.com/Products/4857/the-fabric-of-hope.aspx">described it</a>, a divine gift “anchored in eternity”. There can be no real hope without God. </p>
<p>What Fea bravely does is ask his fellow believers: “Can evangelicals recover this confidence in God’s power – not just in his wrath against their enemies but in his ability to work out his purposes for good?” In other words, can evangelicals set aside the evangelical political playbook, which privileges the pursuit of political power and rests on nostalgia for a mostly mythical past? Can they truly trust in God?</p>
<p>Instead of believing that the only way to safeguard Christian values is to influence legislation – most recently, by making a morally suspect strongman president – what if they actually lived those Christian values instead and let God take care of the rest?</p>
<p>Fea urges his brothers and sisters in Christ to stop chasing political power, to choose history over nostalgia and to replace fear with hope. He offers a Christian approach to politics that rejects the fear, bluster and legislative gamesmanship that underwrote Trump’s rise to power. Instead, Fea takes inspiration from the activists of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/civil-rights-movement-16720">civil rights movement</a>.</p>
<p>Their hope was one “forged amid suffering and pain,” he says, resting on a foundation of deep faith and fearless witness. It was not about making things better by electing the right people. It was about being the right people themselves.</p>
<p>Fea argues that evangelical hope has become too secular. It is the hope of Obama – vote for the right party and things will get better – not the hope of <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/martin-luther-king-14460">Martin Luther King</a> and the everyday heroes of the civil rights movement. In Fea’s arguably romanticised view, their hope was expressed by bearing witness to injustice and allowing God to take care of the rest. They knew that, beyond organising, “something deeper was needed”.</p>
<h2>Forget the demigods</h2>
<p>Fea urges fellow worshippers to forget the political demigods and return to the original nature of Christian hope. Remember God and remember his son. This, after all, is the essence of hope: the faith in Christ’s sacrifice and the trust that he will return. Fea’s request may seem simple enough, but it is a big ask, because he insists his fellow evangelicals need to relinquish the notion that America is a Christian nation. </p>
<p>He may also be allowing the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/11/09/exit-polls-show-white-evangelicals-voted-overwhelmingly-for-donald-trump/?utm_term=.f17d1f25e58e">81% of evangelicals who voted for Trump</a> (that is the white, non-Hispanic Protestants who self-identify as evangelical) too much benefit of the doubt. By treating them as a group of people who compromised their values for the sake of their faith (a very strange conundrum indeed) he is privileging their “evangelical” identity over their other identities. </p>
<p>His argument presumes all of these white evangelicals acted from a basis in shared Christian beliefs – that they are, when it comes to politics, fundamentally motivated by their Christianity.</p>
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<p>By doing so Fea glosses over how, for some of those evangelicals, the term is as much a cultural category as a theological one. For many, it is as much about <a href="https://www.npr.org/2015/12/19/458058251/are-you-an-evangelical-are-you-sure?t=1530820291803">white entitlement</a> as it is about Jesus. “Evangelical” <a href="http://bostonreview.net/us/laura-premack-donald-trump-ted-cruz-evangelical-christians">can serve as cover</a> for sexism, racism, nativism, Islamophobia and homophobia. God is their excuse for hate.</p>
<p>These men and women are unlikely to give up political activism for hymns, volunteer work and prayer. They fear for their way of life, they believe things used to be better (which, thanks to <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/the-unhappiness-of-the-us-working-class/">Jim Crow and the post-war economy</a>, for them, they were ) and they want to have power so that other people – who will infringe on their way of life – won’t get it.</p>
<p>This is the chief blind spot in this otherwise impressive book, and I suspect it may be an intentional one. If Fea is hoping to change the hearts and minds of some of the 81% who voted for Trump he dare not speak too harshly. Even so, I have to wonder how much traction his book will find with them, given <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Was-America-Founded-Christian-Nation/dp/0664235042">his rejection of the belief</a> that America was founded as a Christian nation. </p>
<p>Perhaps it doesn’t matter. The book is dedicated to the 19% – the white evangelicals who did not support Trump. And I hope it finds an audience outside evangelical circles as well, among people too accustomed to excoriating rather than listening. Most people are well aware that Islamic extremists don’t speak for all Muslims. So why do so many persist in allowing the most toxic of so-called evangelicals to represent the rest?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/99386/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laura Premack is an American citizen and a registered Democrat. She regularly donates to the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Immigration Law Center, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and Everytown Against Gun Violence.</span></em></p>A new book by a Christian thinker is challenging what it means to be an evangelical in Donald Trump’s America.Laura Premack, Lecturer in Global Religion and Politics, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/900892018-01-15T22:13:40Z2018-01-15T22:13:40ZTrump’s lies are white nationalist gospel<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201983/original/file-20180115-101508-1xvwuph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nov. 24, 2015: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign event in S.C. The bloc of Trump voters was significantly weighted with white born-again Christians.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Willis Glassgow)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>U.S. President Donald Trump’s bigotry is no longer in question. Most recently he has called Haiti, the largest Black nation in our hemisphere, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/01/11/trumps-shithole-comment-about-haiti-lends-credence-to-report-that-he-said-its-residents-all-have-aids/?utm_term=.88d618e566dc">a “shithole” whose people “all have AIDS.”</a> </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/13/opinion/sunday/heartbeat-of-racism-denial.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fopinion&action=click&contentCollection=opinion&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=5&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=1">man’s a racist</a>, period. So are many of his fans.</p>
