Category: Voting

Faith-based bullying and bigotry

In today’s interview, Katherine Stewart uses a striking phrase about the Christian nationalist movement – “faith-based bullying and bigotry.” Her journey of researching it began in 2009 when her children encountered the “Good News Club” organization which she describes as “confusing little kids into believing clubs endorsed by the school.” As a journalist, she dug deep into the broader movement which she sees as “an attack on modern constitutional democracy.”

Her latest book, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, documents this global movement which she says is “not Christianity and not religion, but an exploitation of religion for political purposes” seeking political and legal power to decide “who gets to belong as an American and who does not.”

Meet Katherine Stewart in my interview with her, listen to all that she says, and then continue below the video for more highlights.

Many people see Christian nationalism only through the lens of individuals they know, or events they hear about like the Reawaken America Tour, or sound bites on the news. As Katherine says here, it is driven not just by individual leaders but through multiple organizations. The movement has “deep roots in our history,” as she points out, but “the new right in the 1970s gave it new impetus, creating organizations still active today” – like the Heritage Foundation and the Council for National Policy.

What can we do? That’s the question most people ask. This is a huge network of churches and organizations with 50 years of experience in educating, training, and crafting their narrative of what it means to be an American and a Christian. Katherine acknowledges that people concerned about its growing power are only now organizing to address the dangers, but we have to engage now.  “Vote,” she says, and “hold elected officials accountable.” Get involved in local and state elections where this movement has been organizing even for who gets elected to school boards. Find the groups engaged in challenging the movement, and get involved. She returned in the interview several times to says that “political engagement is essential.”

I love what she said toward the end about challenging the narrative of the movement. She said, “great and better stories which have the virtue of being true are out there, published over time.”  She urges us to “extend our vision back a few centuries,” listen to the stories, and “recognize the progress over time, not without struggle” but true progress. Let us be “humbled and inspired” by that” and go out and repeat it in our time.  

______________________________________________________________________________________

You may have read some of my posts in the fall about the Reawaken America Tour in Batavia, NY last August. You can read all of them now in a free eBook, “Inside the Reawaken America Tour.” Click here and download your copy today.

Stop the violence

We hear shouts of “stop the steal” everywhere, based on the proven lie that the 2020 election was stolen from President Trump. At public marches, on the Reawaken America Tour, in videos circulated widely, in the daily news, people push the lie.

Violence accompanies the lies. From the January 6 attack on the Capitol to this week’s violent attack on Mark Pelosi, husband of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. He was attacked at home with a hammer by a man shouting, “Where’s Nancy?” – echoing the sing-sing horror chants in the Capitol.

Too many politicians and news sources on the Right ignore what happened, as Donald Trump did in the first day, at least. Or they downplay it because the attacker had a personal history of delusion and violence. There are many more like him, though, and many sane, rational men (mostly men) ready to take up arms against other Americans for the cause, just as they did on January 6.

Federal agencies have issued a renewed warning that domestic violent extremists pose a heightened threat to midterm elections.

We must challenge this movement that leads not only to extremism, but to violence. Midterm elections are already facing threats of violence, with armed men dressed military-style watching voters drop their ballots at designated sites in Arizona:

Two people armed with handguns and wearing tactical military gear, balaclavas masking their face and the license plates on their cars covered, stood watch over a ballot drop box during early voting last week in Mesa, Arizona.

Our national story says that we have free and fair elections in the United States. That has not always been true, of course. Our history includes threatening, even violent, poll watchers in the South who kept Black people from voting. It also includes intimidating poll watchers, threatening violence, in many cities where political “bosses” made sure people voted the way they were expected to. Do we really want our country to return to that?

More often than not, though, the U.S. has been a model for free and fair elections, without violence. That has certainly been my experience, and it continues to be where I live in Brighton, NY. Increasingly, that is not the case everywhere.

One in six election workers say that they have personally received threats …. [and] about 20% of election workers say they may not work in the next presidential election. Among those, about a third cited too many political leaders attacking the voting system, even though they know it is fair.

When will the intimidation and violence stop? Only when enough of us stand up, speak up, and challenge the lies and public threats against people who are just doing their job. When violent attacks on innocent people happen, and armed men are“watching” the polls, and public officials and “personalities” refuse to condemn it – in today’s America, we must stand up, speak out, and challenge it. STOP THE VIOLENCE!