Straight White American Jesus

“God’s Will”

What does it mean when religious people appeal to “God’s will”? What kind of work does this do? Does it always provide the guidance and comfort for life it seems to promise? And what are the dangers of understanding God in terms of “will” in the first place? Dan dives into these and other issues in this episode.

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Brad gives a preview of his new book by discussing how some of Trump's tactics and myths are comparable to what Hitler used to gain power in Germany. Brad is careful to point out that his comparison is just that - a comparison. He is not arguing that Trump and Hitler are identical. Rather, his argument is that Trump's Big Lie and the myth that the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago was unconstitutional and illegal are resonant with the Stab-in-the-Back myths Hitler used in Germany to convince his followers that their country had been stolen from them and only he could return it to glory.

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Brad and Dan begin by discussing the growing case against Trump, whose seems to have clearly obstructed the retrieval of classified documents from his home. This leads to a discussion of how and when GOP elites will pivot away from Trump and what this means for the MAGA movement going forward.

They then discuss two speeches by President Biden this week. In the first, he used the term "semi-fascist" to describe MAGA Republicans. Then, last night he gave a speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia where he laid out the strongest case yet that MAGA-ism is a threat to our democracy. Brad and Dan dissect what fascism is, how it has worked historically, and why it's accurate to label MAGA-ism a fascist movement. They then analyze key lines from Biden's speech and what his intentions were in giving it.

The episode finishes with a segment on the racialized environmental disaster in Jackson, MS where residents are without water. Brad and Dan show how a history of shifting funds away from Black areas of the city and ignoring failing infrastructure led to a preventable humanitarian crisis in the Blackest state in the nation.

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“Pronouns”

What’s up with Christian nationalists and religious communities that are so angry when people talk about their pronouns? How does pronoun use relate to and express gender identity? Why do cisgender people also mark their pronouns? Is this more than identity politics and culture war? In this episode, Dan decodes some of the culture war and religious dimensions around the hot-button topic of pronouns.

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Brad is joined by the one and only Dr. Jemar Tisby. They discuss a range of issues related to paternalism, prejudice, and power.

One of the first things Dr. Tisby points out is that compromise has often been the site of the most egregious forms of racism in American history. He then goes on to talk about the paternalism that pervaded White Christians' justification of slavery - and the ways paternalism continues to perpetuate racism today. The discussion then turns to an individualistic vs. systemic approach to thinking about oppression, and why the former is often used as a way out for doing the hard work of facing history and the present.

The Color of Compromise: The Truth About the American Church's Complicity in Racism: https://jemartisby.com/the-color-of-compromise/

The Color of Compromise is not a call to shame or a platform to blame white evangelical Christians. It is a call from a place of love and desire to fight for a more racially unified church that no longer compromises what the Bible teaches about human dignity and equality. A call that challenges black and white Christians alike to standup now and begin implementing the concrete ways Tisby outlines, all for a more equitable and inclusive environment among God's people. Starting today.

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Brad and Dan begin the episode by discussing the student loan forgiveness announcement the Biden administration made this week. They ask whether it went far enough and then track the responses from the GOP, who uniformly denounced it as irresponsible. Unfortunately for them we have the receipts about how much they received in forgiven PPP loans . . . Brad then takes us through a history of how universities have lost public funding, leading to higher fees, and you guessed it, a student loan crisis. This all happened when BIPOC and women started entering universities in larger numbers during the 70s and 80s.

In the second segment they discuss how abortion has become the primary issue in statewide primary races across the nation. Dan tracks all the numbers from Florida to New York to Oregon and Brad discusses the overwhelming number of young women who have registered to vote in Pennsylvania.

In the last segment they examine the calls to restrict voting rights to landowning men between the ages of 35-65 by prominent right-wing pundits. It's creeping fascism, pure and simple.

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“Spiritual Warfare 2.0”

How do appeals to “spiritual warfare” relate to the social and political struggles of the flesh-and-blood world? How do different kinds of Christian communities and traditions understand the relation between spiritual forces and the flesh-and-blood world? And what role does racial identity play in shaping understandings and expressions of “spiritual warfare”? Dan tackles these and other questions in this episode.

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From the archives, an episode from 2019 centered on how fundamentalist religions are prone to violence. This episode has renewed relevance given the recent discussions of civil war in the wake of the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago:

Dan and Brad dissect why so many evangelical leaders--and high-level government officials--are threatening civil war if the president is impeached and/or removed. One thing is clear: the single group who is maintaining unwavering support for Trump's presidency = White Christian nationalists.

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Brad and. Dan begin by discussing the week's GOP primary results, nothing that the GOP remains the Party of Trump. They juxtapose these results with the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, the Trump Org tax case in NY, and the other ongoing investigations. The takeaway: facts and morality don't matter in MAGA land. Just fealty to the leader.

They then transition to two stories about American Christianity. First, the DOJ's investigation into the Southern Baptist Convention and what that means for the SBC's governance, theology, and future. The takeaway: we should stop giving American Christians the benefit of the doubt. Christian does not automatically mean good, civil, or trustworthy.

https://www.npr.org/2022/08/13/1117362904/southern-baptists-doj-investigation-sexual-abuse

Houston Chronicle's Robert Downen on SWAJ: https://www.irreverent.fm/show/straight-white-american-jesus-1/special-episode-the-southern-baptist-conventions-apocalypse-with-robert-downen/

The last segment is on the new article from the Atlantic on how Rad-Trad Catholics are using the rosary to as a militant symbol for spiritual and political warfare. This leads to analysis of how the Rad Trad movement represents a significant Christian nationalist faction within American Catholicism. Brad argues that there are correspondent elements of nostalgia, apocalypticism, and literalism with White Evangelical Christian nationalism.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/radical-traditionalist-catholic-christian-rosary-weapon/671122/?utm_source=apple_news

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“Spiritual Warfare 1.0”

What is “spiritual warfare”? Why do some Christians understand their faith and practice in terms of spiritual warfare? And what are some of the concrete effects of understanding Christianity in terms of spiritual warfare? In this episode, Dan outlines where this language of spiritual warfare comes from, how different Christian groups understand and practice spiritual warfare, and considers the significance of spiritual warfare language for Christian groups that deny the reality of mental illness and the legitimacy of LGBTQ+ identities.

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