I noticed the stunning lack of self-awareness in the Vance clip: “think about what it means not just to be made fun of or bo be criticized by your peers”. Many of us do not have to imagine that. We have lived it. We lived it as non-Dutch students at Calvin (and I know we had it good compared with the much tinier minority of Navajo and Black students), as women in societal and church patriarchy. Many people I know have lived it as persons of color in a society structured to establish and sustain white privilege. And yet Vance, a member of the 30% who control things, can make this statement.
My (former) reformed community has long lamented that all our problems started with kicking prayer out of schools. I am more and more convinced this is wrong. It was when the humanities were downgraded from being the core of education to being shoved aside as "progressive", "unimportant", "not economically productive", or "focused on those people".
I've been through all that as well and the humanities academic scene too. My life has always been lived in contexts that are on both sides of the culture wars since the 1970s. As a result, in a religious-dominant context I argue for the truths and insights of supposedly secular perspectives. And then I switch to bat the other way as well. The categories and divisions themselves are false — left/right, rural/urban, religious/non- But you cannot get people to a point of pluralist engagement and capacity for sustained cognitive dissonance through any curriculum. Polemic won't work either, but much of what Vance says is true. Numerous criticisms like his exist from many different perspectives. Americans have lost the capacity to value their unresolvable differences as a dialogue where people can and do change — not because there is one true path we should all reach but because we need to work out our own paths and some collective compromises.
This should be about trust building and relationships that have been steadily lost for many reasons, but at CCCU institutions, it is baked in out of their fear of being wrong / facilitating people exercising their freedom to embrace the wrong theology, convert to something else, etc. They should be places where at least a visiting distinguished atheist Jewish/Catholic Marxist professor exists. The people who want that job would be incredibly qualified and fun people.
For a long time now, I’ve been arguing that the primary targets of Christian nationalists are likely to be fellow Christians who do not toe the Christian nationalist line.
Go Calvin University and Hope College. Don't cave in to the pressure. Love your "fellow enemies" but do not serve them.
Why the future tense? Politicized and Fundamentalist Christianity has always been persecutory against its own communities where there is disagreement. Calvin and Hope included. The Dutch Reformed communities are piles of schisms — denominations and churches and other institutions where divorces and village feuds add the to dogmatomachy. Their religion/moralism is the smoke screen excusing diagnosable sociopathy and generations of closeted *sexuality and domestic abuse. These paradigms of aberrant totalistic religionism are being normed with all the other national spiritual disorders. The inmates have taken the asylum, as the entire conservative/Christian movement intended. Let us seize power while accumulating more motes in our own eyes... it is actually the ultimate plan for assimilation to base materialist concerns. They should wonder who they are actually serving.
Jonathan, the issue here isn’t about “Christian nationalism” or whether Christians disagree on politics. The real question is: *What is the standard for truth?* If some Christians are being “targeted,” as you say, it’s not because they’re refusing to toe a political line—it’s because they’re embracing ideas that conflict with biblical truth.
Loving our enemies, as Jesus commanded, doesn’t mean surrendering to their worldview. It means standing firm in what’s true while engaging with grace and clarity. Calvin University and Hope College shouldn’t cave to pressure—whether from political movements or cultural trends—but neither should they redefine love as passive acceptance of falsehood. If truth divides, that’s not a flaw in truth. It’s a reflection of reality (Luke 12:51).
The problem is those who are certain they have all the truth and no latitude for differences even though it is impossible to maintain any effective group without making its natural and abiding diversity a strength. Authority works better when it isn't so authoritarian it promotes the illusion of agreement. CCCU institutions for example are always cultures where the private transcript (students and faculty in less public arenas) deviates all over the map beyond the currently funded institutional orthodoxy. Nobody, not even the most quixotic extreme calvinist today can or would want to live in the mentality and social context of John Calvin. (Which was also not a monoculture despite his best efforts to discipline even the livestock of Geneva.)
We want thinking individuals with wills of their own, yes? Or yes-men for Jesus all mushed into the same mold by -- who? A pope? A fuehrer?
We've seen it coming; hard to believe that so many have been blind. My alma mater, Saint Mary's College at Notre Dame is committed to equality and the sacred value of every individual.
