Desiring Certainty: The Making of Biblical Inerrancy
An interview with Jason Hentschel
Jason Hentschel is author of Desiring Certainty and senior pastor of Wyoming Baptist Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. He holds a Ph.D. in theology from the University of Dayton and an MDiv from Truett Theological Seminary. He serves as an editor for Foundations, the journal of the American Baptist Historical Society, and his work has been published in the Journal of Theological Interpretation, American Baptist Quarterly, and Christian History.
One of the great strengths of this book is that it grows out of your personal experience. As you note in the “Acknowledgments” you state that “after writing the dissertation that became Desiring Certainty, I realized that what I had written was my own story of deconstruction and reconstruction.” Could you elaborate upon this statement? In particular, what did you have to deconstruct, and what led you to “deconstruct”?
JH: Looking back, I think part of the impetus for my deconstruction lay in my growing disillusionment with the over-intellectualization of Christianity as I knew it. Evangelical faith is far more than just intellectual assent to certain propositions, but the logic of inerrancy often runs there because it tends to idolize the Bible. Instead of worshiping the God of the book, we end up worshiping the book itself. So, I began to deconstruct and then reconstruct how we relate to God and God to us. This becomes a through line of Desiring Certainty and provides a lot of the grist for my discussions of inspiration and hermeneutics and, ultimately, my appeal to the language of trust rather than faith.
In Desiring Certainty you make very good use of a variety of secondary sources, including some that are not usually included in discussions of contemporary evangelicalism. One of these works is Daniel Rodgers’ masterful Age of Fracture. What is this age of fracture that we live in, and how exactly does biblical inerrancy serve as a seemingly perfect response?
JH: The “age of fracture” is Rodger’s way of describing the widespread cultural upheaval Americans experienced during the second half of the twentieth century. Think of the rise of feminism, the various movements for civil and later LGBTQIA+ rights, and even the political and social anxieties stemming from the Cold War and the threat of nuclear annihilation. The church was not immune to these fractures, and Christians, like all Americans, responded to them in various ways, some of which evangelical leaders would eventually consider unbiblical and immoral.
With all this change and this cornucopia of responses, how was a Christian to know what was right? Did God create men and women with distinct, albeit complementary roles? Was America truly God’s chosen nation and his choice for the salvation of the world? If my son comes out as gay, does that mean he’s going to hell? These were (and are) very live questions for evangelicals, and inerrancy provided an answer. I quote a hymn in the book’s introduction that gets to the heart of this. Its author was one of the lead inerrantists of the day, and he titled his hymn “God’s Sufficient Word.” Here is its third verse: “Sufficient too in daily strife // Providing clear directions // For how to live a godly life // Creating right affections.” In this age of fracture, where do we go for certainty and security? For evangelicals, the answer was easy. We go to the Bible.
You devote your second chapter to the King James Only movement. Given that many would see this as a fringe movement, it is striking that you make the case that King James Onlyism “shares the same concerns, presuppositional methodology, and often the very same rhetoric” as many evangelicals battling for biblical inerrancy. Could you expand on this argument?
JH: Without giving away the whole chapter, let me just say this. While King James Onlyism may be fringe, it is firmly within the evangelical fold. It, too, argues that the Bible is without error. The difference is that King James Only folks quite reasonably ask which of the hundreds of Bible translations we have are actually inerrant. Is it all of them, even when many of them disagree with each other in any number of important places? In other words, if the doctrine of inerrancy is to have any meaning at all, then we better have those actual inerrant words in our hands and not, as greater evangelicalism often qualifies, only in some lost original manuscripts. And if our inerrancy is only in lost manuscripts, what good is that to us?! What chapter two does is trace King James Onlyism’s argument to this end, including its own often ugly battles with greater evangelicalism, and how a deep-seated fear of subjectivism drives both.
Your discussion in chapter 5 of the biblical scholar Clark Pinnock – particularly his intellectual/religious journey away from inerrancy – is simply fascinating. You end the chapter (appropriately entitled “Gaining Consciousness”) thusly: “Sola scriptura, as traditionally understood, had collapsed for Pinnock under the weight of historical consciousness. It had been exposed as a modern objectivist’s ruse – a clever, rationalistic fiction – and we had best be done with it.” Could you explain and elaborate upon this rather provocative statement?
JH: Sola scriptura translates as “scripture alone.” It’s a classic expression from the Reformation era, often coming coupled with two other “solas”: sola fide (“faith alone”) and sola gratia (“grace alone”). The quick and dirty of the history here is the phrase was used by some Protestant Reformers to push back against what they believed to be the church’s practice of putting its tradition on the same authoritative level as scripture. The Bible, these Reformers argued, stood alone. I was first introduced to the phrase growing up in my church’s youth group, where we were genuinely encouraged to question, wonder about, and even challenge interpretations of the Bible. Despite this relative openness, we had one hard and fast rule: Always make sure you are searching for what God truly wants, not what you want. Translated into practice, this meant opening our Bibles with a conscious wariness not to read into them our own desires and beliefs. The goal, as my college textbooks would later put it, was exegesis not eisegesis. These textbooks taught us how to read scripture alone — without any outside influence from our cultural beliefs, personal desires, or denomination’s traditions, however well intended. I came to call this “Blank Slate Interpretation,” and the point of it was to secure objectivity. But what Clark Pinnock came to realize was just how impossible such a blank slate, objectivistic interpretation is. This was the reality of which he grew conscious thanks to his own experiences interpreting the Bible and living through its battles. To say we should best be done with sola scriptura, in this sense then, is simply to say that an inerrant Bible demands an inerrant reader. And since none of us are inerrant, sola scriptura is a fool’s errand just as much as the search for certainty itself.
Interestingly, in your epilogue you (following the lead of Christian Smith and other scholars) point out the obvious failure of inerrancy to give evangelicals “the unadulterated interpretive and epistemic certainty its proponents desired,” but you then go on to observe that “in the end, it gave them something just as powerful. It gave them a weapon.” What do you mean? What sort of weapon is inerrancy?
JH: Inerrancy is a weapon that silences debate. It is used to write off alternative interpretations of the Bible prima facie. Take, for instance, the story I tell in chapter three of Robert Gundry, whose argument that the Gospel of Matthew uses ancient midrashic techniques in its construction of Jesus’ birth narrative was determined to be in error because it did not fit evangelicalism’s conflation of truth with historical accuracy. Historicity, it appears, had been written into the definition of an inerrant Bible. So, to argue — as Gundry did — that Matthew “created” his story was simply unacceptable. Gundry effectively offered a losing argument right out of the bag.
In more popular contexts, we witness such weaponization in the common evangelical appeal to the authority of scripture: The Bible says it; I believe it; That settles it. Suggest, for instance, that Genesis 1 might be theological poetry instead of scientific history, and it’s proof positive that you are following your own whims instead of the Bible’s. In evangelical parlance, what you’ve done is commit eisegesis. You have read into the text what you want it to say rather than reading out of the text what it wants to say. In short, you have placed your will over God’s will. What results from this is an ad hominem argument, an attack on the person instead of on the actual merits of her argument. To call someone “woke” because they support women in all forms of ministry is a dogwhistle that allows people to write that person off as an “errantist” simply because they do not read the Bible as a complementarian would. It shuts legitimate conversation off before it can even begin.
Given that you are a pastor, here’s a pastoral question for you. A young woman from your church – a young woman who grew up fundamentalist -- comes by your office. Quite agitated, she informs you that she has had it with the intolerance and absolute certainty of Christians, and she is simply done with Christianity. What would you say to her that might persuade her to begin the journey of “reconstructing” her faith?
JH: I’ve had this happen a lot of times! My answer is, “Me, too.” And then I try to tell a bit of my own story. That’s actually a big part of the reason why I wrote this book. When I began asking these kinds of questions (and running up against these kind of frustrations), it was stories like the ones I tell in the book, especially that of Clark Pinnock, that helped me realize that intolerance and certainty were not the whole of Christianity. It surely wasn’t Christ. But it’s hard to see anything else because this certainty thing is in the water. This is what I mean in the book when I say historical consciousness cannot be taught. It must be grown. You said it yourself — this is a journey. Not a journey of self-discovery, however, but a journey of divine discovery. And when we consider that God is someone who, like all of us, can and needs to be discovered — even now! — then we can start to move on from the desire for certainty.
I am hoping that this is not the last word from you. Do you have another book project in mind? What else would you like to say?
JH: The International Council on Biblical Inerrancy, which ran throughout the 1980s and drafted the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, has a story that needs to be told in full, and I was lucky enough to spend a few days a number of years ago at Dallas Theological Seminary, where the council’s archives are held. It was a phenomenal experience. One day, I opened up a manila folder and out fell a short letter from one of the architects of the council. It was written on airline letterhead — Delta’s, if I recall — as if the author had an epiphany mid-flight and needed to jot it down quick. These kinds of artifacts make historical work exhilarating. You never know what you’re going to find, and one thing I found was the council’s intention of hosting a couple inerrancy “congresses” for the general public. Think of them as Billy Graham crusades for inerrancy, and in some sense, that’s exactly what they were — evangelism for an inerrant Bible. If Desiring Certainty tells the intellectual side of the making of biblical inerrancy, a deep dive into the history of the ICBI promises to offer a good chunk of its material and political side, as well as a deeper analysis of its theological underpinnings.