<p>The puzzle is how Trump came to be a symbol of <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-religious-right-shaped-american-politics-6-essential-reads-89005">national pride for evangelical Protestants</a> who value strict morality and good manners. In 2016, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/05/a-match-made-in-heaven/521409/">80 per cent</a> of white evangelicals voted for a thrice-married vulgarian of no evident piety, <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/2012/12/07/election-2012-post-mortem-white-evangelicals-and-support-for-romney/">a slightly higher level of support than they showed for choir boy Mitt Romney and born-again George W. Bush.</a> Why?</p>
<p>The quick answer is that <a href="http://time.com/5102214/donald-trump-immigration-evangelicals/">these conservatives wanted anyone but Hillary Clinton and knew that Trump would appoint pro-life judges</a>. And yet they’ve <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-evangelicals-are-ok-with-voting-for-roy-moore-88920">mostly stuck with The Donald through a rough first year</a>, suggesting a real affinity rather than a marriage of convenience. </p>
<p>If we take a broader and deeper view of American history, we find that evangelical voters and Donald Trump share a version of that history, a master narrative of a chosen nation with special powers. It’s a long and twisted tale, <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-trumps-evangelical-supporters-welcome-his-move-on-jerusalem-88775">a bloody saga torn from Scripture</a> and sewn into too many American flags. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201884/original/file-20180115-101489-ht3kj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201884/original/file-20180115-101489-ht3kj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201884/original/file-20180115-101489-ht3kj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201884/original/file-20180115-101489-ht3kj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201884/original/file-20180115-101489-ht3kj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201884/original/file-20180115-101489-ht3kj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201884/original/file-20180115-101489-ht3kj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference in January 2018 at the White House in Washington.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Evan Vucci</span></span>
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<h2>Pilgrims and founders</h2>
<p>The story began with <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/puritanism">the New England Puritans</a>, who saw themselves as pious seekers in a “heathen” land. The wars they waged against Indigenous peoples in the 1600s gave rise to <a href="http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199827251/obo-9780199827251-0115.xml">best-selling captivity narratives</a>, in which innocent white women endured long months in wild forests with the men who had just scalped their children.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.ulsterscotssociety.com/about.html">Ulster Scots</a> who came to the middle and southern colonies of British North America in the 1700s had told similar tales about the savage Irish back home, and they easily recast the <a href="http://blog.nmai.si.edu/main/2014/02/meet-native-america-george-tiger.html'">Creeks</a>, Cherokees and Shawnees into the role of bloodthirsty infidels.</p>
<p>As men of the <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-shocking-savagery-of-americas-early-history-22739301/">Enlightenment</a>, the American Founders disliked such religious tribalism. They proudly called themselves “liberal,” by which they meant open to the rest of the world. They thought of race in <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/bind-us-apart-9780198796541?lang=de&cc=za">environmental rather than biological</a> terms. </p>
<p>But they did not see non-white people as full members of an American “nation.” That word meant not only political community but also the more intimate bonds of language and culture. (It comes from the Latin natio, birth). </p>
<p>Thomas Jefferson was not even sure if white Americans were a nation, given their diverse ethnicities. But he did call Blacks a hostile nation, an enemy within to go along with the Indigenous enemies beyond.</p>
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<span class="caption">Battle of New Orleans led by President Andrew Jackson.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
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<p>The War of 1812 was a watershed. Especially for Americans in the southern states, this was a harrowing war of survival against the British Empire and its non-white allies. It called for a new kind of patriotic rage. “The government has at last yielded to the impulse of the nation,” the pious Ulsterman and future president Andrew Jackson told his volunteers. </p>
<p>By this he meant that Americans were now free to wipe out the evildoers south of the Tennessee River — <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/avenging-the-people-9780199751709?cc=ca&lang=en&">first the hostile “Redstick” Creeks and then any Indigenous communities or runaway slaves in their way</a> — much as the Israelites had once waged holy war for the promised land west of the Jordan.</p>
<h2>Endangered whiteness</h2>
<p>To this way of thinking and feeling, the United States was not just a nation of white people. It was a nation of <em>endangered</em> white people whose right to vengeance came from God rather than from any manmade source.</p>
<p>The story spread through the 19th century, fed by <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674948051">“scientific” theories of race</a> and the rapid conquest of everything south of Canada.</p>
<p>Often it wore an optimistic face. Providence had chosen them to spread the blessings of liberty, Americans believed. They were happy to shoulder the burden.</p>