How do they feel about Amy Coney Barrett at Notre Dame? ND Law is a pipeline for clerks to Supreme Court justices. Who is likely to influence whom the more?
I remember when CCCU institutions were promoting Antonin Scalia and programs like the now ADF's Blackstone Legal Fellowships. Starting in the '90s, those types of efforts produced several generations' worth of justices that Trump (first term) appointed to the federal circuit courts, where they will deal with civil rights issues for the rest of the century.
In 2015, I told everyone I could what would happen if Trump became president. I was accused of being a heretic, of causing disunity in the church, of speaking against God‘s anointed, of being woke, liberal, feminist, man bashing, you name it I was called it. I was told that I was being an extremist, sewing distrust, and hate, when all I wanted to do was make people see who Trump was and what his platform was, and what kind of people supported him.
I don’t feel vindicated, I feel horrified and sick. I’m glad my parents are not here to see what is happening. They warned us when Reagan became president that he would be the beginning of an end for the next 50 years and I thought they were extremist thank you so much for your work. Jesus and John Wayne was one of our book club choices not a church book club but my Crossfit book club!
I wonder how many who voted, programmed by their choice of media sources, didn't know about Project 2025 and were not really aware of what they were voting for.
This type of argument will never work because it implies the other party in the tightly controlled and not at all democratic American system must be better, if not morally outstanding themselves. (Which is not true. Considered simply on foreign policy, it's a reasonable view that Trump is far less likely to inflame and accelerate US involvement in global conflicts.)
Recognizing the situation's double binds forces people to face the fraud of the system itself and their actual lack of power and freedom. This will make them attached all the more to people who say they will smash this system or at least ensure their interests prevail in it.
Aquinas said when all choices you have lead to immoral ends, it is because you went down a lot of bad paths previously. Historically considered, all states and empires do this. They all decline and die. Augustine or the Mennonite perspective on this is worth a look, or perhaps Christian anarchism. If you are into voting as a Christian because you think there is a correct Christian solution at the ballot box, you are already assuming the whole framework for religious nationalism. Most nations today are oligarchies that enslave people for money, as they have always done. We should expect less of them and politics.
I can't muster much optimism that private Christian colleges will resist the pressure. More likely, I think, will be the kind of response that Prof. Du Mez got when her speaking engagement was cancelled: "We know the accusations are untrue, but our hands are tied..." The cavalry won't be coming over the hill to help. We will have to make this stand on our own, and there will be casualties. Professors will lose their jobs. Students will be deprived of honest teaching and learning opportunities. Dissidents will be persecuted. This is more a time for Revelation theology: Hold fast and keep the faith, because God's love and justice win in the end.
Not only this, but with wealthy conservative donors to these private colleges and universities, there is a trend toward keeping them happy to survive the recent financial downturn. Our local Northwestern College (RCA) has curved back toward a tighter and more aggressive treatment of LGBTQIA+ students.
For context, Northwestern (origins of Robert Schuyler) is in Orange City, IA and Shelbyville with Dordt College/University in Springfield/Sioux Center. The RCA is considered the most liberal of about 6 reformed denominations in this historic Dutch colony founded directly after the natives were removed. The CRC is considered marginally less liberal. Their big disagreement historically has been over public schools. The RCA is OK with them. The CRC and RCA are so small they have had to unite under one North American administration to share resources and lower costs. They have some ecumenical engagements with each other (pulpit sharing, men and maybe sometimes women clergy) but this is always contested ground. Currently there might be some challenges keeping the Canadians (who think they are the most liberal but not by much) on board!
Both schools compete for the same dwindling pool of ethnic legacy students and others who trend very conservative. The homeschooling parents (who are as organized as a group as the Iowa gun owners/same people) know they have the power to play off the colleges against each other and negotiate deals for their quiverfuls of kids by raking administrators over the coals for this or that slip of Darwinism or lack of hostility to Muslims, gay people, etc. It's completely true and the established reality that the President Business characters in charge and their subordinates will do everything they can to seem and sound as reactionary as the home school moms like, but do they actually believe anything anymore? One wonders.