“Stop filming me”: Influencing Christianity and Yesteryear
by Elise Abshire
Elise Abshire is a graduate of the MA program in Theological Studies at the University of Dayton. Currently, she is finishing her PhD, and works at UD as a Grant Coordinator on a grant from the Lilly Endowment centered around creating and enhancing worship for children with disabilities using Montessori methods. Her areas of research include disability and theology, the intersection of social media and Christianity, and Louisiana Catholic cultural traditions.
“The goal of an influencer is not to be lovable, and it is not to be unbearable. The goal is to be both at once. In other words: addicting” (247)
Caro Claire Burke’s work, Yesteryear, recently hit the shelves and has already spent nineteen weeks on The New York Times' Best Sellers list. I originally heard about the book from a friend, and then suddenly I was hearing about it from most of my friends. Both of my book clubs mentioned reading it for our book of the month. I had to figure out what all the buzz was about with this tradwife satire, so I grabbed a copy, and after reading the first few pages, I was hooked. Burke’s writing is sarcastic, witty, and clever, but underneath the humor are some important themes to think about in both the Christian life and the world of social media.
The story revolves around the character of Natalie Heller Mills who is a traditional wife and influencer living in a rustic farmhouse with her husband and six children. At first sight, it may seem that her Instagram shows the perfect traditional family life full of aprons, chickens, and sourdough bread. However, Natalie's household is full of modern gadgets, producers, and nannies. Anyone who disagrees with Natalie is simply an “Angry Woman” who is jealous of her supposedly perfect life. Natalie even goes as far as to say: “Sometimes it actually makes me nauseous, how satisfying – no how perfect my life is, and how good I am at living it” (269). Natalie’s obsession with creating this image is important because she eventually begins to believe the image herself. Her family becomes part of the brand she is building, and she becomes more concerned with appearing like the perfect wife and mother than actually caring for the people around her. This is especially obvious with her children. Natalie frequently records them for her social media, and at one point her daughter Clementine tells her, “Stop filming me” (24). The problem is not simply that Natalie shares her family online. Parents share pictures and stories about their children all the time. The deeper problem is that Natalie’s understanding of her family becomes shaped by the need to produce a particular image of family, a Christian family at that.
Spoiler alert! One of the main twists in the novel is that Natalie seems to travel back in time to the 1800s where her trad wife life looks bizarre while still strangely familiar. Burke uses this shift to show what Natalie’s idealized tradwife life might actually look like in the 1800s. Instead of the beautiful farmhouse and carefully staged Instagram posts, life in the past is difficult and not aesthetically pleasing. This is where Burke really plays with Natalie’s ideals. Natalie wants her Instagram page to “feel like stepping into a time machine,” while still having “all the aesthetics of the olden times and all the amenities of modernity” (45-46). Platforms such as Instagram can function as spaces of cultural and religious formation. They shape what people see, what they value, and eventually what they understand to be normal. Even something as simple as clicking “follow” can place a person within a much larger network of cultural, political, and religious influence.
There are around 170 million Instagram users in the United States, with women making up approximately 55 percent of U.S. users. Additionally, there are three billion people worldwide reported to use Instagram each month. The size of this audience matters when thinking about influencers as cultural and religious figures. Kristin Kobes Du Mez makes a similar point in Jesus and John Wayne when she writes, “The products Christians consume shape the faith they inhabit” (10). Media has long been connected to evangelical identity, and social media has only made that relationship more visible.
Many people online have suggested that Burke based Natalie on Ballerina Farm, the popular social media account associated with Hannah Neeleman. Hannah Neelman has responded to the claims that Yesteryear is based off of her life, saying that she tries to stay away from conversations about the term "tradwife" because the term is a stereotype without true meaning. She expanded on that thought saying, “I don’t think women who want to work are winning. I don’t think mothers are winning. In fact, I think it’s a step backward. If someone wants to be a mother, great. If someone wants to be a mother and sell sourdough-bread kits, great. We have to support and cheer each other on even if it doesn’t look like what our home life looks like.”
There are many other influencers who could have inspired Burke’s creation of Natalie. I have long been intrigued by Madison Prewett Trout, one of the token Christian influencers of The Bachelor franchise. Prewett Troutt left the show abruptly, and she framed her exit as an act of conviction, grounding it in biblical standards. She commented on her presence on the show saying, "So many girls have given their heart to Jesus and girls who have decided to wait until marriage, just hearing me talk about my decision. It has just been so cool… We're all called to step out in faith and sometimes it doesn't look like what we thought.” What followed from this type of exit from The Bachelor was the creation of her as the “true” Christian influencer who stands up for her beliefs, especially actions and beliefs backed by Scripture. Prewett Troutt has since extended this narrative on TikTok, Instagram, and podcasts, gaining a massive following online, with 2 million TikTok followers and 1.7 million Instagram followers. Along with Hannah Neeleman, MadisonPrewett Troutt offers a window into the character of Natalie and religious ideals, especially how evangelical fundamentalism is not only thriving today but adapting, finding new life through social media platforms.
Natalie’s religious identity is also puzzling, as Burke never fully explains her faith background. She defies classification in a particular religious tradition, since she has a baptism that took place during her teenage years, but there is still no evidence that she belongs to the Mormon faith, as she does not go to a temple. Another question I had with the book was the story line of Natalie and her producer that lives in the house, Shannon. Natalie finds out that her husband, Caleb, is having an affair with Shannon, and Natalie goes to confront Shannon with yells and even physicality. Their conversation raises the question of Natalie’s queerness because Shannon later says her pants were pulled down, so there is an allegation of sexual assault here. To say that Natalie was in the closet and then possibly abuses a woman to get her sexual frustration out is to paint a picture full of assumptions of Christianity and queerness.
Additionally, Natalie often invokes Scripture, resorting to it whenever she faces difficulties. While doing that, she fails to use the text properly, and she interprets it in a way that she finds consistent with her conservative beliefs. If Scripture cannot be wrong, then she must find ways to justify her life with the verses. The inerrancy of Scripture is the basis of religious fundamentalism. Natalie begins to see God as someone who tests and manipulates his children and rewards them when they behave correctly. She does not seem to understand God as a kind, just, and loving Father. When “Old Caleb” is coercing Natalie to have sex with her against her wishes, she says “I’m not alone. I’m not stuck, not lost, not forgotten, not punished. I am here, a chosen one, with Him, and I will remain here, wherever here is, until He decides to take me elsewhere” (259). Natalie’s view of a God who keeps people in abusive situations and wants their suffering is not a healthy theological view. Thus, with Yesteryear, Burke is also asking what happens when Christianity becomes part of an image that someone is trying to maintain. One can justify their life off of the interpretation of Scripture to the point that it becomes toxic and dangerous.
By the end of Yesteryear, Natalie’s fantasy completely collapses. Natalie is left to confront the difference between the family she imagined and the family she actually created. Ultimately, this work leaves the reader with a much more complicated picture of Scripture, social media, and influencers. Burke’s novel is not trying to say that traditional family life is bad, but instead, Burke is asking what happens when religion and homemaking becomes an aesthetic, when faith becomes part of a personal brand, and when Scripture is used to defend an image rather than to transform the person reading it.
Life After Fundamentalism: Carl Ruby, Pierre Damas Bel, and Haitians in Springfield
by William Trollinger
On June 25 of this year the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government could end Temporary Protected Status for citizens of Haiti, thus allowing the government to deport them despite the reality that it is not safe for them to return. The result for Haitian families in Springfield has been rampant fear, the application of ankle monitors, and the possibility of deportation to a place that is frighteningly dangerous. More than this, “Haitians have lost their jobs, with employers forced to fire them . . . With no income, it’s almost impossible to pay for housing and food, and they are afraid to come to the grocery store.”
And then there is the heartbreaking story of Pierre Damas Bel. As a student at Springfield High School he was on the soccer team, and was a happy member of the U.S. military-sponsored JROTC program. Off he went to Wright State University, where he was planning to study neuroscience.
But in late July ICE forced him to wear an ankle monitor. He now could not play soccer, and some of his university classmates began to bully him. He posted the following on Instagram:
I came to this country to pursue my education. I didn’t come here to commit a crime or hurt anyone. Yet now I’m walking through the streets of the United States with a GPS monitor on my leg, carrying a feeling of shame and humiliation that I never imagined I would experience. I came here to study, to build my future, and to live a better (life), not to be treated like [a] criminal. So now, how am I supposed [to] play college sports with a GPS monitor on my leg?
Soon thereafter, he killed himself by stepping in front of a truck on I-70.
In response, Springfield’s Central Christian Church pastor Carl Ruby called on ICE to quit issuing ankle monitors: “Pierre died as a result of policy. And it’s our immigration policy that took his life.” Ruby and other faith leaders – including Haitian Support Center’s Viles Dorsainvil – have continued their work in behalf of their immigrant neighbors and parishioners in Springfield. As Ruby has proclaimed, “I think there needs to a revival in the American church of a prophetic spirit, of a willingness to call out evil even if it may cost us.”
Amen.