<p>Whenever new groups sought new protections of law, however, the bloody epic was enacted all over again. <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/102257/trouble-in-mind-by-leon-f-litwack/9780375702631/">Klansmen lynched Black men</a> accused of raping white women in the 1890s. A second Klan targeted Jews, Catholics, Speakeasies and other signs of change in the 1920s. Their white gowns and burning crosses <a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9780807846278/citizen-klansmen/">symbolized the racial “purity”</a> they longed to inflict. </p>
<p>White nationalist themes also flourished during the long Cold War against godless communism. Most important here were the new mega-churches of the South and West, the religious descendants of the Puritans and Ulstermen who became a political force within the Republican Party during the 1970s and 1980s.</p>
<p>Although Trump never attended such churches, he embraced their national story. He entered politics in 1989 by calling for retribution for <a href="http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/centralparkfive/">five men of colour (falsely) accused of raping a white woman in Central Park</a>. He re-emerged in 2011 by claiming that Barack Obama was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/17/us/politics/donald-trump-obama-birther.html">not a U.S. citizen — an African, not an American</a>. He took the White House by promising to avenge “forgotten” Americans, and named Andrew Jackson his guide and inspiration.</p>
<p>All of this resonates with many white evangelicals as a kind of American gospel, making Trump sound honest no matter how many lies he tells. For everyone else, the challenge is to offer a new story about the national community, one rooted in common humanity rather than divine favour.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90089/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jason Opal receives funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I had a three-year SSHRC grant in 2011-14 and applied for a new team grant this past year.</span></em></p>How did Trump came to be a symbol of national pride for evangelical Protestants who value strict morality and good manners? It has to do with their shared master narrative of white power and domination.Jason Opal, Associate Professor of History, McGill UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/891292018-01-03T23:47:44Z2018-01-03T23:47:44ZEvangelical women are shaping public attitudes about sex work<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200631/original/file-20180102-26163-13z1f4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C3%2C709%2C394&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Anti-trafficking evangelical activists are often sensationalist and incite fear, prurient interest, and a sense of moral righteousness in their crusade against sex work. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(A21)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Evangelical speaker and activist Christine Caine wants you to know: “<a href="http://christinecaine.com/content/key2free-is-today/gjenua?permcode=gjenua&site=true">Slavery still exists</a>.” Her organization A-21, which aims to abolish “injustice in the 21st century,” <a href="http://www.a21.org/content/human-trafficking/gnjb89">says human trafficking affects 27 million people each year and is a $150 billion criminal industry</a>. </p>
<p>Caine is on a mission to eradicate human trafficking. <a href="http://thecnnfreedomproject.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/16/abolishing-sex-slavery-by-helping-one-girl-at-a-time/">Stories of missing women and girls abducted in Europe and sold into the sex trade</a> ignited her outrage and motivated her and her husband Nick Caine, an evangelical pastor, to launch the organization a decade ago. A-21 now works with law enforcement in 11 countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, and provides safe houses where girls and women can be rehabilitated.</p>
<p>Caine is quick to tell her audiences the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=250&v=mHkBkWpj7Po">atrocities victims of trafficking have suffered </a>. Girls are <a href="http://www.a21.org/content/stories-a21/gng6kp">treated like livestock</a>. They are crammed into shipping containers, some drown at sea; they are moved forcibly across borders; locked in apartments and brothels; made to have abortions, or “they give birth and the babies are sold into pedophile rings.” These girls “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdsC0ait_OE">are raped twenty maybe thirty times every day</a>,” says Caine. </p>
<p>These are gripping stories. And Caine’s talks engage audiences with gruesome details, and then end on a high note. Every girl that is “saved” is given a new life. She is made free. This is a classic Protestant redemption story. </p>
<h2>Dominating the sex work debate</h2>
<p>While Caine speaks about human trafficking, in fact, sex trafficking is her primary target, and with it the sex industry. In this, Caine is not alone. She represents a powerful constituency of conservative Christians who have formed non-profits of their own, such as <a href="http://faastinternational.org/">FAAST</a>, <a href="https://wellspringliving.org/">Wellspring Living</a> and <a href="https://concernedwomen.org/issues/sexual-exploitation/">Concerned Women for America</a>, <a href="http://www.catholicsforchoice.org/issues_publications/sex-trafficking/">and made alliances with anti-prostitution, secular feminists</a>. </p>
<p>It is a surprising affiliation. In the U.S. in particular, secular feminists and conservative women have usually found themselves on opposite sides of social issues. For <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/divided-we-stand-9781632863140/">four decades they have been embattled over women’s rights and abortion, as historian Marjorie Spurill has noted.</a></p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200639/original/file-20180102-26139-11v5vvw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200639/original/file-20180102-26139-11v5vvw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200639/original/file-20180102-26139-11v5vvw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200639/original/file-20180102-26139-11v5vvw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200639/original/file-20180102-26139-11v5vvw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200639/original/file-20180102-26139-11v5vvw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200639/original/file-20180102-26139-11v5vvw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Christine Caine is the founder of A21.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">A21</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet evangelical women and anti-trafficking feminists come together on this point: The sale of sex threatens a woman’s very humanity. And these groups dominate public discussion of sex work. They have, and continue to influence policy-making and legal enforcement of anti-sex-trafficking laws despite vehement criticisms by sex worker rights activists and their supporters. </p>
