I trained to be a historian and went to graduate school specifically to study the history of American slavery. It is impossible to study that topic and conclude, as the
"patriotic curriculum" insists, that the United States has steadily moved closer to its founding ideals.
The slaveholders among the Framers almost all acknowledged that slavery was a sin and a moral stain (their terms) and that the nation would someday pay a terrible price. Yet they found themselves unable to abolish it, rationalizing to themselves why it could not happen. And over the next 75 years the nation moved further away from the biblically-based ideal that all men are created equal. While Christians were at the core of the abolitionist movement, they also were at the core of defense of slavery as divinely ordained and as a responsibility that God gave to white people, like dominion over animals.
While Lincoln envisioned a "new birth of freedom" that would remake the country along its founding ideals, the severe backlash in the South (and racism in the North) demonstrated the absolute refusal of a majority of American Christians to embrace those ideals -- all the way up to the point that integration and basic rights for African Americans were forced on them by law.
What these failures point to is not so much that America has always been a Christian nation but rather a nation of professing Christians who have refused to embrace the most basic of Judeo-Christian values--that all human beings are made in the image and likeness of God. It is no coincidence, I think, that right-wing Christians are the primary reason why a false history is being promoted. And what they really cannot bring themselves to confront is not the idea that America is an institutionally racist nation but the truth, as stated by WEB DuBois, that "on the whole white Christianity in America must be regarded as a failure."
“ (i) Members of one race, color, sex, or national origin are morally or inherently superior to members of another race, color, sex, or national origin;”
A lot of Trump supporters are going to be unhappy to learn that teaching White Supremacy appears to be banned by the EO.
Near to my heart in the Clear Lake area of Houston, the president ordered I quote "NASA employees were required to "drop everything" and remove a list of words from public facing websites including "Indigenous people" and "Anything specifically targeting women (women in leadership, etc.)."
Astronauts, male and female, live down the street, attend my Bible study class, and have taught and sponsored my child in youth activities. These people are heroes! This is an absurd rewriting of history. I thought we had boomers had fought these fights already but obviously we have let our children and grandchildren down!
The bizarre nature of T’s definition of DEI means we always need to spell it out. And also to emphasize how the supposed principles of “merit alone” would disqualify most of his cabinet.
Truly appreciate the reading list and pointing out a new podcast. Thank you for the work you do. When I listen to The Convocation Unscripted, I hear (what sounds like) your grief at the current state of our country and I feel less alone in my grief.
I sure hope it doesn't get THAT bad - but it might. I'm stocking my green shelves with more of these titles. Thankfully, the bibles with which they're gonna bludgeon people still contain the germ of truth that can sustain a resistance to what may come. You and Beth Barr (and the twitter discussions of the last few yrs around y'all) have done more to make me rethink what inerrancy means than my whole stack of books from ev authors. I suppose when they write the books someday, the American ev church will get a blurb among the rest of the weird sects that obfuscated Jesus's words, leaving a trail of pain behind. Sigh...
If you buy from my store, yes. Otherwise, no idea. But either way, a cut goes to independent bookstores. I just wanted to divert from Amazon and realized this was a fun way to do it.
I have been using https://5calls.org/. Enter your zip code and it gives you the phone numbers of your federal reps. In addition, it guides you related to how to leave messages. There is an extensive list of topics, also
When I wrote a book about our fight to overturn the Tulia Drug Sting, my goal wasn't to make the residents of a small Texas Panhandle town look bad. My goal was to tell as much of the truth, from as many angles, as possible. Why did this happen? What can we learn? I'm sute none of this would pass patriotic muster.
Thank you for the work you do, Kristin, and for raising this issue. Watching blatant revisionism in real time is really unnerving.
If he appoints a partisan “yes person” to the national archivist position, can that person (in theory) order the actual destruction of documents and digital files that have been archived by previous persons in the post? Or order they be changed to reflect Trump’s version of things like the classified documents he kept, J6 records and proceedings, etc?
I’m pretty sure all those things would be illegal because there are laws about what the National Archives is supposed to do. But as we are seeing with various firings and other activities, this regime doesn’t care about obeying the laws. And when the Executive Branch is lawless and the legislative branch is gutless, the lawbreakers get away with it.
minor point, fwiw .. when I open the link to your curated list, it opens fine on the US site, but then cunning electrons tell the world I'm in the UK, and I'm offered a redirect to the UK site. Naively, like an innocent child, I accept the invitation .. only to discover your list isn't available on the UK site. Apparently. Mayhap there is magic to rescue me.
