Showing posts with label Establishment Clause. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 02, 2022

Lessons for Muslims from "Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation" by Kristin Kobes Du Mez

Kristin Kobes Du Mez provides answers in Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation to those who wondered why the vast majority of self-identified Christian evangelicals supported the publicly vulgar & openly sinful Donald Trump for President of the United States in the 2016 election cycle. Historians like Du Mez and Kevin Kruse claim that the answer to this apparent dilemma lies in decades of United States history. While Kevin Kruse emphasized oligarchs' fear of organized labor and social welfare programs and communism, Du Mez emphasized the misogynistic, white supremacist messaging in support of overseas imperialism and domestic patriarchy. I encourage readers to benefit from both books. I encourage Muslim readers to ponder the following questions:

Comments on Ronald A. Lindsay's "The Necessity of Secularism: Why God Can't Tell Us What to Do"

A few years ago I read Ronald A. Lindsay's The Necessity of Secularism: Why God Can't Tell Us What to Do. I meant to reread it and then thoroughly review it, but I'm in a fit of Konmari & I need to send my copy to the person who requested it from me. So, I'm writing a few comments based on my skimming a few passages I had highlighted.

I hope readers of this blog, Muslims in particular, will attempt to understand secularism in a non-polemical manner. It isn't licentiousness (الإباحية), and it can be uncommitted on essential religious positions, so it is not equivalent to atheism.

Lindsay's layman definition of secularism is "the view that: government should not involve itself with religious matters; religious doctrine should play no role in shaping public policy or in the discourse about public policy; and religious institutions and beliefs should not enjoy a privileged position within society." [p. 18]

Review: The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism by Katherine Stewart

Katherine Stewart, author of The Good News Club: The Christian Right's Stealth Assault on American's Children, which I reviewed earlier, explores how Christian Nationalists have gained influence & power in various areas of life in the United States and elsewhere since the mid-1970s. As such The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism goes beyond Good News Club to place this threat to liberal democracy in a broader historical context and therefore should rise to a high priority in your "to-read" list.

A book with similar themes is Kevin Kruse's One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America.

While there is important information in this book, I disagree with the author's exhortation in epilogue to vote harder. While voting is a tool, the USA's and the world's veering towards fascism isn't going to stop because liberals win an election here or there.

Comments on "To the Far Right Christian Hater...You Can Be a Good Speller or a Hater, But You Can't Be Both" by Bonnie Weinstein

I read To the Far Right Christian Hater ... You Can Be a Good Speller or a Hater, but You Can't Be Both by Bonnie Weinstein in a book club I organized as a member of the local chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. It consists of hate messages sent to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), occasionally accompanied by a pithy rejoinder from the author, who is married to the organization's founder, Mikey Weinstein.

While the Establishment Clause of the USA Constitution has brought this society many benefits, some of which I've mentioned elsewhere, this book can open eyes to the dangers the continuation of the Global War on Terror (GWOT), in its neoconservative Bush-the-Small iteration or its neoliberal Obama iteration or its 45 Regime kill all non-whites iteration.

Film: We Believe in Dinosaurs

The IMDB entry for the documentary film We Believe in Dinosaurs will tell you that it explores the people behind the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter Park in Kentucky. I'm telling you it is an understated cry for anti-fascist action. And if you think that's a hyperbolic statement, then you haven't been paying attention to my entries tagged fascism at this blog and at my other blog. You are Günter Grass's Social Democrat.

Review: How to Be Secular: A Call to Arms for Religious Freedom by Jacques Berlinerblau

How to Be Secular: A Call to Arms for Religious Freedom by Jacques Berlinerblau
Mariner Books, Paperback, 9780544105164, 306pp. Publication Date: September 17, 2013

Professor Berlinerblau's book is a "how-to" manual for activists concerned with preserving secularism in the United States. The key to the defense of secularism is building up a large coalition of people. Some will be committed to separationism, one of secularism's variants which "maintains that [order, freedom of religion and freedom from religion] will be achieved in spades if there is, in effect, no relation between government and religion." [p. 125, emphasis in original] Others will be content with accomodationism, which allows government to establish religion, provided it does not privilege one over another. Some will be atheists who promote the abandonment of religion. Some will be believers who interpret their religion to call for distance from the state. Others will be members of religious minorities who fear persecution by the majority. Astute activists will try to gather all of these under the rubric of disestablishmentarianism.

