tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/heat-and-light-podcast-58804/articlesHeat and Light podcast – The Conversation2018-09-26T00:54:57Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1039012018-09-26T00:54:57Z2018-09-26T00:54:57ZWhy God Votes Republican<p>The white Christian left was once a powerful influence on American politics, in an era when faith did not dictate political inclination. Then came the 1968 declaration against the Vietnam War by the National Council of Churches. President-elect Richard Nixon would later eschew liberal Christian leaders – and become the first of a series of presidents who built their base on the anxieties of white Christian conservatives. Phillip talks with professor Jill Gill of Boise State University in Idaho, whose parents were a conservative evangelical and a secular liberal. She tells us how evangelicals became synonymous with conservatism in today’s political landscape.</p>
<p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/heat-and-light/id1424521855?mt=2"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233721/original/file-20180827-75984-1gfuvlr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=268&fit=clip" alt="Listen on Apple Podcasts" width="268" height="68"></a> <a href="https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9oZWF0YW5kbGlnaHRwb2QuY29tL2ZlZWQucnNz"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233720/original/file-20180827-75978-3mdxcf.png" alt="" width="268" height="68"></a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=221807&refid=stpr"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236756/original/file-20180917-158222-1w998g0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=268&fit=clip" alt="Stitcher" width="268" height="80"></a> <a href="https://radiopublic.com/heat-and-light-WYDE55"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-152" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233717/original/file-20180827-75990-86y5tg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=268&fit=clip" alt="Listen on RadioPublic" width="268" height="87"></a></p>
<p><a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/2pNAWvcME1HXB074Ys0dWM"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237984/original/file-20180925-149976-1ks72uy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=268&fit=clip" width="268" height="82"></a> <a href="https://tunein.com/podcasts/History-Podcasts/Heat-and-Light-p1149068/"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233723/original/file-20180827-75984-f0y2gb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=268&fit=clip" alt="Listen on TuneIn" width="268" height="105"></a></p>
<p>Also: <a href="https://heatandlightpod.com/feed.rss">RSS Feed</a></p>
<p><strong>Music:</strong> “And never come back” by Soft and Furious, found on <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Soft_and_Furious/You_know_where_to_find_me/Soft_and_Furious_-_You_know_where_to_find_me_-_06_And_never_come_back">FreeMusicArchive.org</a>, licensed under <a href="https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/">CC0 1</a></p>
<p><strong>Archival:</strong> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b80Bsw0UG-U">Martin Luther King, “Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam”</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGvcHIWIK6E&t=299s">Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.: The Role of the Church Militant</a></p>
<p><a href="http://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums741-b227-i004">Lecture by William Sloane Coffin on the Vietnam War, November 19, 1972</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQyLHi_X83s">They’ll Know We Are Christians Peter Scholtes 1966</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvW_w_MDiJM">NIXON TAPES: Vietnam is Kennedy’s Fault (Billy Graham)</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YADvHEFAE28">LBJ and Martin Luther King, 11/5/64. 3.20p.</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6T4y1WDofK0">Ann Coulter - Godless: The Church of Liberalism</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IN05jVNBs64">President Obama sings Amazing Grace (C-SPAN)</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j06TTdKT64U">Obama links raising taxes to Christianity</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jNkSOe6dU0">Evangelicals turn on Trump over immigration</a></p>
<p>Read more: <a href="https://theconversation.com/anti-war-protests-50-years-ago-helped-mold-the-modern-christian-right-90802">Anti-war protests 50 years ago helped mold the modern Christian right</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/103901/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
In 1968 the Protestant Left lost its political clout over their opposition to the Vietnam War – and opened the door for the rise of the modern Religious Right.Phillip Martin, Podcast hostLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1029722018-09-10T20:53:45Z2018-09-10T20:53:45ZDetroit is Burning<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/235699/original/file-20180910-123122-1g7zk0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Detroit police officer makes an arrest during the riots of 1967.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/File</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As 1968 began, the city of Detroit was dealing with the aftermath of some of the worst race riots the country had ever seen. That year, the Kerner Commission, appointed by president Lyndon Johnson, placed the blame squarely on the way the police and the city government had handled the response. In this episode, Jeffrey Horner, a professor of urban studies at Wayne State University, speaks with Phillip about how race and class divisions met with economic and social upheaval to shape the city as it tried to rebuild … and also how the city shaped them, as they themselves grew up in Detroit at the time.</p>