Wow, I appreciate Dr. Du Mez' perspective! I didn't think about deletion & destruction of literal historical sources. I've wanted to look into more historical records after I found public records of my religious-refugee-settler-ancestors who enslaved people & built a Mennonite church in a northern colony. My family's written & oral narratives left the enslaver part out. I feel more of an urgency to look through more historical records as I've intended. Esp since the county is a hotbed for white Christian Nationalism (wCN) with a 24/7 place of prayer for Christian Dominionism.
Mix it in with the strides toward bringing Christianity back into public schools and making it illegal to not pledge allegiance to the flag etc, each state will become its own little country having to define what they will teach and where they will plant their own flags. it's states' rights all over again, isn't it?
sadly that's probably exactly what will happen. so only private institutions will hold the line? or they'll fade out too. places like Calvin University are probably not secure in any way either. I listen to the Convocation and just think, do these people represent their institutions well or are they all looking for new jobs or hoping for that next sweet sweet book deal that will set them up for life (lol)
The only thing Trump, and his minions (morons), understand is the language of money. We need to bring the country to a halt, right now. Trump's economics will bring us there anyway, so why not use the economy to stop him and President Musk to a stand still? Again, where is the actual Christian leadership that can get things going? They certainly aren't in any Mega/MAGA churches. Those are the Pharisees who got us here. Anyone have a suggestion? The western world was truly founded on Christian ethics which is in direct opposition to Mosaic Law. Trump's assault on Christianity won't stop with the gov't. He will turn his ire on Christians. Musk and Miller are already dong that.
"On Feb. 2, Lutheran Social Services [LSS] came under attack. In a tweet by Elon Musk, he said his team would be shutting down “illegal payments” and accused LSS of running a money laundering operation. Much of that money goes to operating senior living centers in the Midwest.
The week before, those sneaky Lutherans caught Musk’s attention when Global Refuge (formerly Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services) had their funding frozen, along with every aid organization working with legal immigration. That left six thousand immigrants in the care of Global Refuge with no money to pay for housing and food.
At least Musk and his high school graduate buddies are ecumenical. Funds that went to Catholic Relief Services were cut." (https://tinyurl.com/cutting-religion)
Like I said, who will stop these monsters (from the OT, Torah and Koran)? Congress? You have to be kidding.
Sorry, just can't let this go. Everyone outside of MAGA is already "educated" enough on the realities and the historical facts of the America Experiment. Trump, and his Project 2025 implementers, are not going to acquiesce to anyone; not to any Representative you call, not to the courts, no one. You, as a "historian" should know exactly who these people are. They are exactly who Jesus rebelled against: "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. - Jesus (Mat 23)
Trump can only be stopped by another rebellion against the rule of our modern Pharisees, Sadducee (billionaires) and Trump's Sanhedrin (SCOTUS). The rebellion will require the deconversion of MAGA back to actual Christianity and away from the worship of the God of Moses and his teachings of Mosaic Law (Project 2025). 54% of the country is under the religious fervor of the MAGA "God of Moses" cult and most are heavily armed (as our Moses figure, Charlton Heston, implored them to be under a warped 2nd Amendment).
So, until you can point to a real Christian leader (another Martin Luther King, Jr) that is willing to take up the fight and push to join forces with re-educated MAGA, there won't be anyone to stop this madness of Mosaic origin, which you as a historian should know, was only meant for the children of Israel to ensure a "purified Chosen People", and not the rest of the world. MAGA is comprised of the heavily-armed American Taliban and they will not go quietly.
I see no way to stop them without a civil war, unless we find the Christian Leadership to fight them, starting right now, with non-violent action, civil disobedience and massive walk outs, strikes and "sit ins", like the entirety of DC. Just say'in.
I trained to be a historian and went to graduate school specifically to study the history of American slavery. It is impossible to study that topic and conclude, as the
"patriotic curriculum" insists, that the United States has steadily moved closer to its founding ideals.
The slaveholders among the Framers almost all acknowledged that slavery was a sin and a moral stain (their terms) and that the nation would someday pay a terrible price. Yet they found themselves unable to abolish it, rationalizing to themselves why it could not happen. And over the next 75 years the nation moved further away from the biblically-based ideal that all men are created equal. While Christians were at the core of the abolitionist movement, they also were at the core of defense of slavery as divinely ordained and as a responsibility that God gave to white people, like dominion over animals.