And here’s what I had to say about Carl Ruby in 2024:
As most Americans know, it has been a hellish two weeks in Springfield, Ohio. And they have Donald Trump and J. D. Vance to blame. Despite all factual evidence to the contrary, the Republican presidential/vice-presidential candidates have continued to repeat the lies – started on Facebook and amplified by the KKK and other Far Right groups – that Haitian immigrants are stealing and eating the dogs, cats, and other animals of “legitimate” Springfield residents.
The result has been a Haitian community on edge, and a spate of bomb threats, forcing the closure of schools, hospitals, and government offices. Despite all this, Trump and Vance are doubling down on their false claims; appallingly, Vance says it does not matter if these stories are actually true, as they help make his political point. And he has expanded his invented story of immigrants eating pets to include the nearby city of Dayton.
But there is also some heartwarming news. Many non-Haitian residents have made it a point to show their support by, for example, patronizing Haitian-run restaurants. More than this, “many of Springfield’s churches are giving support by way of English classes, correcting misinformation, and displaying solidarity” with their Haitian brothers and sisters. One of the leaders in this effort is Carl Ruby, pastor of Springfield’s Central Christian Church, a church that states on its website that “the Bible is very clear that God loves immigrants and refugees, and expects us to as well.” Ruby has welcomed Haitian community leaders to Central Christian – telling them that “We love you [and] we are glad you’re here” – and has called on Trump and Vance to stop the pet-eating stories (while also imploring President Biden to send resources to his embattled city).
More than any other Springfield faith leader, Ruby has been thrust into the national spotlight for his efforts. But what most news reports leave out is that Ruby has been working with immigrants in Springfield not for two weeks, but for twelve years. More than this, he started this work after having been summarily forced out of an administrative position at a nearby fundamentalist university, forced out for being the sort of Christian leader he has proven himself to be in Springfield, forced out for being the sort of Christian who, as a former trustee at that fundamentalist school put it, actually cares for “people on the margins.”
And for the rest of the story, here’s what I wrote about Carl in 2018:
Evangelical colleges are always having to prove – to parents, donors, and evangelical leaders such as James Dobson or Ken Ham – that they are, to quote Adam Laats, “guardians and teachers of a necessarily vague dream of eternal and unchanging orthodoxy.” Sometimes the only way for an evangelical school to reassure doubters is to purge its ranks of supposedly “unsafe” faculty and administrators.
As we describe in Righting America at the Creation Museum, this is precisely what happened at Cedarville University between 2012-2014. One of those forced out of Cedarville was Carl Ruby, vice president for student life. His departure was a shock to many students, one of whom told The New York Times that Ruby “made Cedarville feel more like Heaven. If you thought someone would be untouchable, it would be Carl.” But as a former Cedarville trustee noted in the same article, Ruby was pushed out because conservative trustees “were threatened by Carl’s . . . ministry to people struggling with gender identification [i.e., LGBTQ students], [and] how he ministers to people on the margins.”
As we noted in our book, Ruby was but one of 43 administrators, faculty, and staff members who departed Cedarville between the fall of 2012 and the summer of 2014, “some of whom [having been] forced out (having signed nondisclosure statements) while others quit and moved on to less hostile professional and religious climes.” This does not include the exodus of 15 members of the Board of Trustees, many of whom left in displeasure over the fundamentalist crackdown.
In our book, that is where the Cedarville tale ends. But it turns out there is more to the story. Take, for example, Carl Ruby.
Departing Cedarville, Ruby founded Welcome Springfield (OH) a non-profit organization that serves immigrants while also encouraging community members to sign a “Statement of Support for Immigrants in Clark County” that says in part:
While I recognize and support reasonable steps to ensure our national security, I also stand opposed to all forms of communication and policy that fail to recognize the human dignity and innate value of our global neighbors, especially those fleeing hardship, violence, poverty, and persecution.
While maintaining his position with Welcome Springfield, in the fall of 2014 he accepted the position as pastor of Central Christian Church in Springfield, which describes itself as a church where “we strive to keep Jesus at the center” and where “we care about justice” and “love our neighbors.”
In Springfield, where there are two mosques, “neighbors” includes Muslims. In an effort to build bridges between the Muslim and Christian communities (and as featured in a CBS Faith in America documentary) in May 2017 Central Christian members attended Friday prayers at one of the mosques and Muslims attended Sunday worship at Central Christian. As Ruby reflected on his Red Letter Christians blog,
I was overwhelmed by the strong sense of human connection. [Emphasis Ruby’s.] The events did not feel like an awkward mingling of strangers who were working hard at being polite and finding things to talk about. It felt like a reunion of longtime friends. There was an eagerness on both sides to connect and to love one another.
On the Central Christian website Ruby does not mention Cedarville or the purge, but he does describe – in winsome and gracious fashion – the journey he has been on:
I grew up in churches that tended to be pretty conservative. I met many beautiful people and learned lots about scripture, but I also encountered a tendency to neglect certain areas of the gospel such as our mandate to care for the poor and to commit ourselves to issues of social justice. I also experienced a church culture that added many rules and expectations that are not found in scripture . . . God didn’t save us just so that we could go to heaven. He saved us so that we could go to work trying to help bits of heaven to break through into our world through the sacrificial service of the body of Christ.
Life after fundamentalism, indeed.
Here’s the original 2018 blog post, and the original 2024 blog post. And here’s a link to a powerful Jim Wallis article, "The Parable of Springfield", which includes reference to Carl Ruby.
Reflections and Projections on American Feminism and Culture: An Interview with Gloria Steinem
by Susan Trollinger
In the spring of 1995, I received my PhD in rhetoric and communication from the University of Pittsburgh. That summer, I moved to Iowa City to teach a couple of courses while I looked for a more permanent teaching position. There, I met Melissa Friedling, who was finishing up her dissertation in rhetoric. She invited me to join her in an interview with Gloria Steinem that would appear in the Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies. Steinem was going to be in Iowa City to give a series of talks at the University and made herself available for a couple of young women to talk with her. When Melissa asked me to join her for this interview, I was thrilled! I had written my dissertation on what was being called the Third Wave of Feminism, and one of my chapters focused on Steinem’s Revolution from Within. What was so striking about Steinem in that interview was not only her thoughtful articulation of the challenges related to achieving gender equality and how to respond to them, but also her grace, generosity, and peace. Unlike so many angry voices we hear today, Steinem was calm, reflective, and thoughtful. She struck me as something like “feminism grown up.” She knew the history. She had lived the struggle. And she was full of kindness toward everyone—even her so-called enemies. I learned a lot from her in that interview—about a movement that made my life choices possible and about how to work hard for change and love the other at the same time.
Q. In your Playboy bunny expose as re-released in Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions you reveal that the well-paid, glamorous, on-her-way-to-stardom bunny was really an underpaid and sexually harassed cocktail waitress, squeezed into a corset. From this article we learned that the Hugh Hefners of this world lie, and that the women who work for them, do so out of necessity. Thus, you helped us to understand that duped bunnies are really exploited waitresses. In Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem you expanded our understanding further by showing us how education, religion, the fashion industry, etc., seduce women into wanting to think linearly, or worship god-the-father, or sport a miniskirt. Thus, you inspired us to call ‘sister’ not only the bunny who is really a waitress, but also the waitress who really wants to be a bunny. This expanded analysis seems terribly important because it helps us to have grace for the masculinist mistakes we all make, and to have empathy for even the most ‘duped’ among us. Yet, if we say that our desires are culturally produced, in order to have empathy for one another, on what grounds can we fight for, or even know, what it is women want?
A. I think we begin to suspect that our choices may be political when we see that we are following an existing pattern in society. That doesn’t per se mean that it’s not a personal choice, but the alarms go off when we see that we are impelled toward or there seems to be no choice other than what is the predominant one, two, or three. When we’re faced with more subtle choices, as women are now more likely to be (compared to, say, 25 years ago), I think we have more opportunity to examine what we really as individuals want to do or should do or “what’s right for the individual.” The interplay between culture and individuality and between community and person is always going to be very complicated and very subtle, because we are both unique human beings and communal creatures.
So the question becomes, “What are we impelled toward?” Now, this is a hard argument to make in a materialist-rationalist society that in education, even at its best, tends to treat kids like blank slates on which you can write anything and, at its worst, treats them like little animals whose spirits have to be broken. But I think it’s true. You know, I think that anyone who’s ever met a baby knows that there’s a person in that baby already. There’s the seed of what can become. If we flout too much what is already in the baby, that baby will grow up thinking there’s something wrong with a portion of herself or himself and that feeling that there’s something wrong seems to be the source of most future problems. It’s the source of addictions, the source of violence, the source of feeling you must be in a hierarchy in order to be better than others or worse than others or dependent.
So while we both respect each other’s choices and the pressure under which we make those choices, I think there are unmistakable signs in us of what is more suited to us as a unique person. The signs are joy. The signs are interest. The signs are forgetting everything that’s around you because you’re doing, whether it’s making a bookcase, or solving a computer problem, or talking to another person, whatever it may be. It’s a kind of forgetfulness of all that’s around you and a feeling of satisfaction that means that you might continue to do it whether you get paid or not. I don’t mean to be romantic about it, because that isn’t a feeling that happens all the time, but it happens in moments of unity with the task at hand. And if we allow ourselves to be guided by those moments, I think we will continue to make progress and support each other in our search for those moments.
