What is it about ‘the Jews,’ American Protestants, and Israel/Palestine?
by Jim Sleeper
Jim Sleeper, a writer and teacher on American civic culture and politics, was a lecturer in political science at Yale from 1999-2020. His reportage and commentary have appeared in most major American newspapers and magazines. In the 1990s he appeared occasionally on The PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer, the Charlie Rose show, and National Public Radio’s “Talk of the Nation” and was a commentator on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” Sleeper writes frequently about American civic culture, ethno-racial politics and identity, early America history, electoral politics, foreign policy, higher education, and freedom of speech. (See “Recent Work” on this site.)
Author’s Preface
Israel invaded Gaza 28 centuries ago, but few Americans know that such ancient “undercurrent events” ever really happened, let alone that they still drive “current events” that divert our attention from deeper realities. The following essay, revised slightly from one that I wrote for Salon in 2024, doesn’t track or parse current events in Israel/Palestine. Instead, it takes a dive, or at least a dip, into long–running undercurrents that are still shaping the conflict — especially as it figures in American Jews’ and Protestants’ preoccupations with it.
Not only Jews obsess about Israel/Palestine. So do some descendants and legatees of early American Puritans who infused that obsession into America’s civic-republican culture from its beginnings. Still more obsessive are today’s evangelical Christian Zionists, sometimes in ways that imperil Jews’ full standing and security in the United States, as I warned in 2019 in Tikkun and on the London-based website openDemocracy.net.
The original Salon essay was posted in March, 2024, and re-posted almost immediately by the international website Reset.doc, which also translated it into Italian. It was also excerpted and assessed on the website of The Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College. But if you’re inclined to read the essay itself after you’ve read this brief preface to it, please read the updated version that’s right below it here on screen.
When Salon posted my essay under the headline, “Israel and the Puritans: A Dangerous Historical Romance,” charges that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza were becoming plausible. But equally plausible were doubts about the protestors’ motives and intentions. Since mid-summer of 2024, however, Israel’s strategies have become genocidal in reality and in some of its strategists’ intentions. At the least, the strategies amount to brutal ethnic cleansing.
Explanations of its causes and origins differ, but anyone who thinks that I’m interpreting the biblical and 17th-Century undercurrents to justify the current events is misreading this essay, which has been updated only slightly here below to add some of my references but not to change my assessment. Having grown up in an intersection of my family’s ancestral Jewish tradition and education and, on the other hand, my youthful encounters with strong Protestant, Calvinist traditions that dominated my hometown, I’m trying here to depict converging, conflicting realities that drive many Americans’ ‘Judeo-Christian’ preoccupations with the Israeli/Palestinian war.
Some commentators and editors have dived under their desks or jumped out of windows instead of reporting or sharing what I actually show here. But others have commented in ways that can enhance our understanding of what’s developing.
For example, the head of a private school who teaches in Columbia College’s Contemporary Civilization curriculum sent a message to a mutual friend calling this essay
“a fascinating and intellectually rich article, the difficult paradoxes of which may escape most modern readers…. But if we are ever to escape the binary thinking of every political and civic argument that plagues us currently, we need historically nuanced analyses like Sleeper’s. The ancestral thread tying Calvinists and ancient Hebrews together is a lens I hadn’t seen through before, though most of us know the two sides of each (culture? religion?) — its ambitious, questing, covenantal side and its ‘manifest destiny’ brutality.”
A political and intellectual historian in New York wrote me, “Thanks for sending this amazing piece. I devoured it immediately. I know a bit about the Biblical influence on New England’s elimination of America’s very own Canaanites, but most of the works you cite were new to me. I am also glad you appreciate the work of my friend Adam Shatz. Anyway, it seems to me you have the core of a book condensed into a few pages here. I hope you keep developing this line of thought.”
Dive in with me now as I keep on developing this line of thought. Here’s a link to the essay. Help me develop these ideas by sending your comments to me at jimsleeper12@gmail.com.
How the Scopes Trial was Almost Scooped
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 1925, a young teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, was convicted of violating a state law that forbade the state’s educators “to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.” Especially now, as its centennial year is being commemorated in various ways across the nation, the Scopes “monkey” trial is widely known. But the details of a similar controversy in New Mexico three years earlier deserve to be remembered as well.
Famously, the antievolution crusade of the 1920s was launched by William Jennings Bryan, a politician of national stature, who began to encourage the passage of bans on the teaching of evolution at both the state and the local level early in the decade. Probably as a result, in the summer of 1922, the school board in Fort Sumner, New Mexico — perhaps most famous as the site where the outlaw Billy the Kid was shot and killed — adopted a resolution forbidding the teaching of evolution in the town’s schools, and calling for the resignation of any offending teacher.
Fort Sumner’s superintendent of schools, F. E. (for Finis Ewing: he was evidently named after the founder of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church) Dean, was summering in his home state of Missouri when he received a copy of the resolution. He decided that it would not be useful to argue about the resolution at a distance, planning instead on his return to Fort Sumner to argue in person to the board that “I had not been teaching the...doctrine of evolution in the form attributed to me” and moreover to explain that the antievolution resolution was unworkable.
“A good many of the texts used in every high school teach evolution,” Dean later explained in the local newspaper, the Fort Sumner Leader. “In fact, all modern science, even in elementary texts …, is written from the evolutionary point of view. It is even true[,] as LeConte says, that evolution is more than half of modern thought.” (Not quite: in his Evolution and its Relation to Religious Thought (1889), Joseph LeConte wrote that evolution “is literally one half of all science.”) Dean added, “[T]here is no entering even the vestibule of modern thought except thru [sic] a knowledge of evolution.”