While Lincoln envisioned a "new birth of freedom" that would remake the country along its founding ideals, the severe backlash in the South (and racism in the North) demonstrated the absolute refusal of a majority of American Christians to embrace those ideals -- all the way up to the point that integration and basic rights for African Americans were forced on them by law.
What these failures point to is not so much that America has always been a Christian nation but rather a nation of professing Christians who have refused to embrace the most basic of Judeo-Christian values--that all human beings are made in the image and likeness of God. It is no coincidence, I think, that right-wing Christians are the primary reason why a false history is being promoted. And what they really cannot bring themselves to confront is not the idea that America is an institutionally racist nation but the truth, as stated by WEB DuBois, that "on the whole white Christianity in America must be regarded as a failure."
Well said.
“ (i) Members of one race, color, sex, or national origin are morally or inherently superior to members of another race, color, sex, or national origin;”
A lot of Trump supporters are going to be unhappy to learn that teaching White Supremacy appears to be banned by the EO.
Yeah, that caught my eye. Separate but equal will be making a comeback.
I wondered about this after the 45th Pres donated to HBCUs during his 1st term.
Near to my heart in the Clear Lake area of Houston, the president ordered I quote "NASA employees were required to "drop everything" and remove a list of words from public facing websites including "Indigenous people" and "Anything specifically targeting women (women in leadership, etc.)."
Astronauts, male and female, live down the street, attend my Bible study class, and have taught and sponsored my child in youth activities. These people are heroes! This is an absurd rewriting of history. I thought we had boomers had fought these fights already but obviously we have let our children and grandchildren down!
The bizarre nature of T’s definition of DEI means we always need to spell it out. And also to emphasize how the supposed principles of “merit alone” would disqualify most of his cabinet.
Truly appreciate the reading list and pointing out a new podcast. Thank you for the work you do. When I listen to The Convocation Unscripted, I hear (what sounds like) your grief at the current state of our country and I feel less alone in my grief.
I sure hope it doesn't get THAT bad - but it might. I'm stocking my green shelves with more of these titles. Thankfully, the bibles with which they're gonna bludgeon people still contain the germ of truth that can sustain a resistance to what may come. You and Beth Barr (and the twitter discussions of the last few yrs around y'all) have done more to make me rethink what inerrancy means than my whole stack of books from ev authors. I suppose when they write the books someday, the American ev church will get a blurb among the rest of the weird sects that obfuscated Jesus's words, leaving a trail of pain behind. Sigh...
At this point I’m seeing no signs that it won’t. I would absolutely love to be wrong about this.
So, with your storefront at bookshop.org do you get a % if we buy books from your list - or from any book we search from your storefront?
If you buy from my store, yes. Otherwise, no idea. But either way, a cut goes to independent bookstores. I just wanted to divert from Amazon and realized this was a fun way to do it.
(I’ve made $11 and will probably just donate it back. Unless, you know, I fall on hard times…🙃)
I have been using https://5calls.org/. Enter your zip code and it gives you the phone numbers of your federal reps. In addition, it guides you related to how to leave messages. There is an extensive list of topics, also
Thank you! I was looking for this resource that I somehow had lost & forgotten.
When I wrote a book about our fight to overturn the Tulia Drug Sting, my goal wasn't to make the residents of a small Texas Panhandle town look bad. My goal was to tell as much of the truth, from as many angles, as possible. Why did this happen? What can we learn? I'm sute none of this would pass patriotic muster.
Love your book list…thank you for sharing!
Have you read “The Woman They Wanted” by Shannon Harris or “Disobedient Women” by Sarah Stankorb? You might appreciate those also.
Yes! I love Sarah’s book. And I have Shannon’s but have been waiting until in writing that chapter in my next book.
Thank you for the work you do, Kristin, and for raising this issue. Watching blatant revisionism in real time is really unnerving.
If he appoints a partisan “yes person” to the national archivist position, can that person (in theory) order the actual destruction of documents and digital files that have been archived by previous persons in the post? Or order they be changed to reflect Trump’s version of things like the classified documents he kept, J6 records and proceedings, etc?
I would imagine all this is possible.
I’m pretty sure all those things would be illegal because there are laws about what the National Archives is supposed to do. But as we are seeing with various firings and other activities, this regime doesn’t care about obeying the laws. And when the Executive Branch is lawless and the legislative branch is gutless, the lawbreakers get away with it.