The Melancholy, Outrage, Resentment, and Shame of MAGA Historians
by Rodney Kennedy
Rodney Kennedy has his M.Div from New Orleans Theological Seminary and his Ph.D. in Rhetoric from Louisiana State University. He pastored the First Baptist Church of Dayton (OH) – which is an American Baptist Church – for 13 years, after which he served as interim pastor of ABC USA churches in Illinois, Kansas, New York, and Pennsylvania. He is now a full-time writer, and lives in Louisiana. His eighth book, Dancing with Metaphors in the Pulpit, was the focus of this righting america interview. And for Kennedy’s most recent sermons and articles, see theprogessivepreacher.com.
David Barton, Robert Jeffress, and Eric Metaxas are three current popular history revisionists. And these revisionists don’t have much interest in the facts.
With the backing of President Trump they have launched a war against American history and historians. Trump, for instance, ordered the interior department to display signs in front of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History that accuse the institution of inaccuracy.
What in the name of George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson is going on here? If our nation didn’t already have more than 17,500 history museums, this trio might be building a “Christian America Museum” next to the Ark Encounter outside Wilmore Kentucky.
As John Fea scans the work of the revisionists, he concludes, “Their understanding of the past has been debunked by nearly every serious American historian, including those who teach at the most conservative Christian colleges.” As a pastor and, just as importantly, a scholar trained in the history and theory of rhetoric, my contribution is to engage the revisionists rhetorically precisely because their arguments are emotionally-grounded.
A Rhetorical Issue
Barton and company are bad rhetoricians. Plato would have called them Sophists. According to Plato the rhetoric of Sophists was “an experience in producing a sort of delight or gratification.” It was predicated on “flattery.”
In Plato’s dialogue the Gorgias, for example, Socrates compares rhetoric to “cookery”—the equivalent of junk food—and observes that although some rhetoric might taste good, consuming it too readily or mindlessly could condemn your soul to an overweight hell of reincarnation. Barton, Jeffress, and Metaxas are junk food rhetoricians.
Joshua Gunn says, “Junk food is pleasurable or exciting or intoxicating, at least until the first swallow. At least until the burps of shame come up.” And the revisionists serve “junk food” as comfort to people in need of a fantasy of a Christian America. Judged as rhetorical arguments, the revisionists are fantasists, flatterers, fake tellers of a facile promise of national salvation. It is a puerile gospel of redemption void of responsibility and repentance.
MAGA has an emotional template for criticizing American historians. It goes like this: For too long, students have been taught a distorted, liberal version of American history. Teachers intentionally make students feel bad about America’s many crimes from its checkered past—slavery, the treatment of Native Americans, and the oppression of women.
Emotion coupled with reason has tremendous potential. There is powerful emotion everywhere in history. Our best historians arouse our deepest emotions when telling the stories of our nation. We feel joy, remorse, sadness, anger, outrage, happiness, pride, shame. MAGA sifts through the emotions and deletes any capable of making them feel bad.
As a teenager from Louisiana, I flooded my bed with tears as I relived Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg and the terrible blunder of General Robert Lee. I have laid furious in my bed after reading a letter from one of my ancestors. He fought for the Confederacy and sent a letter to his “Mama” from Gettysburg. He talked about the soldier next to him having his head blown off by a cannon ball. He wrote of the hell of war. He wanted to come home. He later became a prisoner of war. At the time, I felt sure I could have made better command decisions. But you have to be born Southern to feel that bitter in the dark.
In email correspondence, University of Dayton history professor, William V. Trollinger, wrote me: “Here’s my favorite defense of history, from the great W.E.B. DuBois’ Black Reconstruction (1935): ‘Nations reel and stagger on their way; they make hideous mistakes; they commit frightful wrongs; they do great and beautiful things. And shall we not best guide humanity by telling the truth about all this, so far as the truth is ascertainable?’”
The Fallacy of Emotional Arguments
MAGA evangelicals make emotional arguments in favor of a contrived history of an American golden age. But this reveals the weakness of their argument. Unable to make the case on the facts, realities and interpretation of history, MAGA evangelicals have resorted to emotional proofs. MAGA argues not through sustained reasoning (logos) but through pathos – hyperbole, misinformation, threats, repetition and fantasy.
Are we witnessing an entire nation caught up in an emotional storm? Has America lost its mind?
The temptation for these writers of “Back to the Future” ideologies, prejudices, beliefs and commitments is to make characters remarkably like themselves. I shudder at the thought of George Washington looking remarkably like Barton, Jeffress like Thomas Jefferson and Metaxas like John Adams.
MAGA historians connect their audiences with a pathos-filled tale that, in effect, is saying: “Look at our wonderful evangelical founders. They were evangelicals just like us.” They have produced a history of affects – a litany of emotions designed to make people feel good and feel free.
Do they know they are lying? Do they know the absurdity of wish-fulfilment told as truth? The evangelical baptism of Franklin would be a spectacle. As US ambassador to France, Franklin dressed in Quaker garb and described himself as a “Quaker philosopher.” In his speeches and writings he was a secular Deist. He even testifies to being a “thorough Deist.” When Franklin arrived in Paris, his French counterparts told him they were worried about him having religious convictions. Later they told him they were gratified to learn he had none.
Randall Balmer clarifies what is at stake:
We tend to take history—and historians—for granted. But that is a grievous mistake. An understanding of history helps us understand who we are, where we’ve been and even provides a clue to where we’re headed. It’s no accident, for example, that David Barton masquerades as a historian. He’s a fabulist, of course, not a historian, as has been amply demonstrated by his habit of wrenching quotations out of context and fabricating “evidence” out of whole cloth. Barton is a fraud, but he recognizes the power and importance of history, which is why he’s fashioned a career out of creating this elaborate, false narrative of the American past.
The rhetorical form of evangelical argument consists of four interrelated and mutually reinforcing emotions. Practically devoid of logos and ethos, the four emotions dominating the soul of MAGA and her apologists are melancholy, outrage, resentment and shame.
Melancholy
The first emotion permeating all of MAGA and its revised history is melancholy. It may seem odd to think of melancholy as one of the primary effects of the MAGA movement and its revised history. The tales the revisionists fabricate are melancholic throughout. They represent a failure to confront the crimes of America against African Americans and Native Americans, and our involvement in slavery, colonialism and racism.
I feel a deep sadness for my fellow Americans captured by the emotional arguments of the revisionists. Casey Kelly’s Apocalypse Man: The Death Drive and the Rhetoric of White Masculine Victimhood examines contemporary white masculine victimhood and its compulsion toward death and self-destruction. He identifies the white male melancholia for better days – when “men could be men” – and the white male politics of resentments as tethering white masculinity to a fantasy of annihilation—both their own and others.
What evangelicals claim as a loss turns out to be a lack. They mourn what has never existed. There’s an empty tomb but not by resurrection. There was never a body in the evangelical tomb.
Melancholy has become a death trap for evangelicals. They maintain fealty to the notion of a Christian America, refusing to renounce their attachment to it. Evangelical melancholy is dishonest. They have turned it into feelings of persecution and victimization.
Slavoj Zizek says the melancholic is guilty of committing a kind of paralogism of the pure capacity to desire, which resides in the confusion between loss and lack. Insofar as the object-cause of desire (Christian America) is originally lacking, melancholy interprets this lack as loss, as if the lacking object was once possessed and then lost. Evangelicals have not only created a fantasy history. They have also created a false claim of loss.
The evangelical revisionist historians turn out to be politically naïve, nostalgic, and reactionary. They defend a nonexistent entity, a “purely anamorphic entity that does not exist in itself,” making the entire enterprise delusional.
Outrage
The MAGA emotion machine produces outrage 24/7. These revisionist history writers are furious with what they see as the moral decline of America. And battalions of outrage disciples are on call to respond instantly to every manufactured instance where outrage is considered necessary. MAGA has already given away the rhetorical nature of their attack, as they make primary use of a negative trope – ad hominem – to attack the character of historians, and not the content of what they have written. This is the emotional rhetoric of demagogues, Sophists and evil rhetors.
Attacking American historians as liberal, socialist, atheist, “woke,” or biased has nothing to do with the quality of historical research. Even if a few of the character attacks were factually true, their point is also completely irrelevant to whether historians are writing a biased account. It does not matter if a historian engaged in human sacrifice at every full moon and therefore wrote America was not founded as a Christian nation. Some historian might have kicked puppies and screamed at her editor, and that’s actually irrelevant to whether or not their research and conclusions are true.
“Breathing threats and violence” (Acts 9:1) are apt descriptions of MAGA evangelicals. Those who disagree need to be deported, imprisoned, or killed. Evangelicals often speak of “Lynching,” “firing squads,” “deportation,” “imprisonment” for liberals, Democrats and immigrants.
James Fishback, a GOP candidate for governor in Florida told a Black voter he “should be lynched.” President Trump called Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly and five other Democrats “traitors” who should face trial for sedition – a crime punishable by death. A Republican congressman called for Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde’s deportation after her sermon at President Trump's 2025 inaugural prayer service, where she urged compassion for marginalized groups.