<p>The public debate about the sex trade finds sex workers unable to seek legal rights and protections on their own terms. Sex work, according to anthropologist Laura Maria Agustin, is very often an intelligible response made by women, men and trans-people to social, economic and political realities; <a href="https://www.zedbooks.net/shop/book/sex-at-the-margins/">it is strategic equation for many who engage in it</a>. Their attitudes about the work vary. They do not always “like” their job. They would not deny that it can be dangerous (<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/mar/15/will-nobody-listen-to-the-sex-workers-prostitution">though the dangers are magnified when their labour is criminalized</a>). </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200629/original/file-20180102-26163-1ga46x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200629/original/file-20180102-26163-1ga46x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200629/original/file-20180102-26163-1ga46x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200629/original/file-20180102-26163-1ga46x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200629/original/file-20180102-26163-1ga46x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200629/original/file-20180102-26163-1ga46x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200629/original/file-20180102-26163-1ga46x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Evangelical activists and groups like A21 have influenced policy making and legal enforcement of anti-sex trafficking laws.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://twitter.com/charlieblythe">(Twitter/@CharlieBlythe)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet for anti-trafficking campaigners, sex work is not work — it is exploitation. It is servitude. Even <a href="http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-prostitution-is-commercial-rape-says-gloria-steinem-1958154">rape and sex work become synonymous for anti-trafficking activists</a> because no women could ever <em>choose</em> it. The only solution, they say, is for women to leave the industry: to be saved or reformed. </p>
<p>Even “the most seemingly benign ‘rehabilitation’ programs for sex workers’” writes Melissa Gira Grant in <em><a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/1568-playing-the-whore">Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work</a></em>, “may be described as shelters, but the doors are locked, the phones are monitored, and guests are forbidden… This isn’t charity. This is control.” </p>
<h2>Criticisms of anti-trafficking campaigns</h2>
<p>Critics of these anti-trafficking campaigns have argued that the numbers of trafficked people put forward are inflated, or entirely unsubstantiated. They have asked <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/jun/24/human-trafficking-report-obama">whether most coerced labour is actually made of up trafficked women and girls</a>, as the campaigns claim. </p>
<p>Sex-worker rights advocates and scholars have rejected the conflation of sex trafficking and prostitution that animates much anti-trafficking crusades, Christian and otherwise. For instance, Donna Hughes, an activist who helped to inform the Bush administration’s anti-trafficking legislation, asserted that most of what people see as prostitution is “<a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/216604/new-abolitionist-movement-interview">actually trafficking because it involves force, fraud and coercion or underage girls</a>.” </p>
<p>In fact, <a href="https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-03-29/why-cambodias-sex-workers-dont-need-be-saved">studies of sex workers even in sites of “sex tourism” (notably Cambodia) have not revealed large-scale sex-trafficking rings</a>. But what chance do such studies have in the face of the moral panic promoted by anti-traffickers? </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200625/original/file-20180102-26157-d3h5we.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200625/original/file-20180102-26157-d3h5we.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200625/original/file-20180102-26157-d3h5we.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200625/original/file-20180102-26157-d3h5we.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200625/original/file-20180102-26157-d3h5we.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200625/original/file-20180102-26157-d3h5we.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200625/original/file-20180102-26157-d3h5we.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sex workers in Cambodia face criminalization, violence and discrimination.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.unaids.org/en/resources/presscentre/featurestories/2017/june/20170602_sexwork">(UNAIDS)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The rhetoric of evangelical anti-trafficking activists, like Hughes and Caine, is sensationalist. Yet it works to incite fear, prurient interest, and a sense of moral righteousness. It is, explains scholar and sex worker rights advocate, Jo Doezma, evocative of the fabricated <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/S/bo20852135.html">“white slave panic” of the 19th century</a> that in its own day facilitated draconian measures against prostitutes and other working class women. </p>
<p>Why, we should ask, has it caught the moral imagination of evangelical communities and, particularly, evangelical women?</p>
<h2>Why anti-trafficking campaigns attract evangelical women</h2>
<p>One historic reason that drew evangelicals generally to the cause of anti-trafficking occurred during the Bush administration (2001-2009). Bush established the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, giving conservative Christian organizations new access to federal funds for their charitable work. <a href="https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/infocus/traffic/">Under Bush, however, anti-trafficking initiatives also became government policy</a>. <a href="https://psmag.com/social-justice/ivanka-trumps-trafficking-troubles">The Trump administration, too, may be investing in the issue</a>. </p>