<p>Read more in this accompanying article from Jeffrey Horner:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/police-killings-of-3-black-men-left-a-mark-on-detroits-history-more-than-50-years-ago-101716">Police killings of 3 black men left a mark on Detroit’s history more than 50 years ago</a></p>
<p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/heat-and-light/id1424521855?mt=2"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233721/original/file-20180827-75984-1gfuvlr.png" alt="Listen on Apple Podcasts" width="268" height="68"></a> <a href="https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9oZWF0YW5kbGlnaHRwb2QuY29tL2ZlZWQucnNz"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233720/original/file-20180827-75978-3mdxcf.png" alt="" width="268" height="68"></a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=221807&refid=stpr"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236756/original/file-20180917-158222-1w998g0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=300&fit=clip" alt="Stitcher" width="300" height="90"></a> <a href="https://radiopublic.com/heat-and-light-WYDE55"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-152" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233717/original/file-20180827-75990-86y5tg.png" alt="Listen on RadioPublic" width="300" height="97"></a></p>
<p><a href="https://tunein.com/podcasts/History-Podcasts/Heat-and-Light-p1149068/"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233723/original/file-20180827-75984-f0y2gb.png" alt="Listen on TuneIn" width="318" height="125"></a></p>
<p>Also: <a href="https://heatandlightpod.com/feed.rss">RSS Feed</a></p>
<p><strong>Music on this episode:</strong> Something to save" by Komiku, found on <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Komiku/Its_time_for_adventure__vol_2/Komiku_-_Its_time_for_adventure_vol_2_-_10_Something_to_save">FreeMusicArchive.org</a>, licensed under <a href="https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/">CC0 1</a></p>
<p>“This tuning is so dramatic” by Monplaisir, found on <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Monplaisir/Draft/Monplaisir_-_Draft_-_09_This_tuning_is_so_dramatic">FreeMusicArchive.org</a>, licensed under <a href="https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/">CC0 1</a></p>
<p><strong>Archival audio</strong>
<a href="https://keenerpodcast.com/?p=2713">WKNR Contact News - Detroit 1967</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoU4cmRULKY">Address to the Nation Regarding Civil Disorder, 7/27/67. MP594.</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCW58RCgqOQ&t=1551s">Racism in America Small Town 1950s Case Study Documentary Film</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBsnDrp88Ak">Misconduct allegations mount inside Detroit Police Department</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYg3L_y1EhQ">Police misconduct costing Detroit millions of dollars</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKQxL1AOFgI">Ex-DPD officers charged with misconduct</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDYMpztd5uc">Detroit police officer charged with assault and misconduct in rough arrest at Meijer</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94e64G9ZFio&t=35s">Police brutality at Detroit Meijer 8 mile and Woodward</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/1967-detroit-riot-a-community-speaks/oclc/53865376">The Detroit 1967 Riots: A Community Speaks</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102972/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
In 1967 race riots nearly tore Detroit apart. The next year, the Kerner Commission, appointed by president Lyndon Johnson, placed the blame on the way the police and had handled the response.Phillip Martin, Podcast hostLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1012992018-08-27T20:40:20Z2018-08-27T20:40:20ZRed-state politics in and out of the college classroom<p>For two decades, I have taught U.S. women’s and gender history at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, a blue town in a blue state, <a href="https://cola.siu.edu/history/faculty-and-staff/faculty/zaretsky.php">marooned in an ocean of red</a>. </p>
<p>Bordered by Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta and the Ozarks, Southern Illinois is surrounded by the country’s poorest rural regions.</p>
<p>Some of my students arrive from white farming communities and are the first in their families to attend college. They grow up on church, military, patriotism and traditional family, and they come from a world different from mine. I grew up in 1970s San Francisco, and my parents were leftists.</p>
<p>As I prepared to teach about abortion and gay rights for the first time in 2003, I approached the classroom with trepidation. I feared that our discussions would mirror the country’s culture wars and lead to tension among students. </p>
<p>One joy of teaching is when students surprise you, and I soon discovered that my fears had been unwarranted. </p>