Outrage is the key to virality, success and power for the evangelicals. Read the blogs, listen to the podcasts of Doug Wilson, Sean Feucht, Al Mohler, and a host of MAGA evangelicals. They ooze outrage. It’s like being nibbled to death by ducks.
Resentment
The third MAGA emotion is resentment. And evangelicals and fundamentalists developed a chip on their shoulders in the first decades of the 20th century. For example, fundamentalist patriarch William Bell Riley complained that conservative ministers had “about as good a chance to be heard in a Turkish harem as to be invited to speak within the precincts of a modern State university.”
Evangelical resentment has grown to a Sequoia sized log. At the ceremony opening the Creation Museum, Ken Ham spoke of repairing the damage done to Christianity eighty-two years ago when Clarence Darrow humiliated William Jennings Bryan at the Scopes trial. “It was the first time the Bible was ridiculed by the media in America, and that was a downward turning point for Christendom,” he told the enthusiastic crowd. “We are going to undo all of that here at the Creation Museum.”
MAGA has a particular resentment when liberals presume to teach them about the Bible. Evangelical attacks on the social gospel, liberation theology and progressive thought are as vicious as any political attack. Evangelicals are prone to snap, “Who are you to tell me what the Bible teaches? Who are you to tell me I should accept gays, welcome immigrants or forgive my enemies?”
Shame
The most pernicious emotion haunting MAGA evangelicals is shame. MAGA runs from shame, hides from shame, denies feeling any shame. The previous masters of shame can’t abide being shamed. I believe the consistent evangelical support of Trump comes from his rhetorical ability to offer a facile salvation where they are free to avoid shame and feel dignity.
Most of all, evangelicals don’t want to be made to feel bad even when they deserve to feel bad. They are tired of playing the “bad guy” in the Exodus stories of all the minorities, Jews, women and homosexuals. In 37 states, hiding behind children, they have passed laws to prohibit the teaching of materials that make white students feel bad. When history is reduced to “not feeling bad” we should know we have a problem.
Evangelicals were once the masters of shame, understanding that shame leads to repentance. Ironically, it is now progressives who have embraced shame as a pedagogy for learning how to treat minorities. As Donovan Shaefer observes, “Orientation to shame is one of the cardinal principles of progressivism. Shame on the move—an openness to shame, a trafficking in shame — is how left-wing politics feels.”
But MAGA is having nothing to do with liberal shame. Instead, MAGA’s response to shame has been a furious refusal of culpability. In its desperate attempt to avoid shame, MAGA has perverted love, destroyed empathy and abandoned all pretense of following Jesus’ love for those who are different. The attempt to Christianize America is an attempt to avoid the shame of America’s sins and trespasses, and thus to repeat them.
Conclusion
Christianity represents both the best and the worst of the nation’s history. At its best, it invokes a “good neighbor” policy to the world, gives voice to the voiceless, and a place for the Other. At its worst, it produces an uncompromising resurrection of Jim Crow white supremacy and nativist, exclusionary and American exceptionalism, all of which violates the most basic of Christian principles. And the evangelical revisionist historians attempt to cover all these transgressions with a political/theological ideology fueled by melancholy, outrage, resentment and shame. The revisionist historians are fantasists dwelling in a fantasy world where emotional arguments flourish. When the costume and mask is ripped away, MAGA is left without a history, without a way out and without the promised salvation. They are scarecrows without brains, lions without courage and tin men without hearts – a perverse reversal of the Wizard of Oz fantasy tale.
Instead they are left with a harsh reality: “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6).
Doug Wilson Says Mamdani Voters “Should Lose Their Citizenship”
By Brian Kaylor
Editor’s Note: Rev. Brian Kaylor is editor of Word and Way. This post appeared originally in the Word and Way enewsletter, A Public Witness, and is reposted here by permission.
Doug Wilson, a Christian Nationalist pastor in Idaho and a self-described “paleo-Confederate,” wants to strip the citizenship of anyone who voted for New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani. As leader of the denomination that includes Pete Hegseth, Wilson previously sparked headlines for wanting to repeal the 19th Amendment that gave women the right to vote and for seeking a return to religious tests for officeholders. But during a recent forum on Christian Nationalism, he went a step further to argue people should lose their citizenship for voting for the first Muslim mayor of the Big Apple.
“Citizenship is more of a privilege, dependent upon ancestry, background, how long you’ve been here, whether you meet the qualifications or not,” Wilso said as he insisted citizenship was not a right. “And if America is a creedal nation, then you have to have creedal standards. So anyone who voted for Mamdani should lose their citizenship.”
Wilson’s comment during an event in Moscow, Idaho, sparked applause from the audience that had gathered for a conference hosted by his church. The session on Christian Nationalism featured comments and dialogue by Wilson, Joe Rigney (an associate pastor with Wilson), Albert Mohler (president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary), Paul Miller (a professor at Georgetown University who was mostly offering a counter voice opposing Christian Nationalism), and moderator Jared Longshore (an associate pastor with Wilson). The “Which Way, America?” session was sponsored by Canon Press, a publishing house Wilson founded and that has published many of his works. Canon just published a book, Five Views on Christian Nationalism, featuring Wilson, Rigney, Mohler, Miller, and R.R. Reno — and the session promoted the book by having four of the authors offer remarks and then engage in discussion and debate over various church-state issues.
Before making his remark about Mamdani voters, Wilson argued in the session that he thinks the United States could be considered a creedal nation, calling it “a Christian nation with a Christian consensus, Christian history.” As a result, he insisted that to participate in decision-making, people must acknowledge “the historical reality of our Christian history — which I think is undeniable” and must want to “preserve” the “overwhelmingly Christian ethos” of the United States. He therefore condemned the Biden administration for allowing immigrants to come into the country with a different history and worldview. Wilson insisted that because of immigration, “we’ve lost our bearings.”
Although Wilson did not explicitly explain why he felt Mamdani voters deserved to be stripped of their citizenship, his remarks came after comments by Rigney and Mohler that the immigration of Muslims threatened the United States. Mohler argued that since he believes the U.S. Constitution and polity “is based upon Christianity,” then “one of the biggest problems we face right now” is immigrants who practice Islam. Rigney made the point even more directly, insisting that “religious diversity is destructive. It’s not our strength. Islamic and Hindu immigration erodes America’s Christian core.”
“Hindu and Islamic immigration in particular are harmful because, quite frankly, statues to monkey gods anger the living God,” Rigney added. “He doesn’t like it. Idolatry is offensive to him and we can’t expect his blessing while engaging in that kind of idolatry. Moreover, Islam in particular is adept at manipulating Western Christian and post-Christian structures and policies in order to establish beachheads.”
Wilson previously argued that Muslims and Hindus should not be allowed to hold political office in a “Christian” nation. And he insisted that Muslims, Hindus, Catholics, and other non-Protestants should not be able to worship in public spaces in a “Christian” nation.
In the forum on Christian Nationalism, he did not explain any details for how he would strip citizenship from someone because of the faith of those they vote for. Such a proposal would apparently mean that voting could no longer be done by secret ballot.
As Miller, the author of The Religion of American Greatness: What’s Wrong with Christian Nationalism, pushed back on some of Wilson’s rhetoric, Wilson said he rejects the idea of government neutrality when it comes to religion. He said that while he wanted “denominational neutrality” since “the state should stay out of Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist” disagreements, he wants the Protestant Bible to serve as a governing guide. As an example, Wilson argued that the tax rate should not be more than 10%, which he claimed was based on his reading of the Bible. Wilson later added he wants to repeal the 17th Amendment, which switched the election of U.S. senators from state legislators to a vote of the people in each state, because the new system is too democratic.
Once considered a fringe far-right Christian figure, Wilson in recent years has found himself increasingly embraced by the broader evangelical world and the conservative political movement in the age of Donald Trump. The biggest evidence of his rise is that Hegseth, who likes to call himself the “secretary of war,” is part of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches and invited Wilson to preach at the Pentagon in February. Wilson’s CREC launched a church in Washington, D.C., last year that Hegseth often attends. Rigney recently preached the installation service for its pastor, Brooks Potteiger, who has preached at the Pentagon three times.
Mamdani won the election as mayor of New York City on Nov 4, 2025, with more than 1.1 million votes. Since then, he has been a key target of a surge in Islamophobic rhetoric by Republican politicians and rightwing preachers — including those preaching inside the Pentagon during a war against an Islamic nation.
As a public witness,
Brian Kaylor
A Flat-Earth Preacher’s Understandable Silence about the Scopes Trial
by Glenn Branch
Glenn Branch is deputy director of the National Center for Science Education, a nonprofit organization that defends the integrity of American science education against ideological interference. He is the author of numerous articles on evolution education and climate education, and obstacles to them, in such publications as Scientific American, American Educator, The American Biology Teacher, and the Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics, and the co-editor, with Eugenie C. Scott, of Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design is Wrong for Our Schools (2006). He received the Evolution Education Award for 2020 from the National Association of Biology Teachers.