The problem with having the institutions and instruction aligned with the way you think it should be is that you're playing the same game as the people you say you oppose. It envisions schools mostly as good for indoctrination. Smart, sensitive, capable, and willful individuals always hate this stupefying paternalism and authoritarian streak in schools, churches, groups of any kind. From very very young ages too. The more pressure put on them, the stronger they will get. And most will sensibly walk away to freer pastures.
This is partly why the religious right fills up with increasingly incompetent people even as it seems to be an electoral success. In a defective culture, the defectives become popular.
The problems you chronically see in religious ghetto institutions has to do with their parochial, petty intergenerational family dysfunctions where parents cling to children and feel entitled to dictate their intellectual, vocational, emotional, physical, and spiritual outcomes. It is satanic beyond the dreams of Stalin. What we should worry about with these people in power is their lack of capacity to actually wield it with such fragile, anxious minds and incapacity to deal with complexity, multivariable systems, paradox, contradiction, and uncertainty. Without the anti-intellectualism and racist monomania of Hitler, Germany might have won.
The writing was on the wall as to what is to come.
How people could have voted for a future, a country, such as what the Trump Administration & Conservative/Fundamental/ Evangelical Christians are striving to create, amazes, saddens & angers me.
Realizing I am pretty useless if stuck in all those emotions.
Donating to ACLU & to Democratic Senators & Congressmen, from my family’s limited income -as we are both now retired & my husband has significant health issues, which are an expense.
Doing my best to be an encouragement to my children & grandchildren… hoping we come out of this craziness.
What were people, those who voted for Trump, voted for Jill Stein & those who did not bother to vote at all, thinking???!
The recent Atlantic article, "The Army of God," pretty well sums it up ... they've been planning on this for years now ... laying the ground work, building their coalitions of madness ... all of America's racial bigotry, fear, and pride, have coalesced around this moment, joined now by the likes of the hyper wealthy and their consumer capitalism. The perfect storm of hate and greed.
I read that Atlantic article. It seems like they were under the radar for a long time but have been emboldened to come out of hiding by the Christian Nationalists' new powers in JD Vance and Project 2025.
Oh I feel this one already. Recently (like yesterday) I saw old church folks posting calls for tribunals (and worse) for top CDC docs, and I just really wanted to ask if they’d stand me up there too. That would really stress my wife - so I don’t ask. A year or so I had mused to my wife that soon we’d have all our kids through school and no house payment, and could perhaps have a season of rest. I suppose that kind of expectation runs against the grain of the Gospel no matter how you look at it. Perhaps it’s appropriate to use a few cowboy and saddle metaphors ( cue the 90s CCM lyrics) for what lies ahead for us. 🤠 And I’m grateful for all of you folks here who comprise “us”, who can’t just rest in suburban comfort while wicked men crush helpless folks. 🙌
I have been thinking about Bishop Budde's reference to "the politics of contempt". It is painfully difficult for progressive Christians to avoid showing contempt for those who express contempt for us.
Thx so much Kristin. Don’t forget our wonderful Catholic universities and our commitment to Catholic Social teaching. Just like other Christians we are polarized with Vance being an ultra conservative right wing Catholic. The USCCB is now waking up to fear what is happening to immigrants. And Vance’s claim that is only because of funding is ludicrous as the money is only used on immigrants.
I will keep going forward. I am an activist and lobby/advocate in the areas of hunger, poverty and immigration.
The Catholic church has been no less a consistent source of reactionary politics — it is historically the central seat of Western counter-revolutionary politics. So the centre-right continental reformed traditions have always been politically sympatico with their own Christian Democratic third-way doctrines where they try to inject compassion into capitalist market economies while still being totally pro-aristocracy, pro-oligarchy, and usually fairly racist, anti-feminist, etc. It was this centre-right that went into coalition with national conservatives in Germany and opened the door to Hitler and then went right along with him. This is what's next up, in a rather different world reality, as Germany and other European nations can't go on repressing their "populists" (persistent votes for nationalist right parties) forever.
So, consider the historic lessons a significant argument against trying the same things with religious centre-right/third way efforts. What is so bad about the actual left or a totally off-spectrum position?