Review: Strange Gods: A Secular History of Conversion by Susan Jacoby

Strange Gods: A Secular History of Conversion by Susan Jacoby

If you, like me, grew up receiving religious education, you likely encountered conversion stories. For Muslims, an important topic of our weekend school education in the United States is the siirah (biography, "gospel") of the Messenger Muhammad ﷺ. It is replete with stories of how courageous and noble individuals, beginning with his wife Khadija and cousin `Ali, recognized him as God's Messenger. Implicitly and explicitly, those who rejected him were cruel and venal.

Susan Jacoby examines how European Christians told stories about conversion, which, under the scrutiny of modern historical method, turn out to have concealed varying degrees of coercion, and how the post-fascist Catholic Church has attempted to shift blame away from itself for the most grievous period of coercion, the enslavement and murder of six million Jews by Nazi Germany.

Review: "The Holy Vote: The Politics of Faith in America" by Ray Suarez

The Holy Vote: The Politics of Faith in America by Ray Suarez is a good introduction to policy discussions with religious claims in the United States in 2006, the time of the book's publication. Some of those issues have waned and new ones have arisen, and, if you've read other books I've reviewed on this blog under the tag Establishment Clause, you may not find these chapters exciting.

Mr. Suarez's style, in this age of bombastic partisanship, is frustratingly documentarian. He includes lengthy quotes from people whose positions he opposes. He avoids snarky rejoinders. Maybe his long years at the United States Public Broadcasting System, which depends on funding from the government and thus must garner support from many diverse sectors of our nation, have increased his ability to listen respectfully to others beyond that of those who publish in ideological Internet news sites, corporate media and crazy, egotistical bloggers like myself!

Review: Bad Faith: When Religious Belief Undermines Modern Medicine by Paul Offit

Bad Faith: When Religious Belief Undermines Modern Medicine by Paul A. Offit (Twitter)

Dr. Offit reviews a series of incidents in which children died of treatable illnesses due to the pursuit of their guardians or parents of spiritual healing through supplication in lieu of standard medical practice. He then gives an interpretation of Christianity which rejects spiritual healing as a substitute for medicine. Then he provides an overview of the historically recent development of state protection of children from abuse by their parents and guardians. Finally, he discusses efforts to proscribe and punish parents and guardians who fail to provide standard medical care to the children in their care and resistance by some religious groups which led to religious exemptions to these anti-neglect laws.

The organization of the book makes for a logical progression to Dr. Offit's call for an end to all religious exemptions to laws designed to protect minors.

Review: Christian Nation by Frederic C Rich

Frederic C. Rich retired from one of the United States's largest law firms. He also found time to write a speculative fiction (by now, nearly alternative history) novel set in our time about the takeover, via election, of the United States by Christian dominionists and reconstructionists.

The author maintains a website with more information about the book and a list of questions for discussion. You can search for the book at your local independent book store or at a library near you.

Review: God Sent Me: A Textbook Case on Evolution vs. Creation by Jeffrey Selman

Jeffrey Selman (website) was the lead plaintiff in a suit against the Cobb County, Georgia Board of Education which resulted in an order for it to remove a disclaimer from its public high school biology textbooks.

I've met Jeffrey twice in my activities for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the first time to lobby against Georgia's Religious Freedom Restoration Act legislation in March 2015 and the second time to hear him speak at our Augusta, Georgia chapter meeting about his book in August 2015.

Review: One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America by Kevin M Kruse

I reviewed this book through a series of Twitter status updates using the hashtag #1NationUnder. I've also Storify'd it, adding some additional comments, which you can see after the jump.

Review: One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America by Kevin M Kruse

Review: One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America by Kevin M Kruse

Collection of thoughts on the book One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America by Kevin M Kruse. I tweeted using the hashtag #1NationUnder.