In his new book, The Power of the Flat Earth Idea (2026), the historian Edward Guimont notes a small mistake in Edward J. Larson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the Scopes trial, Summer for the Gods (1997). There Larson wrote, “Relatively little comment about the trial survives from African Americans. A few black evangelists, such as Virginia’s John Jasper, endorsed Bryan’s position.” Guimont comments, “It would be an impressive feat for Jasper to endorse the attack on evolution twenty-four years after his death—although, as mentioned earlier, modern parishioners of the Sixth Mount Zion Church believe his spirit to haunt it, so Jasper could perhaps provide feedback in that manner.” As it happens, I noticed the same mistake while rereading Summer for the Gods in 2025, although it was news to me that Jasper’s spirit is believed to haunt his old church!
Guimont and I were both ready to detect such a mistake because we’re both interested in the history of flat-earthery, and Jasper was, as it happens, a well-known flat-earther. Indeed, Guimont devotes a chapter of his book to him, entitled “The Unmatched Negro Philosopher”—the title is taken from the subtitle of a 1908 biography. Born a slave in Virginia in 1812, Jasper underwent a religious experience in 1839, leading to his becoming a Baptist minister in the following year, while still enslaved. He was not emancipated until 1865, when Richmond, Virginia, was captured by federal forces. In 1867, he was called to lead the Sixth Mount Zion Church. There, in 1878, he first gave the sermon that made him famous, “The Sun Do Move.” A powerful orator, Jasper would deliver “The Sun Do Move” hundreds of times, often to large audiences, including the Virginia General Assembly, before his death in 1901.
Judging from a printed version published in 1882, “The Sun Do Move” took as its text Exodus 15:3 (“The Lord is a man of war: the Lord is his name” [KJV]), but he turned from the military to the astronomical about halfway through, in the course of a discussion of the book of Joshua. Jasper cited Joshua as proving geocentrism—“the Sun Do Move around the earth”—also citing verses from Malachi, Ecclesiastes, Psalms, Isaiah, and Judges by way of corroboration. He then turned to Revelation 7:1, which refers to the four corners of the earth, arguing, “Now the four angels that stood on the four corners of the earth are an evidence that the earth is squar and not round, for anything that has got four corners is not round, but squar! So we is living on a four-cornered earth sot steady.” (I think that “sot” is a variant past tense form of “set.”) He closed by urging his audience to “stick to the Bible!”
(Parenthetically, printed versions of Jasper’s sermons tend to employ “eye dialect”—“misspellings that are based on standard pronunciations (such as sez for says or kow for cow) but are usually intended to suggest a speaker’s illiteracy or his use of generally nonstandard pronunciations,” per the Encyclopedia Britannica. I quoted from the 1882 version because its use of eye dialect is minimal. A different version, printed in the 1908 biography, renders the discussion of Revelation 7:1 thus: “What do John, und’r de pow’r uv de Spirit, say? He say he saw fo’ anguls standin’ on de fo’ corners uv de earth, holdin’ de fo’ win’s uv de earth, an’ so fo’th.” This is both difficult to read and arguably insulting to Jasper. But I have to admit that I like the challenge that Jasper proceeds to pose in the 1908 biography’s version: “’Low me ter ax ef de earth is roun’, whar do it keep its corners?”)
Guimont offers a possible diagnosis of Larson’s mistake about Jasper, observing, “In March 1925, several months before the Scopes Trial, James S. Hatcher, Reverend of the Third Street Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Richmond, preached a sermon titled ‘The Sun Do Move and the Earth Has Corners,’ a conscious attempt to echo Jasper.” Guimont adds that a contemporary black journalist, Ernest Rice McKinney, reacted to the sermon by explicitly connecting the dots between flat-earthery and antievolutionism, jokingly speculating that “friend Hatcher may have been talking with William Jennings Bryan.” Hatcher and Bryan weren’t in cahoots, of course, but Guimont reports that in the wake of the Scopes trial, Hatcher was asked to preach against evolution in Richmond, concluding that “it does seem that at least in one case, the trial’s outcome led one Flat Earther to Creationism.”
For what it’s worth, I arrived at a different possible diagnosis. Henshaw Ward, a teacher of English turned science popularizer, contributed a piece entitled “Uncle Jasper and Mr. Bryan: Fundamentalism and Absurdity” to The Independent for May 2, 1925. In it, Ward imagines introducing William Jennings Bryan to William E. Hatcher (no discernible relation to the Reverend James S. Hatcher), the author of the 1908 biography of Jasper. “What a funny old darky crotchet it was to preach in these enlightened days that the sun moves,” Bryan exclaims. But Hatcher compares Jasper’s attitude toward the roundness of the earth to Bryan’s attitude toward evolution. “John Jasper was excusable because he was unlettered,” Hatcher charges Bryan. “But what excuse is there for you ... to be sixty years behind theological thought and to use this negro’s logic against the scientists?”
On Guimont’s hypothesis, Larson must have read about Hatcher’s flat-earth sermon echoing Jasper’s, learned or inferred that Hatcher was opposed to teaching evolution, and confused the two preachers. On my hypothesis, Larson must have read Ward’s fiction suggesting that Jasper and Bryan agreed in their basic attitude toward the Bible and misremembered it as documenting that Jasper agreed with Bryan in understanding the Bible to be inconsistent with evolution. To be frank, neither seems to me to be tremendously convincing, especially when Hatcher and Ward were not the only writers to have compared Jasper and Bryan. For example, a black newspaper, The New York Age, suggested in 1922 that Jasper “would find himself reinforced today by the weight of such authorities as the Kentucky legislature [which considered a ban on teaching evolution in 1922] and the Hon. William Jennings Bryan.”
Here, in lieu of a decisive diagnosis, is a closing irony. Although Larson wrote, “Relatively little comment about the trial survives from African Americans,” there was more than he recognized. Among the commentators on the Scopes Trial was the great scholar and activist W.E.B. Du Bois. Writing in the NAACP’s magazine The Crisis, of which he was the editor, in September 1925, Du Bois described the situation in Dayton, Tennessee, as “no laughing matter. It is menace and warning. It is a challenge to Religion, Society and Democracy.” A quarter century earlier, Du Bois was the primary organizer of “The Exhibit of American Negroes” for the 1900 Paris Exposition. Included in the exhibit was a collection of a few hundred books written by American blacks. And among them, according to a report in The New York Times about the collection’s visit to Buffalo, New York, in 1901, was John Jasper’s “The Sun Do Move.”
Is MAGA a Cult?
by Rodney Kennedy
Rodney Kennedy has his M.Div from New Orleans Theological Seminary and his Ph.D. in Rhetoric from Louisiana State University. He pastored the First Baptist Church of Dayton (OH) – which is an American Baptist Church – for 13 years, after which he served as interim pastor of ABC USA churches in Illinois, Kansas, New York, and Pennsylvania. He is now a full-time writer, and lives in Louisiana. His eighth book, Dancing with Metaphors in the Pulpit, was the focus of this righting america interview. And for Kennedy’s most recent sermons and articles, see theprogessivepreacher.com.
Is MAGA a cult? My first inclination was to use a bit of paralipsis (a way of saying two things at once): “I’m not saying MAGA is a cult, I’m just saying there’s cult-like ideas and actions prominent in MAGA.” Such a strategy would be disingenuous on my part. I would be using the favorite misleading trope of the demagogue.
If labeling MAGA as a cult is more than shameless name-calling, and it is in fact a cult, then our inquiry has other questions to address. Why has this idea gained such popular support? Why are millions around the country tempted to support the president? These are questions that matter, and they matter for reasons that extend all the way to the issue of American democracy itself.
This is an investigation, not an inquisition. Therefore, I have chosen to use comparison as my primary argumentative strategy. I will compare Trump/MAGA to Jim Jones/converts. The argument is simple: Jim Jones’ movement was a cult. Comparing MAGA to Jones’ movement determines whether or not MAGA is a cult.
If we agree cults are dangerous and anti-democratic, and I think most Americans do, then we want to understand what happened in a historical cult that enabled one man to rise to power and lead an entire group of converts to a tragic ending.
It’s important, therefore, to see, when it comes to MAGA, if there really is another cult under construction, and not just fling that accusation at any group we dislike.
And maybe MAGA is merely a loose collection of unhappy Americans, each convinced he or she is right. As David French puts it, “After all, when you’re absolutely certain that you’re right — that the policies you advance will defend liberty and defend justice — then isn’t zealotry called for?”
Maybe MAGA is just an amalgamation of mistrustful, angry and frustrated voters who are disillusioned with the establishment, and who have watched too many campaign ads portraying the Democrats as demons, haters of America and destroyers of faith.
That said, correspondents are writing long articles insisting MAGA is a cult. Nick Cattogio’s Dispatch column on Ken Paxton’s victory over John Cornyn in the Texas GOP Senate primary argues “Republican voters are …. Hellbent on purging incumbents in primaries: They are in their Jonestown phase. Disappointed in Trump’s economic failures yet psychologically unable to hold him (or themselves) accountable, they’re coping by turning more radically cultish and flogging heretics like Cornyn, Thomas Massie, and Bill Cassidy instead.”