I’ve been out of the Catholic Church for decades. Anyone heard lately about what the next papacy might shape up to be? Seems like another Pope like Francis could go a long way towards fighting the creep of the right that we’re seeing in evangelicalism in the global south. Maybe John McGreevey would know. Dunno…
This is happening at all levels of the education system. I heard yesterday from a friend in East Texas. Her daughter came home from school horrified. Her history teacher told the students that he was required to say that 6 million Jews had died in the Holocaust, but it wasn't true. He had listened to podcasts by "people who knew what they were talking about." He said it was "just not possible" that 6 million could have been killed--probably more like 500,000. The teacher also said that Hitler undoubtedly was one of the best leaders ever because he was able to get his whole country against the Jews. To put Hitler's accomplishment in perspective, he said, imagine if Trump tried to turn the whole US against Mexicans. It would be hard because "not everyone will hate Mexicans."
My friend called the principal this morning. She's not optimistic that anything will happen. The principal said they would investigate but also said that "people have opinions." I suggested she ask the principal if he think it is appropriate to offer students the opinion that Hitler did a great thing by unifying Germans against Jews. Also, if it's cool to teach opinions, they it must be OK for a teacher to teach critical race theory, right?
This is an extreme case (for the moment), but it's what the new orthodoxy will look like, and it will be enforced by school boards and universities that impose false teaching.
I see two wonderful things in this story...you are doing something about it, and your kid knew enough not to believe it. I was that kind of kid myself. Let's not underestimate how many people will NOT be taken in, and the general trend of the culture toward more empathy and inclusivity. Doesn't mean we don't keep fighting, but we fight with hope!
That story is incredibly disturbing. Yes, people have opinions but there are also facts. The Nazis killed 6 million more other people as well as 6 million Jews that often get left out of the conversation, too. The fact that the principal wouldn't have a serious talk with that teacher is not a good sign.
To add injury to insult, I should have mentioned: My friend fears that just by bringing this to the principal's attention, she and her daughter will become targets for hate and retaliation. While she couldn't let what this teacher did pass without a response, she also is now living in fear.
"For a long time now, I’ve been arguing that the primary targets of Christian nationalists are likely to be fellow Christians who do not toe the Christian nationalist line." That started back in 2016 and shifted into high gear in 2020. Folks like Eric Metaxas and Charlie Kirk are trying to do exactly that. It will take a concerted effort from church and Christian college leadership to stand up to them.
It did not start in 2016! Any kid growing up in a conservative Christian community of any kind since forever has been subjected to psychological Stalinism. Church politics, religious school politics, etc. The fundamentalist/evangelical movement got going hard in the 1920s combined with an anti-union/labour/catholic/jewish/black/etc message.
We grew up with all this same stuff in the 70s, 80s, and 90s.
I hope that your readers have let you know that your writing and speaking are helping the people across the country immensely. Your family must be so proud of your work. A result of listening to your speeches, Convocation, and reading your books and articles has been a grounded reference for having conversations with others. Thank you. It feels like I have made small positive steps with my family, friends, and colleagues who have continued down the path of MAGA.
Thank you. I sometimes (daily, hourly) wonder why I keep at this, but in case it isn't too late, things have to be said. If it is too late, they still do.
As someone who prepared to be a historian but didn't go into academia (no jobs), I fear for all of you who are in the cross-hairs of rightwing (I refuse to call them conservative) revisionists.
But if they want to put a target on my back and come after me for posting the unbiased, unvarnished version US history, warts and all, I say: "Come ahead, and be sure to bring a sack lunch."
Great article. Thank you so much for all you are doing in this area. I am the mom of two Calvin grads and I pray that Calvin and other Christian institutions have the courage to stand up for the values Jesus calls us to. Keep up the good work.
Thank you, Kristin.
I noticed the stunning lack of self-awareness in the Vance clip: “think about what it means not just to be made fun of or bo be criticized by your peers”. Many of us do not have to imagine that. We have lived it. We lived it as non-Dutch students at Calvin (and I know we had it good compared with the much tinier minority of Navajo and Black students), as women in societal and church patriarchy. Many people I know have lived it as persons of color in a society structured to establish and sustain white privilege. And yet Vance, a member of the 30% who control things, can make this statement.