<p>In the last two decades, the fight against human trafficking has become something of an evangelical mission. One now finds <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=tn_8hgIpj6s">fundraising walks </a>, <a href="http://faastinternational.org/take-action/pray-for-freedom">prayer weekends</a>, <a href="http://mission14.org/assets/resources/downloads/Week_1_Joseph.pdf">Bible studies</a>, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15811074-the-white-umbrella">self-help books</a> and even <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0L7NH48BWE">praise songs</a> devoted to ending global slavery.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200578/original/file-20180102-26145-18or3h7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200578/original/file-20180102-26145-18or3h7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=340&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200578/original/file-20180102-26145-18or3h7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=340&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200578/original/file-20180102-26145-18or3h7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=340&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200578/original/file-20180102-26145-18or3h7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200578/original/file-20180102-26145-18or3h7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200578/original/file-20180102-26145-18or3h7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An A21 campaign poster: In the last two decades, the fight against human trafficking has become an evangelical mission.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://A21.org">(A21)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Political factors alone did not draw evangelical women to anti-sex-trafficking crusades, however. So did the crusades’ rhetoric, which is grounded in values that resonate deeply with conservative Protestant sexual morality. </p>
<p>A traditional script of sexual and gender roles is foundational to anti-trafficking activism. Girls are rehabilitated so that they can occupy their true positions as women, that is, as married women and mothers. </p>
<p>This is ultimately what anti-trafficking activists mean by freedom, Yvonne Sherman argues in <em><a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/other-dreams-of-freedom-9780199942190?cc=ca&lang=en&">Other Dreams of Freedom: Religion, Sex, and Human Trafficking</a></em>. This notion of freedom is entirely commensurate with conservative Protestant views of sexuality — initially articulated by the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-23-3-4_84-85-285">16th century reformers, Martin Luther and John Calvin, who championed marriage</a> and rejected celibacy and monasticism.</p>
<p>Following their teachings, conservative Protestants have argued that marriage alone is the appropriate sexual relationship, divinely ordained. It is the only one that ensures a proper relationship with God. As such, sexual relations outside of marriage are imagined as bondage. Here, then, we see how sex work can readily become sex slavery. </p>
<p>But there is more: Evangelical women can see themselves as uniquely suited to this particular cause because of its moral tenor. Conservative Protestant women have a long history of fashioning themselves as <a href="http://pluralism.org/religions/christianity/christianity-in-america/abolition-and-womens-rights/">guardians of the moral order</a>, more specifically <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1998202.Frances_Willard">of marriage and the family</a>, <a href="https://nyupress.org/books/9781479866427/">a strategy they have employed to legitimate their political and social campaigns</a>, from suffrage and temperance to abortion and same-sex marriage debates.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200624/original/file-20180102-26157-19l4l4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200624/original/file-20180102-26157-19l4l4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=315&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200624/original/file-20180102-26157-19l4l4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=315&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200624/original/file-20180102-26157-19l4l4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=315&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200624/original/file-20180102-26157-19l4l4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200624/original/file-20180102-26157-19l4l4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200624/original/file-20180102-26157-19l4l4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A campaign poster from A21: Bush established the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, giving conservative Christian organizations new access to federal funds for their charitable work.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://a21.org">(A21)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Trafficked women are victims in need of saving, evangelical anti-trafficking activists proclaim. The labour that evangelicals undertake to do so is arduous. Caine warns: <a href="http://www.a21.org/content/human-trafficking/gnjb89">few will be rescued, only one per cent</a>. Her assertion, however, is not self-defeating. It compels her audience to action, by playing on an apocalyptic scenario that amplifies the testimonial power of one “saved” victim, and so, too, her heroic saviours. </p>
<p>Could it be that Christian anti-sex traffickers, like Caine, solicit large evangelical audiences and prop up a legal system that criminalizes sex work because they are better story tellers than their opponents? </p>
<p>Sex worker rights activists offer accounts of women, men and trans-people who migrate to new countries; who turn tricks on the street, acts as escorts, perform sex acts on camera, strip or whatever, to make ends meet; who fear police crackdowns and try to avoid deportation. </p>