Extremely concerning.
minor point, fwiw .. when I open the link to your curated list, it opens fine on the US site, but then cunning electrons tell the world I'm in the UK, and I'm offered a redirect to the UK site. Naively, like an innocent child, I accept the invitation .. only to discover your list isn't available on the UK site. Apparently. Mayhap there is magic to rescue me.
No idea how to fix this! I just had fun putting a little shop together but that’s the limit of my expertise.
No problem. I can still see the books on the US site.
Wow, I appreciate Dr. Du Mez' perspective! I didn't think about deletion & destruction of literal historical sources. I've wanted to look into more historical records after I found public records of my religious-refugee-settler-ancestors who enslaved people & built a Mennonite church in a northern colony. My family's written & oral narratives left the enslaver part out. I feel more of an urgency to look through more historical records as I've intended. Esp since the county is a hotbed for white Christian Nationalism (wCN) with a 24/7 place of prayer for Christian Dominionism.
Mix it in with the strides toward bringing Christianity back into public schools and making it illegal to not pledge allegiance to the flag etc, each state will become its own little country having to define what they will teach and where they will plant their own flags. it's states' rights all over again, isn't it?
Yes and no. I expect the federal government to use carrots and sticks to coerce blue states into compliance as well.
sadly that's probably exactly what will happen. so only private institutions will hold the line? or they'll fade out too. places like Calvin University are probably not secure in any way either. I listen to the Convocation and just think, do these people represent their institutions well or are they all looking for new jobs or hoping for that next sweet sweet book deal that will set them up for life (lol)
No expectations of sweet book deals down the road either, not without the First Amendment!
That part
The only thing Trump, and his minions (morons), understand is the language of money. We need to bring the country to a halt, right now. Trump's economics will bring us there anyway, so why not use the economy to stop him and President Musk to a stand still? Again, where is the actual Christian leadership that can get things going? They certainly aren't in any Mega/MAGA churches. Those are the Pharisees who got us here. Anyone have a suggestion? The western world was truly founded on Christian ethics which is in direct opposition to Mosaic Law. Trump's assault on Christianity won't stop with the gov't. He will turn his ire on Christians. Musk and Miller are already dong that.
"On Feb. 2, Lutheran Social Services [LSS] came under attack. In a tweet by Elon Musk, he said his team would be shutting down “illegal payments” and accused LSS of running a money laundering operation. Much of that money goes to operating senior living centers in the Midwest.
The week before, those sneaky Lutherans caught Musk’s attention when Global Refuge (formerly Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services) had their funding frozen, along with every aid organization working with legal immigration. That left six thousand immigrants in the care of Global Refuge with no money to pay for housing and food.
At least Musk and his high school graduate buddies are ecumenical. Funds that went to Catholic Relief Services were cut." (https://tinyurl.com/cutting-religion)
Like I said, who will stop these monsters (from the OT, Torah and Koran)? Congress? You have to be kidding.
Sorry, just can't let this go. Everyone outside of MAGA is already "educated" enough on the realities and the historical facts of the America Experiment. Trump, and his Project 2025 implementers, are not going to acquiesce to anyone; not to any Representative you call, not to the courts, no one. You, as a "historian" should know exactly who these people are. They are exactly who Jesus rebelled against: "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. - Jesus (Mat 23)
Trump can only be stopped by another rebellion against the rule of our modern Pharisees, Sadducee (billionaires) and Trump's Sanhedrin (SCOTUS). The rebellion will require the deconversion of MAGA back to actual Christianity and away from the worship of the God of Moses and his teachings of Mosaic Law (Project 2025). 54% of the country is under the religious fervor of the MAGA "God of Moses" cult and most are heavily armed (as our Moses figure, Charlton Heston, implored them to be under a warped 2nd Amendment).
So, until you can point to a real Christian leader (another Martin Luther King, Jr) that is willing to take up the fight and push to join forces with re-educated MAGA, there won't be anyone to stop this madness of Mosaic origin, which you as a historian should know, was only meant for the children of Israel to ensure a "purified Chosen People", and not the rest of the world. MAGA is comprised of the heavily-armed American Taliban and they will not go quietly.
I see no way to stop them without a civil war, unless we find the Christian Leadership to fight them, starting right now, with non-violent action, civil disobedience and massive walk outs, strikes and "sit ins", like the entirety of DC. Just say'in.
Beautiful. Thank you so much. I learn from you consistently and for that I am grateful.