My (former) reformed community has long lamented that all our problems started with kicking prayer out of schools. I am more and more convinced this is wrong. It was when the humanities were downgraded from being the core of education to being shoved aside as "progressive", "unimportant", "not economically productive", or "focused on those people".
I've been through all that as well and the humanities academic scene too. My life has always been lived in contexts that are on both sides of the culture wars since the 1970s. As a result, in a religious-dominant context I argue for the truths and insights of supposedly secular perspectives. And then I switch to bat the other way as well. The categories and divisions themselves are false — left/right, rural/urban, religious/non- But you cannot get people to a point of pluralist engagement and capacity for sustained cognitive dissonance through any curriculum. Polemic won't work either, but much of what Vance says is true. Numerous criticisms like his exist from many different perspectives. Americans have lost the capacity to value their unresolvable differences as a dialogue where people can and do change — not because there is one true path we should all reach but because we need to work out our own paths and some collective compromises.
This should be about trust building and relationships that have been steadily lost for many reasons, but at CCCU institutions, it is baked in out of their fear of being wrong / facilitating people exercising their freedom to embrace the wrong theology, convert to something else, etc. They should be places where at least a visiting distinguished atheist Jewish/Catholic Marxist professor exists. The people who want that job would be incredibly qualified and fun people.
For a long time now, I’ve been arguing that the primary targets of Christian nationalists are likely to be fellow Christians who do not toe the Christian nationalist line.
Go Calvin University and Hope College. Don't cave in to the pressure. Love your "fellow enemies" but do not serve them.
Why the future tense? Politicized and Fundamentalist Christianity has always been persecutory against its own communities where there is disagreement. Calvin and Hope included. The Dutch Reformed communities are piles of schisms — denominations and churches and other institutions where divorces and village feuds add the to dogmatomachy. Their religion/moralism is the smoke screen excusing diagnosable sociopathy and generations of closeted *sexuality and domestic abuse. These paradigms of aberrant totalistic religionism are being normed with all the other national spiritual disorders. The inmates have taken the asylum, as the entire conservative/Christian movement intended. Let us seize power while accumulating more motes in our own eyes... it is actually the ultimate plan for assimilation to base materialist concerns. They should wonder who they are actually serving.
Jonathan, the issue here isn’t about “Christian nationalism” or whether Christians disagree on politics. The real question is: *What is the standard for truth?* If some Christians are being “targeted,” as you say, it’s not because they’re refusing to toe a political line—it’s because they’re embracing ideas that conflict with biblical truth.
Loving our enemies, as Jesus commanded, doesn’t mean surrendering to their worldview. It means standing firm in what’s true while engaging with grace and clarity. Calvin University and Hope College shouldn’t cave to pressure—whether from political movements or cultural trends—but neither should they redefine love as passive acceptance of falsehood. If truth divides, that’s not a flaw in truth. It’s a reflection of reality (Luke 12:51).
The problem is those who are certain they have all the truth and no latitude for differences even though it is impossible to maintain any effective group without making its natural and abiding diversity a strength. Authority works better when it isn't so authoritarian it promotes the illusion of agreement. CCCU institutions for example are always cultures where the private transcript (students and faculty in less public arenas) deviates all over the map beyond the currently funded institutional orthodoxy. Nobody, not even the most quixotic extreme calvinist today can or would want to live in the mentality and social context of John Calvin. (Which was also not a monoculture despite his best efforts to discipline even the livestock of Geneva.)
We want thinking individuals with wills of their own, yes? Or yes-men for Jesus all mushed into the same mold by -- who? A pope? A fuehrer?
We've seen it coming; hard to believe that so many have been blind. My alma mater, Saint Mary's College at Notre Dame is committed to equality and the sacred value of every individual.
I’ll be speaking at St Mary’s this winter.
Would that be for the Center for the Study of Spirituality, headed by the inimitable Dan Horan?
history dept!
It will be a great presentation!
How do they feel about Amy Coney Barrett at Notre Dame? ND Law is a pipeline for clerks to Supreme Court justices. Who is likely to influence whom the more?
