Favre’s Fraud, Autism and Fundamentalism, Liberal Christian Nationalism
KTF Weekly Newsletter
Hi everyone,
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And now, let’s get to this week’s highlights on political education and discipleship!
Suzie’s recommendations:
Last week, newly instated Editor-in-Chief of Christianity Today, Dr. Russell Moore, published a piece that declared Christian nationalism to be “a liberation theology for white people.” The implication of this statement is that his readers should think that Christian nationalism is as misguided and dangerous as he thinks liberation theology is. Friends, I am having some feelings about this one. First, Dr. Moore is a privileged white man who held office for years in the Southern Baptist Convention, which was founded to protect slave owners and perpetuates racism on a massive scale to this day. For him to decry the teaching and legacy of theologians like Gustavo Gutiérrez and Oscar Romero who lived (and in Romero’s case, was assassinated) in solidarity with the poor and marginalized is abhorrent. And while Moore has, in the past, seemingly taken a stand against far-right fear-mongering around Critical Race Theory, his swipes at Black liberation theologians like James Cone speak volumes. I could go on. Instead I will point you to Rev. Dr. Malcolm Foley’s enlightening critique that lays out the worldview buttressing Moore’s statement. In response, Dr. Foley calls us to an understanding of the Gospel that is both political and liberative because it is robust and relevant for all people.
Football Hall of Famer Brett Favre is currently mired in a racially-charged scandal. A former Trump attorney is mounting his defense in a case of massive fraud involving Favre’s alleged role in misappropriating millions in welfare money earmarked for low-income Mississippi households, a disproportionate number of which are Black, to build a new volleyball stadium at his daughter’s university. Author and former Shake the Dust guest Danté Stewart has some powerful words on the lessons to be drawn from this incident. Chief among them, that proximity to Blackness does not correlate to one’s level of complicity in systems that dominate, disenfranchise, and oppress. Stewart also quotes the wisdom of an old family friend: “‘[w]hiteness is not just a social construct; it is a business decision.’”
Jonathan’s recommendations:
Two podcasts last week analyzed white, conservative evangelicals’ evolution from morally condemning Bill Clinton’s sexual misconduct to blessing Donald Trump’s bigotry, racism, and misogyny. This episode of The Run-Up chronicles that shift and features an interview with Al Mohler, the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, who unapologetically explains the inherent sinfulness of voting for anyone who is not a Republican. Mohler adds that he won’t run away from the term Christian nationalist because there isn’t one definition. But the pastor interviewed in this episode of The Daily, Kevin Thompson, is the exact opposite. Thompson chooses fidelity to Christ over coddling his congregation and consecrating conservative candidates. And he ultimately left his job because of the backlash. Leaving colonized faith to follow Christ is costly for all of us. These two interviews highlight one pastor who is willing to pay the price and one seminary president who is not.
Mark Charles is the co-author of the book Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery. A few weeks ago he called the Christian nationalism of the political Left in the US just as dangerous as that of the Right. That created a bit of a stir online and this video was his response. He explains how Christian nationalism, colonized faith, and the embrace of what I call White American Folk Religion are a bipartisan effort. He argues that to assume only the Right is responsible for these things is to dismiss both history and the fruit of what both parties have accomplished in our society. We must be clear that both political platforms idolize America and hold out the US as the promised land.
Sy’s recommendations:
Newly-minted Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson came out swinging in her first week of presiding with the rest of the Court over oral arguments. In a case involving an accusation that Alabama’s Congressional districts discriminate against Black voters, Alabama is contending it cannot consider race when drawing congressional maps because of the constitution’s promise of colorblind equal protection. Precedent could be on Alabama’s side, and they have a good chance of winning. But as this Bloomberg Law article explains, Justice Jackson’s pointed questioning of counsel revealed an approach usually associated with conservative justices: looking primarily to the framer’s intent to help interpret the constitution. But she doesn’t have the ideological commitment to colorblindness that so many of her white fellow justices have had over the years, allowing her to see the clause for what it was: a definitively race-conscious provision to fight discrimination against Black people.
D.L. Mayfield is an autistic author with OCD whose diagnoses came later in life. She recently wrote this fascinating reflection on what constitutes fundamentalist religion, and how having a rigid Christian worldview functioned as a way to cope with aspects of her neurodivergence before she understood why her mind functioned differently than those of so many people around her. As we have said before several times at KTF Press, seeing the world through a disability lens helps us to better understand our own humanity. This piece is filled with useful insight into how fundamentalism is more common than we sometimes think, and how a commitment to orthodoxy can be no more than an attempt to escape trauma.
Thanks for reading, and see you next week!
The KTF team