The paradigmatic tragic cult in American history is Jim Jones and his followers. Jim Jones has been dead for almost 50 years. It seems wise to remind ourselves of this fact given the continued use of his movement in our politics. Jim Jones and “cult” are twinned in our memory. While people may not know the historical details, the mention of Kool-Aid, cyanide, Jonestown and suicide are still prevalent in our language. “Drinking the Kool-Aid” is still hurled at those we wish to discredit and remains a well-used trope of derision in our politics.
Jimmy Kimmel made fun of Marjorie Taylor Greene: “Here’s a woman, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who didn’t just drink the Kool-Aid, she chugged it. I mean, she drank all the Kool-Aid. And not just the regular flavors like Close the Borders and The Election Was Stolen.”
The phrase to drink the Kool-Aid has three meanings:
- To accept foolish and irrational ideas as truth.
- To commit suicide
- To demonstrate unquestioning obedience or loyalty.
Unquestioning obedience is in itself a kind of political suicide. Blind obedience includes membership in the tribe and deference to its leader. The followers abdicate judgment to the leader. Belief and obedience are almost automatic. Followers accept and believe that the past was as the leader portrays it, that the present is as he depicts it, and that the future will be as he predicts it. And they follow without hesitation his prescriptions for action.
MAGA abdicates personal critical thinking for a cult-like level of commitment, an allegiance to an authoritarian leader and blind obedience to the leader. MAGA submits to Trump’s authority. In this regard, it acts like a cult.
Jim Jones' Cult
Jim Jones was a charismatic preacher with a stormy and controversial professional career. Jones carefully developed a pattern of speaking unceasingly of the “enemies.” As a skillful evangelist, Jones made real an array of enemies within the lives of his converts.
His movement, rooted in suspicion, mistrust and fear, especially of the government, the FBI and the CIA, was defined by paranoia. The movement evolved from a church to a political movement.
Jones started claiming he was God. Not satisfied being a servant of God, “God’s anointed,” Jones claimed he was God. He claimed, “I came as the God to eliminate all your false Gods.”
Jones vividly pictured himself as a God invulnerable to death. “You have never seen anyone shot down before your eyes and heal themselves. I, yet I have done it. I’m the only God you’ve ever seen, with blood gushing out of his chest, who, after the nurses put their fingers in the bullet holes, just wiped his hand across his chest, and closed him. Your God is one of the people. He is the instrument of all you’ve ever desired, all that freedom embraces., all that justice embodies, all that sensitivity involves. This is what your God is.”
During a sermon, Jones would take the Bible and throw it on the floor and shout, “Too many people are looking at this and not at me.” All eyes, all attention, all adoration had to be on him. He was the ultimate authority.
Jones was a preacher of questionable character. He resorted to tricks (demagoguery) to influence converts: he frightened and manipulated his followers; the espoused religious values at variance with Christian faith but called it Christian; he proclaimed political ideals contrary to the American system; he preached hatred; he made empty promises. The focus of the movement was on Jones as the divine one, the Chosen One, the anointed one. He was the ultimate authority, the ultimate source.
Do Trump and MAGA check all the boxes of the cult form? Our task becomes investigating whether or not he is another Jones-like figure, playing his evil tunes, luring people down the Jonestown road. If, as his critics insist, Trump is deeply flawed and a clear and present danger to democracy, all Americans should want to know and act in democratic ways to make sure MAGA never evolves into a powerful cult with the capacity to destroy democracy.
Charismatic Leader ✓
Trump is a powerful charismatic leader. Charismatic leadership requires complete acquiescence and submission from all followers. It is a relationship of pure hierarchy because it can withstand an extraordinary amount of disconfirming evidence (that the leader is a serial liar, a sexual pervert, not a good person, does not have the character to be president, is out of his depth, makes emotional decisions which are bad) by simply rejecting them. Any admission of a flaw on the part of Trump would destroy the relationship. Therefore dissent can’t be allowed.
Multiple Exigencies ✓
Trump is a genius at exigency marking: immigrants, the “Deep State,” the Justice Department, Democrats, communists. The Trump “Enemies Factory” churns out enemies as needed.
Trump successfully made the federal government, the Judiciary, Congress, civil service and the media enemies of the people. The CIA and the FBI were enemies. Scapegoats were firmly established within a framework of paranoia, distrust and suspicion. Even scientists and historians have been cast as “the enemy.” Trump sees as many “enemies’ in the academy as Senator McCarthy saw communists in Hollywood.
Trump’s shifting collection of enemies changes with the political winds. For almost a decade, immigrants have been Trump’s enemy du jour. Yet in his July 3 and July 4th speeches, he recycled an old enemy – communism. He mentions communism 13 times in the two speeches designed to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary of independence. Trump raised from the dead his long-time personal attorney, Roy Cohn, who was McCarthy’s lead prosecutor in the campaign to root out all communists.
MAGA keeps standing by their man even through his disastrous architectural destruction of the White House and grounds. The reflecting pool has become the defining trope of Trumpism. And MAGA keeps drinking the Kool-Aid even though it has turned green in the pitcher.
The Authoritarian Threat to Democracy ✓
The real danger is that Trump’s magical potion has poisoned American trust in democracy. Democracy itself is in the crosshairs of a warring MAGA. Trump has injected his magical potion with deep mistrust and suspicious. The government is seen as working against the people. Historians, scientists, government workers, military generals and admirals, election officials, the judiciary, the media, the television networks, universities, the health care system, the hurricane watchers, the environmentalists – all lumped under the label of “Don’t trust.”
According to Trump logic, the system has been poisoned by the Democrats with election-stealing, wokeness policies, waste, moral decay and chicanery. And Trump intends to clean up the corruption. And he believes he has the right to use any means to prevent the enemy from victory. And MAGA keeps drinking the Kool-Aid. At least 60% of Republicans, against all reason and evidence, still believe the 2020 election was stolen.
David French, in a New York Times op-ed, “Is America’s MAGA Wing Giving Up on America?,” raises the question of the future of democracy. Timothy Snyder warns of the danger of tyranny. James Miller asks, Is Democracy Possible? Anne Applebaum writes of the “twilight of democracy.” Cornel West, in Democracy Matters identifies three dogmas threatening democracy: free-market fundamentalism, aggressive militarism and escalating authoritarianism. American historian David Blight warns, “It is time to see the real enemy – a long-brewing American-style neo-fascist authoritarianism, beguilingly useful to the grievances of the disaffected, and threatening to steal our microphones midway through our odes to joy.”
Faith in democracy is shaken in the USA. According to a Yahoo News-YouGov poll nearly half of Americans (55% Democrats, 53% Republicans and 49% overall) believe the US is “likely to cease to be a democracy in the future.” Thomas Edsall says, Trump’s “MAGA movement shows no signs of abating.”
Sean Wilentz, prizewinning author of The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln, asserts, “We’re on the verge of what Hamilton in ‘The Federalist’ called government by brute force.”
In other words, MAGA renders all publics precarious.
A God Complex ✓
It’s worth asking: does Trump think he’s God? Or is he simply riding the wave of religious zeal in MAGA to take political advantage? After the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump said, “I’m supposed to be dead.” Four days later he said, “I’m not supposed to be here.” And he added: “But something very special happened. Let’s face it. Something happened.” “It’s … an act of God.” In his victory speech in November, 2024, he claimed, “God spared my life for a reason. In his second inaugural address, he asserted, “I was saved by God to make America great again.” “It changed something in me,” he said in his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast at the Washington Hilton in February.
Trump seems personally convinced by the evangelical campaign to make him God-like. Professor of philosophy at the University of New England, David Livingstone Smith, said, “Trump is a sacred leader. His evangelical followers often refer to him as a ‘savior’ or ‘anointed one’ chosen by God.”
Conclusion
Even when all the ingredients for making a cult are present, it still may not be a cult. Having the ingredients for gumbo and making a good gumbo are not the same.
MAGA contains all the ingredients for making a cult, but falls short. It is on the road to Jonestown but lacks the twisted will necessary to take the final step. Too much narcissism, too much unmitigated desire for power and too much insistence on being right about everything holds them in check. The vices of MAGA will save them from suicide; their virtues have all been eaten away by the moths.
MAGA is still dangerous. It is a conviction and a freedom. MAGA refuses to tolerate the age of liberal tolerance. They have rebelled against it while swearing on the Bible they are not racists or sexists. They have been granted, by Trump, the freedom to act on their conviction. They claim they are holy, reasonable and honorable people. They are acting in clarity to restore Western civilization and American Christianity. They are starting a New Order of things, which is actually the old order of white male supremacy.
MAGA turns out to be Americans stuck in the 1950’s who are unable to transition to the 21st century. Probably not a cult, but dangerous as hell.
Christian Nationalism Echoes the Ideology of the Ku Klux Klan
by Tony Klimek
Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the Dayton Daily News. We are grateful for permission to share it on RightingAmerica.
Tony Klimek is a retired engineer who regular columnist for the Dayton Daily News.
History can help our nation understand its past, provide clarity about current events, and help us move forward and fulfill the ideals of our country. As we commemorate our 250th anniversary, we should acknowledge our successes and our darkest moments, including the painful history of the Ku Klux Klan. After the civil war, the first Klan was a local, southern organization focused on terrorizing newly freed Black Americans. The second Klan of the 1920s was a larger nationwide political force and had a strong presence in the Miami Valley.