<p>Christian anti-trafficking activists, instead, paint dramatic pictures of millions of innocent, vulnerable (even desirable?) victims: women and girls under threat of the voracious appetites of a cruel and dehumanizing sex trade, and they need you to rescue them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/89129/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carly Daniel-Hughes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In the past two decades, the fight against human sex trafficking has become an evangelical mission but sex-worker rights advocates have rejected the conflation of sex trafficking and prostitution.Carly Daniel-Hughes, Associate Professor; Religious and Cultural Studies; Gender and Sexuality; History of Christianity, Concordia UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/722562017-02-16T03:21:33Z2017-02-16T03:21:33ZWhy you should know about the New Thought movement<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157021/original/image-20170215-27409-10cw53m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The New Thought movement left behind an important legacy.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/nitsckie/5507777269/in/photolist-9oGNi4-JoyNFi-5Zvc7-7hkJV-jnLnbe-bpMpmF-6xwaVB-5X6Rye-ohTLDX-7KZZzv-7btGuG-gnDV6V-7KZDQx-4Enhme-3XQfu-3bcoAi-eZGkdG-cDsMF1-nYTGps-uybsGJ-7i3G4x-qFemvQ-8cPLWL-nQraoY-7bhyEq-icXtyv-bzTTMH-roCJtM-GRrDao-ddP1WZ-dKq3nN-dkBNzN-7KZHpK-9Gv7ia-jF9d6d-2XntTa-cigQb7-irybGz-boP1WH-9v2epD-4zfHSE-ewoW5Y-dTYq5S-5jct9S-q5bjfA-8R9TB3-fF2HpC-5CsKzT-4s5mWy-9uSGuY">Wesley Nitsckie</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>President Donald Trump embraces several political stances important to his conservative evangelical base. This includes support for “religious liberty” legislation and <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/12/the-religious-liberty-showdowns-coming-in-2017/511400/">exempting evangelicals</a> from laws upholding lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual rights. </p>
<p>However, Trump does not demonstrate any of the beliefs that have historically characterized evangelicalism. </p>
<p>Unlike the majority of American evangelicals, <a href="http://www.baylorpress.com/Book/24/367/Histories_of_American_Christianity.html">he does not speak</a> about the centrality of the Bible or, like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, of being “a born again” Christian. Trump summarizes his faith by saying that he has a <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/18/politics/donald-trump-liberty-two-corinthians/">“great relationship”</a> with God and that he has never committed any major sins.</p>
<p>As a historian of American religion, I have studied a 19th-century movement known as New Thought. This movement has <a href="http://yalebooks.com/book/9780300136159/republic-mind-and-spirit">left a significant legacy</a>. </p>
<p>Could it also help us understand Trump’s faith? </p>
<h2>What was New Thought all about?</h2>
<p>The New Thought movement was among the more notable movements that emerged in the 19th century to help people achieve a <a href="http://yalebooks.com/search/node/Sydney%20Ahlstrom">better understanding</a> of divine mysteries, through the power of their thoughts. The term “New Thought” signified that one’s thoughts could unlock secrets to living a better life, free from the constraints of religious doctrines or dogmas. </p>
<p>Frequently associated with a Portland, Maine clockmaker, <a href="http://phineasquimby.wwwhubs.com/">Phineas Parkhurst Quimby</a>, New Thought proposed a range of philosophical ideas that focused on the mind’s power to cure illness. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157024/original/image-20170215-27406-c3aonz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157024/original/image-20170215-27406-c3aonz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157024/original/image-20170215-27406-c3aonz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157024/original/image-20170215-27406-c3aonz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157024/original/image-20170215-27406-c3aonz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157024/original/image-20170215-27406-c3aonz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157024/original/image-20170215-27406-c3aonz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mary Baker Eddy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/perpetualplum/4464436565/in/photolist-7Nvpse-83vz41-9T46ix-4a3YJk-rDG6mK-4a3Xht-6qehXu-7aZvz6-eMRx1-pympdw-6LUMGC-eMRJN-4xWNeD-4a83eh-9KFYej-4tENco-cfr37y-qvb3J2-eEYY3H-4UrXF2-6x7ktK-cfr64o-5zKw8J-fDmb-9KFHH3-oG9WAo-6iXn8s-4xVZfg-6x7kKa-4y1e5L-6xbvpC-4y1e6y-gE3kDF-cfr7sh-6qeim1-85XZnV-8uLZnX-6x7kjg-9KCUWK-98ZpXQ-2PNz82-6eSVNr-frNsJw-efBCcU-QrPEZ-bbjzL8-4k6P8t-fryaJa-zVx8N-m7Ksop">Sue Clark</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Quimby believed that the cause of disease resided in the mind. He taught that if one redirected a person’s thoughts, then disease could be cured. Quimby treated a number of individuals who spread aspects of his teachings. </p>
<p>His most famous student was <a href="http://www.marybakereddylibrary.org/mary-baker-eddy/the-life-of-mary-baker-eddy/">Mary Baker Eddy</a>, founder of <a href="http://www.marybakereddylibrary.org/research/what-is-the-background-on-the-name-church-of-christ-scientist/">Christian Science</a>, another religious movement that emerged in the latter half of the 19th century. </p>
<p>Eventually, Eddy distanced herself from Quimby, focusing her movement on reforming what she saw as the <a href="http://search.perseusbooksgroup.com/book/paperback/mary-baker-eddy/9780738202273">errors within Christianity</a>. However, what Eddy shared with the New Thought movement was a belief that curing illness was <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520229273">connected to the mind’s power</a> to restore health.</p>
<p>By the 1890s, the New Thought movement had shifted attention away from curing disease. Instead, it focused upon the <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520229273">mind’s power</a> to create material success. Historian <a href="https://www.ncas.rutgers.edu/beryl-satter">Beryl Satter</a> observes, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Since human thought had creative power, negative thoughts materialized into negative situations, while spiritual thoughts could form a positive reality.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The New Thought’s emphasis on achieving personal prosperity meshed with themes associated with the late <a href="https://nyupress.org/books/9780814714959/">19th-century Gilded Age</a>. Popular literature, such as <a href="http://www.horatioalgersociety.net/100_biography.html">Horatio Alger stories</a>, centered on how <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/html/horatio-alger-moral-story-11933.html">poor boys achieved material success</a> through hard work. </p>