<h2>Students surprise; teacher learns</h2>
<p>Classroom discussions of “hot button” issues turned out to be not so hot after all. </p>
<p>Sure, a student might declare that marriage should be between a man and a woman, but her declaration had no fight behind it. Most students simply did not get worked up about gay rights. By the early 2000s, almost all of them had a relative who had come out. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233512/original/file-20180824-149475-1hx87os.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233512/original/file-20180824-149475-1hx87os.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233512/original/file-20180824-149475-1hx87os.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233512/original/file-20180824-149475-1hx87os.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233512/original/file-20180824-149475-1hx87os.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233512/original/file-20180824-149475-1hx87os.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233512/original/file-20180824-149475-1hx87os.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, where author Zaretsky teaches.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Southern Illinois University</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Regardless of what they might have been told in church, they asserted, who were they to stand in the way of the happiness of an uncle or a cousin? </p>
<p>Three decades after gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk had urged his brothers and sisters to come out, this tactic had borne fruit everywhere, <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300222616/harvey-milk">including the “heartland”</a> where I teach.</p>
<p>Thus, well before gay marriage became legal, I was telling friends back home that if my students were any indication, the question was not whether, but when.</p>
<p>It turned out that the issue that most angered my students was the Vietnam War. This was odd, I thought at first, because the conflict had ended years before they had been born. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/fear-of-a-non-nuclear-family-102245">Fear of a Non-Nuclear Family</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>But in one class, an older student who was the daughter of a Vietnam veteran recounted a story that had been passed down in her family since the early 1970s: Upon his return from overseas, her father had been spat on by anti-war activists. </p>
<p>Others chimed in that they had heard similar stories. These stories were mythical, not because such incidents had never occurred, but rather because opponents of the anti-war movement had overstated their frequency and intensity in order to brand wartime opposition as unpatriotic. When I gently suggested this was the case, <a href="https://nyupress.org/books/9780814751473/">as one scholar has argued</a>, my students swung back, insisting that the stories were true.</p>
<p>It quickly became clear to me that these stories felt true to my students because they resonated with their own experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. </p>
<p>Those military interventions were not abstractions to them. Some were veterans themselves, a few suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, virtually all of them knew someone in the service and many came from military families. </p>
<p>The Vietnam stories struck a chord because they presented a portrait that my students found painfully familiar: loyal Americans who had served their country but who felt forgotten by U.S. institutions and the broader political culture.</p>
<h2>Developing a theory</h2>
<p>This classroom episode surprised me, but it shouldn’t have. </p>
<p>My students confirmed what I had discovered through my own research on the <a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9780807857977/no-direction-home/">recent history of conservatism</a>, which revealed a deep sense of betrayal among Americans who had sacrificed their bodies on behalf of the U.S. military and felt that they had received little recognition in return. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233519/original/file-20180824-149475-17h4hqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233519/original/file-20180824-149475-17h4hqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233519/original/file-20180824-149475-17h4hqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233519/original/file-20180824-149475-17h4hqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233519/original/file-20180824-149475-17h4hqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233519/original/file-20180824-149475-17h4hqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233519/original/file-20180824-149475-17h4hqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Prisoner of war Lt. Col. Robert L. Stirm is greeted by his family as he returns home from Vietnam in 1973. Zaretsky’s students believed veterans were treated badly by the U.S.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP/Sal Veder</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Scholars argue that in the early 1970s the “culture wars” erupted <a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/W/bo20063403.html">and divided the country</a>. And there is no question that both conservative and liberal actors mobilized around issues like <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/2006/05/23/is-there-a-culture-war/">abortion and gay rights</a>.</p>