I recently attended a presentation about the second Klan by William Trollinger, a retired professor from the University of Dayton. The presentation provided information about our region’s history and the basis to see similarities between the second Klan and today’s Christian nationalism.
Many changes were occurring in America in the 1920s. Waves of Catholic and Jewish immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe were continuing to arrive, folks from the country were moving to cities, women were gaining more freedom and rights, and the great migration of Black workers from the south to northern and Midwest cities was beginning. The second Klan exploited these changes by spreading fear that our traditional way of life was in danger and only white Protestants were 100% American. The Klan said that the character of America was being erased by outsiders, and that they were protectors of our country’s heritage. They wrapped their bigotry and white supremacy ideology in the symbols of Christianity and patriotism. American flags and Bibles were prominently displayed during their events. They said that their burning cross represented the sacrificial service of Christ, but it soon became a symbol of terror.
The Klan conflated American history with their bigoted brand of Christianity and proclaimed themselves as defenders of 100% Americanism. Blacks, Jews and Catholics were identified as threats to the American way of life. Klan literature, and pro-Klan ministers asserted that “Jesus was the first Klansman” and proposed that white supremacy was a mainstream Christian duty. Protestant clergymen supported the movement and Klan ideology.
During the second Klan, Ohio had more Klan members than almost any other state in the country, with approximately 400,000 members. It had a strong presence in the Miami Valley and operated as a visible, mainstream organization with an estimated 15,000 members in Dayton. In 1923, more than 7,000 hooded Klansmen held a massive parade in Dayton. The group held regular rallies and cross-burnings at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds.
The local targets of the Klan included the growing Black population and the region’s large Catholic and immigrant communities. Klan propaganda warned that the University of Dayton (UD) was the headquarters of Catholic subversion in southwest Ohio. They even claimed that UD’s ROTC program was training a Catholic army to fight religious wars on behalf of the Pope. In December 1923, the local Klan exploded twelve bombs on campus and lit a cross on fire on the west side of campus. There were no more bombings after that event, but cross burnings continued until 1926. The Klan terrorists that placed and exploded the bombs were never identified or brought to justice.
The Klan collapsed in the late 1920s because widespread financial corruption and moral scandals within the organization. Politicians stopped espousing the Klan rhetoric and, in an effort to avoid confrontation, people and organizations quit talking about the Klan and tried to bury its history.
Unfortunately, as we face changes and uncertainty today, the Klan ideology has been resurrected and repackaged as Christian nationalism. Members of the movement do not wear white robes or burn crosses, but their rhetoric is similar to the Klan’s and they promote the false narrative that America was founded as divinely ordained white Christian nation. They create and exploit the fear of immigrants, a changing world, and uncertainty. They blame immigrants and those that are different for our problems and promote the false nostalgia of a mythical time of pure white protestant bliss.
The concept of Christian nationalism is false and un-American. The creed and the success of our country is not aligned with rhetoric and policies of the Klan and Christian nationalism. Americans are not defined by race, ethnicity, religion, or where your ancestors are buried. We and our leaders need to acknowledge and reject the dark history of the Klan and the false narrative of Christian nationalism.
We will continue to be a great country by continuing to attract and welcome a diversity of smart and hardworking people from around the world, upholding the ideals of our creed, and creating an environment for continued success for all Americans.
Despite the Failure to Meet Attendance Projections, the Kentucky GOP loves Ark Encounter
by Daniel Phelps
Daniel Phelps is a retired environmental geologist for the commonwealth of Kentucky. He has also taught part-time in Kentucky’s Community College system. Phelps is founder and president of the Kentucky Paleontological Society. His work to expose the pseudoscience behind Ham’s Ark Encounter was featured in the award-winning 2019 documentary, “We Believe in Dinosaurs.” And in 2021 the Paleontological Society – the world’s leading scientific organization devoted to studying invertebrate and vertebrate paleontology, micropaleontology, and paleobotany – awarded Phelps the prestigious Strimple Award, which recognizes outstanding achievement in paleontology by someone who does not make a full-time living from paleontology.
Recently, Answers in Genesis CEO Ken Ham has produced a lot of propaganda celebrating the fact that the Ark has been open for 10 years in July. Propaganda that fails to acknowledge that the Ark has never come close to the 1.2 to 2.2 million annual visitors projected by Answers in Genesis.
But in early July, an Ark representative gave questionable testimony about Ark attendance to the Kentucky Legislature Committee on Tourism. A few days later the Kentucky House GOP posted this video to YouTube. Apparently, Representative Kim King once counted 15 out of state license plates in the Ark parking lot!
Wowie!
The purpose of the Tourism committee meeting – which consisted primarily of Ark propaganda – is unclear. Could the long-term goal be to give the Ark more tax incentives or some other Kentucky taxpayer money? At about 44 minutes in the Ark's representative claims a million visitors a year, while Dr. William Trollinger, based on information from my monthly Kentucky Open Records Act requests, demonstrates the Ark has never come close to their attendance projections that were made when bullying the state, Grant County, and the City of Williamstown out of perks to build the Ark. (Note: These numbers don't include free admission for children under 10 and yearly or lifetime pass holders.)
In June 2026, the Ark sold 96,004 tickets according to my monthly Kentucky Open Records Act request. This is up 4,520 tickets compared to June of last year, but much lower than 2024 numbers. Although this is better than last year's precipitous drop, it is still not good news for the Ark.
Because the Ark will have been open ten years, it means the Ark's $1.825 million/year sales tax incentive rebate will expire either in July, 2027 or at the end of the fiscal year. How will they adapt to losing this annual chunk of change from the Commonwealth of Kentucky's teat? Will they get a Christian Nationalist legislator or perhaps a future Republican Governor to help them find more money from Kentucky's treasury? (Perhaps a tax incentive package for their long-planned Tower of Babel reconstruction and ride?)
I predict, at a minimum, the Ark will go from for-profit to non-profit so they won't have to pay Williamstown the safety-fee money. Thus, Williamstown and Grant County will be on the hook for police, fire, and infrastructure costs for a non-profit ministry that once promised them streets of gold.
With gasoline and other expenses soaring, it will be interesting to see how the Ark amusement park fares in remaining summer months. Despite low ticket sales, the Ark and Answers in Genesis seems awash in cash. The Ark opened a new "Welcome Center" for visitors in March, presumably with more opportunities for visitors to spend money. It is amusing to see how outrageously expensive admission has become (adult 1 day tickets are approximately $55) and how the operators find new ways to all but vacuum money out of visitor's pockets with extras such as the virtual reality rides ($16.50), zip lines ($59 to $144), tree sloth experience ($60), macropod (kangaroo and wallaby) experience ($40), bird of prey experience ($50), camel encounter ($5), mining sluice (mineral and fossil bags) ($10 to $55), plus guided Ark tours ($25), and parking ($15).
In any case, these numbers indicate that the Ark will never come near the 1.2 to 2.2 million projected by Answers in Genesis when they were begging and bullying for financial perks from various governmental entities.
P.S.
by William Trollinger
I am sure it goes without saying that Ken Ham never acknowledges how Ark attendance has fallen far short of the projections made when, to quote Dan Phelps, “bullying the state, Grant County, and the City of Williamstown out of perks to build the Ark.” According to those projections, Ark attendance in Year 8 of its existence would have been at just about 2.5 million; at 682,101 visitors, the Ark reached but 27% of its projected attendance.
This failure to come close to their own attendance predictions may explain why Ken Ham has taken to making the case that The Ark Encounter, which teaches the gospel clearly through various exhibits, attracts many non-Christian visitors – they make up about 30% of its total visitors – and our extensive guest surveys reflect that an estimated 70,000+ people a year trust Christ for salvation as a result of their visit. I would call that a fantastic investment in people’s eternity.
Oh my. Here are just a few observations about Ham’s claim:
- Sue Trollinger and I have visited the Ark numerous times, and the notion that 30% of Ark visitors (in year 8,204,630 individuals) are “non-Christian” seems, well, ludicrous. Listening to our fellow visitors, and talking with others who have visited the Ark, it has been obvious that the vast majority of folks in attendance are evangelicals and fundamentalists. Of course, these numbers come from Ham and company, and besides everything else, they are the ones deciding which folks qualify as “non-Christian.” (Fundamentalists who have “backslidden,” perhaps?)
- Accepting their numbers as legitimate, this would mean that in Year 8 61,389 individuals decided to “trust Christ for salvation as a result of their visit.” Again, this seems, well, ludicrous. Again, these numbers come from Ham and company. But perhaps the Ark’s extreme emphasis on Hell – represented here by the global Flood which (according to Ark placards) drowned up to 20 billion (billion, not million) individuals – so frightened 61,839 individuals in Year 8 that they claimed a religious experience. Maybe it is like the camps I attended as an adolescent, when the sermons on hell inevitably resulted in evangelical teenagers (often the same teenagers, year after year after year) streaming forward to “rededicate” their lives to Christ.
- The overwhelming emphasis on Hell makes obvious what sort of “gospel” the Ark is teaching so “clearly.” A gospel of eternal torture for the vast majority of human beings. Sermon on the Mount? Matthew 25? Not so much.