<h2>New Thought and economic prosperity</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157026/original/image-20170215-27396-pkszdd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157026/original/image-20170215-27396-pkszdd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157026/original/image-20170215-27396-pkszdd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157026/original/image-20170215-27396-pkszdd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157026/original/image-20170215-27396-pkszdd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=954&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157026/original/image-20170215-27396-pkszdd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=954&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157026/original/image-20170215-27396-pkszdd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=954&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/30379715@N04/25251727246/in/photolist-eLNdoM-5ocwag-EtpGKG-4JbgSB-8jnV2K-j21GbN-9K5PUM-4c28BB-44Co2-eKfrWQ-8w4sfY-nzqmPx-qq4eY1-6zvXvM-6HT8Rj-2z6f8w-odi56J-rwm8we-vhVYJW-qMtxna-6rxet2-4nLtT6">Anne Aalders</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A book that illustrates the New Thought movement’s shift toward individual prosperity is <a href="http://ralphwaldotrine.wwwhubs.com/">Ralph Waldo Trine’s</a> <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/In_Tune_with_the_Infinite.html?id=bwy4aUfl52oC">“In Tune with the Infinite.”</a> A popular writer and lecturer, Trine taught that one’s ability to channel positive thoughts would lead to success. Published in 1897, the book sold millions of copies and gained Trine <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Power_that_Wins.html?id=teJHvgAACAAJ">a wide following</a>, including from the automobile industrialist Henry Ford.</p>
<p>Trine emphasized that happiness was largely a matter of positive thinking. As he noted in <a href="http://newthoughtlibrary.com/trineRalphWaldo/bio_trine.htm">his book</a>,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“If one holds themselves in the thought of poverty they will be poor, and the chances are that they will remain in poverty. If one holds themselves, whatever present conditions may be, continually in the thought of prosperity, they set into operation forces that will sooner or later bring them into prosperous conditions.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>By the 1920s, the New Thought phenomenon had splintered into numerous small organizations. However, its belief that individuals possessed a God-given facility to change their life through positive thinking became <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=hZKDp7FsDX0C&pg=PP1&lpg=PP1&dq=the+positive+thinkers+pantheon&source=bl&ots=ecF48PDowx&sig=f1Dz21h5pL4g2GgWCg2rWLJUBbI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiPjZXSwZDSAhXmzVQKHStNCdwQ6AEIRzAI#v=onepage&q=the%20positive%20thinkers%20pantheon&f=false">embedded</a> in mainstream Christianity. </p>
<h2>The prosperity gospel</h2>
<p>New Thought ideas about individual happiness and wealth are seen above all in a movement called the prosperity gospel. </p>
<p>The prosperity gospel <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/blessed-9780199827695?cc=us&lang=en&">refers to a belief</a> that religious faith can lead one to personal health and material wealth. In the early 20th century, this movement depicted Jesus as a guide to economic success. Indicative of this trend was the publication of a 1925 book by <a href="http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=B000211">Bruce Barton</a>, “The Man Nobody Knows.” </p>
<p>An advertising executive and future Republican congressman, Barton characterized Jesus as the prototype of the modern business executive. <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_man_nobody_knows_a_discovery_of_the.html?id=O_4dvgAACAAJ">As Barton summarized Jesus’ mission</a>,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“He picked up twelve men from the bottom ranks of business and forged them into an organization that conquered the world.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Barden’s depiction of Jesus as a successful entrepreneur highlights how New Thought beliefs of achieving material abundance undercut orthodox Christianity. As historian <a href="https://divinity.duke.edu/faculty/kate-bowler">Kate Bower</a> observes, Christian salvation <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/blessed-9780199827695?cc=us&lang=en&">was not expressed</a> </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“as an act imposed from above by God, but rather an act of drawing out humanity’s potential.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Prior to World War II, New Thought themes became embedded within a movement that <a href="https://history.princeton.edu/people/kevin-m-kruse">historian Kevin Kruse</a> calls <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/08/donald-trump-christian-libertarianism/494843/">“Christian libertarianism.”</a> This movement was created by politically conservative Protestant leaders who objected to President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal economic policies. Christian libertarianism <a href="http://www.basicbooks.com/full-details?isbn=9780465049493">supported a message</a> that “the freedom from government is a necessary part of freedom under God.” </p>
<h2>Norman Vincent Peale and Trump</h2>
<p>The fusion between New Thought and Christian libertarianism is epitomized by Norman Vincent Peale. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157027/original/image-20170215-27416-16mpwhk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157027/original/image-20170215-27416-16mpwhk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=732&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157027/original/image-20170215-27416-16mpwhk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=732&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157027/original/image-20170215-27416-16mpwhk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=732&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157027/original/image-20170215-27416-16mpwhk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157027/original/image-20170215-27416-16mpwhk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157027/original/image-20170215-27416-16mpwhk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dr. Norman Vincent Peale is shown in 1968 as pastor of Marble Collegiate Church in New York City.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Peale was the minister of Marble Collegiate Church in New York. His message stressed New Thought themes that spoke to many Americans eager for upward economic mobility. His many books, including, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Power_of_Positive_Thinking.html?id=gWRwqxFqEzwC">“The Power of Positive Thinking,”</a> helped spread Peale’s popularity. </p>