I remember when CCCU institutions were promoting Antonin Scalia and programs like the now ADF's Blackstone Legal Fellowships. Starting in the '90s, those types of efforts produced several generations' worth of justices that Trump (first term) appointed to the federal circuit courts, where they will deal with civil rights issues for the rest of the century.
In 2015, I told everyone I could what would happen if Trump became president. I was accused of being a heretic, of causing disunity in the church, of speaking against God‘s anointed, of being woke, liberal, feminist, man bashing, you name it I was called it. I was told that I was being an extremist, sewing distrust, and hate, when all I wanted to do was make people see who Trump was and what his platform was, and what kind of people supported him.
I don’t feel vindicated, I feel horrified and sick. I’m glad my parents are not here to see what is happening. They warned us when Reagan became president that he would be the beginning of an end for the next 50 years and I thought they were extremist thank you so much for your work. Jesus and John Wayne was one of our book club choices not a church book club but my Crossfit book club!
Horrified and sick. Exactly. And I’m angry. A simmering anger at everyone who chose this and continues to enable it.
I wonder how many who voted, programmed by their choice of media sources, didn't know about Project 2025 and were not really aware of what they were voting for.
I think many knew enough, and many others were willfully ignorant and complicit in that way.
This type of argument will never work because it implies the other party in the tightly controlled and not at all democratic American system must be better, if not morally outstanding themselves. (Which is not true. Considered simply on foreign policy, it's a reasonable view that Trump is far less likely to inflame and accelerate US involvement in global conflicts.)
Recognizing the situation's double binds forces people to face the fraud of the system itself and their actual lack of power and freedom. This will make them attached all the more to people who say they will smash this system or at least ensure their interests prevail in it.
Aquinas said when all choices you have lead to immoral ends, it is because you went down a lot of bad paths previously. Historically considered, all states and empires do this. They all decline and die. Augustine or the Mennonite perspective on this is worth a look, or perhaps Christian anarchism. If you are into voting as a Christian because you think there is a correct Christian solution at the ballot box, you are already assuming the whole framework for religious nationalism. Most nations today are oligarchies that enslave people for money, as they have always done. We should expect less of them and politics.
I can't muster much optimism that private Christian colleges will resist the pressure. More likely, I think, will be the kind of response that Prof. Du Mez got when her speaking engagement was cancelled: "We know the accusations are untrue, but our hands are tied..." The cavalry won't be coming over the hill to help. We will have to make this stand on our own, and there will be casualties. Professors will lose their jobs. Students will be deprived of honest teaching and learning opportunities. Dissidents will be persecuted. This is more a time for Revelation theology: Hold fast and keep the faith, because God's love and justice win in the end.
Not only this, but with wealthy conservative donors to these private colleges and universities, there is a trend toward keeping them happy to survive the recent financial downturn. Our local Northwestern College (RCA) has curved back toward a tighter and more aggressive treatment of LGBTQIA+ students.
For context, Northwestern (origins of Robert Schuyler) is in Orange City, IA and Shelbyville with Dordt College/University in Springfield/Sioux Center. The RCA is considered the most liberal of about 6 reformed denominations in this historic Dutch colony founded directly after the natives were removed. The CRC is considered marginally less liberal. Their big disagreement historically has been over public schools. The RCA is OK with them. The CRC and RCA are so small they have had to unite under one North American administration to share resources and lower costs. They have some ecumenical engagements with each other (pulpit sharing, men and maybe sometimes women clergy) but this is always contested ground. Currently there might be some challenges keeping the Canadians (who think they are the most liberal but not by much) on board!
Both schools compete for the same dwindling pool of ethnic legacy students and others who trend very conservative. The homeschooling parents (who are as organized as a group as the Iowa gun owners/same people) know they have the power to play off the colleges against each other and negotiate deals for their quiverfuls of kids by raking administrators over the coals for this or that slip of Darwinism or lack of hostility to Muslims, gay people, etc. It's completely true and the established reality that the President Business characters in charge and their subordinates will do everything they can to seem and sound as reactionary as the home school moms like, but do they actually believe anything anymore? One wonders.
Ugh... Tighter and more aggressive in what ways? I'd be curious to know.