<p>But my research pointed to something else that fueled the nation’s rightward march: the rise of an aggrieved nationalism rooted in a sense of bodily injury.</p>
<p>I first detected this nationalism when I studied the families of American POWs and MIAs in Southeast Asia, many of whom believed that their sons, brothers, fathers and husbands <a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9780807857977/no-direction-home/">had been left behind twice</a> — first by a U.S. government that had failed to bring them home, and then by a libertine culture that had turned against the war. </p>
<p>These were patriotic families who felt let down by their country.</p>
<p>Years later, I encountered something similar when I researched U.S. veterans who had sustained radiation injuries during their <a href="http://natashazaretskyonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/RadiationSufferingPatrioticBodyPolitics.pdf">World War II-era service</a> and who later became ill with cancer. </p>
<p>By the late 1970s, these “atomic veterans” and their relatives were leveling the same charge. They were forgotten men and women who had served their country, but who had been betrayed by the government, which refused to acknowledge that it had <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/radiation-nation/9780231179812">endangered its citizens</a>.</p>
<p>The 1970s gave rise to the culture wars, no question. But it also gave rise to the accusation that the most loyal Americans had suffered through sickness, injury and premature death, and had been forgotten and let down. </p>
<p>This claim fueled a rising hostility toward big government, which championed liberal reform on behalf of racial and sexual minorities ostensibly at the expense of white, <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780809026746">hard-working, patriotic Americans</a>.</p>
<h2>Empathy in the classroom</h2>
<p>When my students became so angry toward Vietnam era anti-war activists, I was taken aback. I had to go beneath the surface of our debate and ask why this issue had stirred them. </p>
<p>Yes, the debate was about history, and I appealed to historical accuracy in order to challenge their assumptions about the past. That is, after all, my job. </p>
<p>But swimming just beneath the surface were their own experiences as young people who come from economically struggling rural communities whose members shoulder the burdens of U.S. militarism.</p>
<p>Simply telling them that they had gotten the history “wrong” would not have sufficed. </p>
<p>Instead, I had to pair my commitment to historical truth with a no-less-powerful commitment to empathy — an attempt to make sense of their anger historically and hopefully provide them with the tools to do the same.</p>
<p>My friends and relatives back home sometimes thank me for being out here in the heartland, “winning hearts and minds.” </p>
<p>But is that even my role?</p>
<p>Certainly, my students have changed my worldview, but how much have I changed theirs? That question is hard to answer, because my interactions with students are brief. They spend just over 37 hours with me over the course of one semester. That is not a lot of time. </p>
<p>But during those hours, we break away from the gerrymandered world of social media and encounter one another face to face. </p>
<p>Those encounters can be difficult and frustrating. Yet they have also yielded moments when the divisions and suspicions that dominate our political landscape fall away. </p>
<p>I am not here to win the hearts and minds of my students, but I like to imagine that I have opened some of them. What I know for sure is that they have opened mine. </p>
<p><em>Our new podcast “<a href="https://heatandlightpod.com">Heat and Light</a>” features Prof. Zaretsky discussing conservative reaction to the 1960s in depth.</em></p>
<p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/heat-and-light/id1424521855?mt=2"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233721/original/file-20180827-75984-1gfuvlr.png" alt="Listen on Apple Podcasts" width="134" height="34"></a> <a href="https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9oZWF0YW5kbGlnaHRwb2QuY29tL2ZlZWQucnNz"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233720/original/file-20180827-75978-3mdxcf.png" alt="" width="134" height="34"></a> <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=221807&refid=stpr"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233716/original/file-20180827-75981-pdp50i.png" alt="Stitcher" width="116" height="34"></a> <a href="https://radiopublic.com/heat-and-light-WYDE55"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233717/original/file-20180827-75990-86y5tg.png" alt="Listen on RadioPublic" width="105" height="34"></a> <a href="https://tunein.com/podcasts/History-Podcasts/Heat-and-Light-p1149068/"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233723/original/file-20180827-75984-f0y2gb.png" alt="Listen on TuneIn" width="86" height="34"></a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101299/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Natasha Zaretsky 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 scholar raised by leftist San Francisco parents in the 1970s ends up teaching in the heartland, where her students represent a very different kind of politics. What she learns from them is profound.Natasha Zaretsky, Associate Professor of History, Southern Illinois UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.