<p>President Donald Trump <a href="http://www.npr.org/2017/01/22/510655254/trump-crowd-size-estimate-may-involve-the-power-of-positive-thinking#">frequently cites</a> Peale as his major religious influence. Marble Collegiate was Donald Trump’s family church and Trump was clearly impacted by Peale’s preaching. As <a href="http://www.npr.org/2017/01/22/510655254/trump-crowd-size-estimate-may-involve-the-power-of-positive-thinking">he remarked</a> to an Iowa gathering in July 2015, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“you could listen to him all day long. When you left the church, you were disappointed that it was over.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Peale’s message deviated significantly from traditional Christianity. Echoing themes from Ralph Waldo Trine, Peale argued that belief in a "higher power” was essential if one was going to find success. <a href="http://www.makemoneywithpyxism.info/joinstevehawk.com/PowerOfPositiveThinking.pdf">He said,</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>“This tremendous in flow of power is of such force that in its inrush it drives everything before it, casting out fear, hate, sickness, weakness, moral defeat, scattering them as though they had never touched you, refreshing and restrengthening your life with health, happiness, and goodness.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Peale’s message was <a href="http://yalebooks.com/book/9780300203738/surge-piety">unequivocally nationalistic</a>. As historian <a href="http://www.english.northwestern.edu/people/faculty/christopher-lane.html">Christopher Lane</a> writes, “the idea that America needed a pro-Christian nationalism to head off an attack of atheistic communism was central to Peale’s message, and he <a href="http://yalebooks.com/book/9780300203738/surge-piety">stuck to it</a> zealously.” Peale’s identity as <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/God_s_Salesman.html?id=JobZAAAAMAAJ">“God’s salesman”</a> for positive thinking was inseparable from his belief that only in a free-market society could Christianity thrive. </p>
<h2>Trump’s Christianity</h2>
<p>Historically, <a href="http://www.nae.net/what-is-an-evangelical/">evangelicalism has emphasized</a> the centrality of the Bible, the need to confess one’s sins and the necessity of personal conversion. It has also stressed that <a href="http://www.baylorpress.com/Book/30/51/The_Making_of_Evangelicalism.html">Christians need to care</a> for society’s victims. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157028/original/image-20170215-27421-1d8gkeu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157028/original/image-20170215-27421-1d8gkeu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157028/original/image-20170215-27421-1d8gkeu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157028/original/image-20170215-27421-1d8gkeu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157028/original/image-20170215-27421-1d8gkeu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157028/original/image-20170215-27421-1d8gkeu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157028/original/image-20170215-27421-1d8gkeu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">What is Trump’s Christianity?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/hinkelstone/31612759983/in/photolist-xGitau-M4pUHm-QavEaV-PwLHov-C3z6fA-PR2Si6-MsfAqq-MsfzTd-Mvk58x-MseT2J-Mvk3Vc-LxYPDa-MvkNJ4-Msfnw9-LxZ4hx-LxUxtU-Mvk9bH-Msfeg1-M4ptzf-LxUFud-Mo2Nb4-M4pyD3-Mkieq1-M4pB1N-Msfy1q-LxYQu8-LxZKgF-MkiT5Q-MvkqQK-MkiRYm-LxUXXo-Mvkx7c-z198UL-DZrafb-RrCSrH-PLaKo1">Karl-Ludwig Poggemann</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Trump’s Christianity, I would argue, blends New Thought ideas of individual achievement with a vision of Christian libertarianism. Unlike <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/God_s_Salesman.html?id=JobZAAAAMAAJ">his mentor Peale</a>, who was married for over 63 years and lived a scandal-free life, Trump’s past includes multiple divorces and accounts of adultery. </p>
<p>However, like Peale, Trump’s Christianity it seems is rooted in the idea that personal weakness or failure is not an option. Faith, in other words, is not about being “born again,” or acknowledging the need for God’s forgiveness. For Trump, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/08/donald-trump-christian-libertarianism/494843/">faith is about being a winner</a>.</p>
<p>Also, American exceptionalism is at the heart of Trump’s Christianity. As <a href="https://divinity.duke.edu/faculty/stanley-hauerwas">theologian Stanley Hauerwas</a> puts it, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Christianity in Peale’s hands was closer to a set of beliefs a follower could make up to suit their desires. Trump has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/01/27/christians-dont-be-fooled-trump-has-deep-religious-convictions/?utm_term=.d8a2e470d2c7">adopted this strategy</a> and applies it to the country.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This link between Christianity and nationalism was evident at Trump’s inauguration when prosperity gospel minister Paula White <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/20/politics/donald-trump-inauguration-paula-white/">said</a> in her invocation,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“We recognize that every good and every perfect gift comes from you and the United States of America is your gift, for which we proclaim gratitude.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>White’s assertion seems consistent with Trump’s belief that Christianity is primarily a faith about positive thinking and patriotism. </p>
<p>So where does this lead the over 25 percent of Americans who <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/">identify as evangelical</a>? This question should be of vital concern.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72256/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher H. Evans does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A 19th-century movement, New Thought, came to a have deep influence on the prosperity gospel - that faith could lead one to health and material wealth. What does it tell us about Trump’s faith?Christopher H. Evans, Professor of the History of Christianity, Boston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.