The problem with having the institutions and instruction aligned with the way you think it should be is that you're playing the same game as the people you say you oppose. It envisions schools mostly as good for indoctrination. Smart, sensitive, capable, and willful individuals always hate this stupefying paternalism and authoritarian streak in schools, churches, groups of any kind. From very very young ages too. The more pressure put on them, the stronger they will get. And most will sensibly walk away to freer pastures.
This is partly why the religious right fills up with increasingly incompetent people even as it seems to be an electoral success. In a defective culture, the defectives become popular.
The problems you chronically see in religious ghetto institutions has to do with their parochial, petty intergenerational family dysfunctions where parents cling to children and feel entitled to dictate their intellectual, vocational, emotional, physical, and spiritual outcomes. It is satanic beyond the dreams of Stalin. What we should worry about with these people in power is their lack of capacity to actually wield it with such fragile, anxious minds and incapacity to deal with complexity, multivariable systems, paradox, contradiction, and uncertainty. Without the anti-intellectualism and racist monomania of Hitler, Germany might have won.
The writing was on the wall as to what is to come.
How people could have voted for a future, a country, such as what the Trump Administration & Conservative/Fundamental/ Evangelical Christians are striving to create, amazes, saddens & angers me.
Realizing I am pretty useless if stuck in all those emotions.
Donating to ACLU & to Democratic Senators & Congressmen, from my family’s limited income -as we are both now retired & my husband has significant health issues, which are an expense.
Doing my best to be an encouragement to my children & grandchildren… hoping we come out of this craziness.
What were people, those who voted for Trump, voted for Jill Stein & those who did not bother to vote at all, thinking???!
They weren’t
The recent Atlantic article, "The Army of God," pretty well sums it up ... they've been planning on this for years now ... laying the ground work, building their coalitions of madness ... all of America's racial bigotry, fear, and pride, have coalesced around this moment, joined now by the likes of the hyper wealthy and their consumer capitalism. The perfect storm of hate and greed.
I read that Atlantic article. It seems like they were under the radar for a long time but have been emboldened to come out of hiding by the Christian Nationalists' new powers in JD Vance and Project 2025.
None of this has been very much under the radar since the 70s. People who grew up in it, like KKD, can tell you all about that.
Oh I feel this one already. Recently (like yesterday) I saw old church folks posting calls for tribunals (and worse) for top CDC docs, and I just really wanted to ask if they’d stand me up there too. That would really stress my wife - so I don’t ask. A year or so I had mused to my wife that soon we’d have all our kids through school and no house payment, and could perhaps have a season of rest. I suppose that kind of expectation runs against the grain of the Gospel no matter how you look at it. Perhaps it’s appropriate to use a few cowboy and saddle metaphors ( cue the 90s CCM lyrics) for what lies ahead for us. 🤠 And I’m grateful for all of you folks here who comprise “us”, who can’t just rest in suburban comfort while wicked men crush helpless folks. 🙌
I have been thinking about Bishop Budde's reference to "the politics of contempt". It is painfully difficult for progressive Christians to avoid showing contempt for those who express contempt for us.
Thx so much Kristin. Don’t forget our wonderful Catholic universities and our commitment to Catholic Social teaching. Just like other Christians we are polarized with Vance being an ultra conservative right wing Catholic. The USCCB is now waking up to fear what is happening to immigrants. And Vance’s claim that is only because of funding is ludicrous as the money is only used on immigrants.
I will keep going forward. I am an activist and lobby/advocate in the areas of hunger, poverty and immigration.
Yes!
The Catholic church has been no less a consistent source of reactionary politics — it is historically the central seat of Western counter-revolutionary politics. So the centre-right continental reformed traditions have always been politically sympatico with their own Christian Democratic third-way doctrines where they try to inject compassion into capitalist market economies while still being totally pro-aristocracy, pro-oligarchy, and usually fairly racist, anti-feminist, etc. It was this centre-right that went into coalition with national conservatives in Germany and opened the door to Hitler and then went right along with him. This is what's next up, in a rather different world reality, as Germany and other European nations can't go on repressing their "populists" (persistent votes for nationalist right parties) forever.
So, consider the historic lessons a significant argument against trying the same things with religious centre-right/third way efforts. What is so bad about the actual left or a totally off-spectrum position?
I’ve been out of the Catholic Church for decades. Anyone heard lately about what the next papacy might shape up to be? Seems like another Pope like Francis could go a long way towards fighting the creep of the right that we’re seeing in evangelicalism in the global south. Maybe John McGreevey would know. Dunno…
This is happening at all levels of the education system. I heard yesterday from a friend in East Texas. Her daughter came home from school horrified. Her history teacher told the students that he was required to say that 6 million Jews had died in the Holocaust, but it wasn't true. He had listened to podcasts by "people who knew what they were talking about." He said it was "just not possible" that 6 million could have been killed--probably more like 500,000. The teacher also said that Hitler undoubtedly was one of the best leaders ever because he was able to get his whole country against the Jews. To put Hitler's accomplishment in perspective, he said, imagine if Trump tried to turn the whole US against Mexicans. It would be hard because "not everyone will hate Mexicans."
My friend called the principal this morning. She's not optimistic that anything will happen. The principal said they would investigate but also said that "people have opinions." I suggested she ask the principal if he think it is appropriate to offer students the opinion that Hitler did a great thing by unifying Germans against Jews. Also, if it's cool to teach opinions, they it must be OK for a teacher to teach critical race theory, right?
This is an extreme case (for the moment), but it's what the new orthodoxy will look like, and it will be enforced by school boards and universities that impose false teaching.
I see two wonderful things in this story...you are doing something about it, and your kid knew enough not to believe it. I was that kind of kid myself. Let's not underestimate how many people will NOT be taken in, and the general trend of the culture toward more empathy and inclusivity. Doesn't mean we don't keep fighting, but we fight with hope!
That story is incredibly disturbing. Yes, people have opinions but there are also facts. The Nazis killed 6 million more other people as well as 6 million Jews that often get left out of the conversation, too. The fact that the principal wouldn't have a serious talk with that teacher is not a good sign.
To add injury to insult, I should have mentioned: My friend fears that just by bringing this to the principal's attention, she and her daughter will become targets for hate and retaliation. While she couldn't let what this teacher did pass without a response, she also is now living in fear.
"For a long time now, I’ve been arguing that the primary targets of Christian nationalists are likely to be fellow Christians who do not toe the Christian nationalist line." That started back in 2016 and shifted into high gear in 2020. Folks like Eric Metaxas and Charlie Kirk are trying to do exactly that. It will take a concerted effort from church and Christian college leadership to stand up to them.
It did not start in 2016! Any kid growing up in a conservative Christian community of any kind since forever has been subjected to psychological Stalinism. Church politics, religious school politics, etc. The fundamentalist/evangelical movement got going hard in the 1920s combined with an anti-union/labour/catholic/jewish/black/etc message.
We grew up with all this same stuff in the 70s, 80s, and 90s.
I hope that your readers have let you know that your writing and speaking are helping the people across the country immensely. Your family must be so proud of your work. A result of listening to your speeches, Convocation, and reading your books and articles has been a grounded reference for having conversations with others. Thank you. It feels like I have made small positive steps with my family, friends, and colleagues who have continued down the path of MAGA.
Thank you. I sometimes (daily, hourly) wonder why I keep at this, but in case it isn't too late, things have to be said. If it is too late, they still do.
Her colleagues at Calvin are also immensely proud of her. She is the voice we need at Calvin!
❤️
Good to hear that! Kristin deserves and needs a solid surrounding wall of support!
As someone who prepared to be a historian but didn't go into academia (no jobs), I fear for all of you who are in the cross-hairs of rightwing (I refuse to call them conservative) revisionists.
But if they want to put a target on my back and come after me for posting the unbiased, unvarnished version US history, warts and all, I say: "Come ahead, and be sure to bring a sack lunch."
Great article. Thank you so much for all you are doing in this area. I am the mom of two Calvin grads and I pray that Calvin and other Christian institutions have the courage to stand up for the values Jesus calls us to. Keep up the good work.
Inspirational clarion call to be a follower of Christ. alert, courageous and unafraid. Thanks Kristin!