While still in Missouri, Dean wrote to the New Mexico superintendent of schools to ask whether the board could legally insist on the resignation of any teacher who taught evolution. The superintendent referred the question to the state attorney general’s office, which answered that it could not. But the board got wind of Dean’s inquiry, and demanded his immediate resignation “on the ground of my manifest insincerity in agreeing to the resolution and then going over their heads to the Attorney General,” as Dean later explained in the Fort Sumner Leader.
According to Dean, certain members of the board sent him letters “assuring me of the friendly feeling of the Board for me” and blaming the resolution on “public sentiment.” Yet, he was told, “my usefulness was at an end in Fort Sumner and that if I insisted on holding to my contract and returning the school would be torn to pieces.” Unable to return immediately to defend himself, Dean decided to acquiesce, explaining, “I have pioneered long enough. ... If the community wants this sort of injustice done to itself, or will even stand for it, it is none of my affairs.”
The front page of the next issue of the Fort Sumner Leader, published August 18, 1922, was almost entirely consumed with reactions to Dean’s resignation. The Alumni Association of the Fort Sumner High School expressed its “love and appreciation” for Dean, and reassured him, and the public, that “we HAVE NOT learned from your teachings that the ‘Mottled ape is our grand-father.’ [Emphasis in original. I don’t recognize the allusion seemingly indicated by the quotation marks.] Neither has it shattered our faith in the bible and made infidels of us.”
Not everybody was supportive. Someone, possibly a minister, with the surname of Smith — the initials are unclear: possibly P. L. S. — wrote in opposition to evolution, invoking various authorities, including “Dr. [Robert] Etheridge, Fossiologist [a word sadly no longer in vogue!] of the British Museum,” “Prof. [Lionel Smith] Beale, of King’s College, London,” and the British biologist William Bateson, who supposedly rejected evolution. Smith added, “Woodrow Wilson does not believe that man came from the beast. So I suppose he is a back number [i.e, out of date].”
Thanks to Smith’s contribution, a vestige of the Fort Sumner controversy would later appear in the Scopes trial. Dean apparently asked his former teacher Winterton C. Curtis, a professor of zoology at the University of Missouri, to investigate Smith’s authorities. Etheridge and Beale were both dead, but Curtis duly wrote not only to his fellow scientist Bateson but also to the former president Wilson, who replied, “Of course, like every other man of intelligence and education, I do believe in organic evolution. It surprises me that at this late date such questions should be raised.”
Three years later, when Curtis was among the expert witnesses for the defense in the Scopes trial, he included the reply from Wilson (who died in 1924) in his affidavit, prefaced by the explanation “Evolution has been generally accepted by the intellectually competent who have taken the trouble to inform themselves with an open mind. The following letter was written in response to a request to state his position, it having been alleged that he was not a believer in organic evolution.” But because the judge decided to exclude expert witness testimony, Wilson’s reply played no role in the Scopes trial.
The only scholar to have taken note of Dean, A. G. Cock (in his “Bateson’s Two Toronto Addresses, 1921: 2. Evolutionary Faith,” published in the Journal of Heredity in 1989), suggests, “Dean deserves to be remembered, along with John T. Scopes, as an early hero of the continuing fight for the right to teach evolution in U.S. schools.” But Cock wasn’t able to follow Dean’s career further: after Curtis told Bateson in November 1922 that Dean hadn’t secured a new position yet, “at least as far as the sources available to me disclose, he disappears from the record.”
I was luckier, having found Dean’s obituary in the Arizona Independent Republic for April 11, 1941. Apparently Dean moved to Arizona in late 1922 or 1923, where he taught in St. David for two years, served as a principal in Benson for seven years, and served as a superintendent of schools in Williams for seven years. After he was discharged from the latter position, he left the education field, engaging in the real estate business and operating a bookstore. He died on April 9, 1941, at the age of 64, owing to complications after a fall in which he broke a left thigh bone.
It isn’t clear why Dean decided to resign from his position in Fort Sumner. He thought that the majority of townsfolk were on his side, and he seems to have been right: the local parent-teacher association adopted resolutions protesting his treatment and urging the board to revoke its resolution and refuse his resignation. His health may have played a role: although he was only 47, he complained that he was “worn out” by the controversy. But if he had fought the board, the resulting trial might have scooped the Scopes trial.
That is, it is perfectly reasonable to imagine that in 2022 we might have devoted great attention to the centenary of the Dean “monkey” trial.
Built to fail: Gaza’s new U.S.-based aid system, and its Trump-supporting Christian Zionist director
by Paul Braterman
Paul Braterman is Professor Emeritus in Chemistry, University of North Texas, and Honorary Research Fellow (formerly Reader) at the University of Glasgow. His research has involved topics related to the early Earth and the origins of life, and received support from NSF, NASA, Sandia National Labs, and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He is now interested in sharing scientific ideas with the widest possible audience, and was involved in successful campaigns to persuade both the English and the Scottish Governments to keep creationism out of the science classroom. He blogs at Primate’s Progress, paulbraterman.wordpress.com.
Blockade has brought Gaza to the brink of famine. The aid system recently imposed by the US and Israel is unfit for purpose. People trying to get to the aid centers are being killed. None of this was necessary. [1]
Trump is an effective mafioso, and as such he is at pains to reward those who have brought him to power. Among them, the vaccination conspiracy theorists, rewarded with the appointment of RFK Junior to the position where he can do the most harm. Intellectual nihilists, rewarded with the appointment of one of their own as Vice President, and the onslaught on the intellectual independence of the Universities. Lunatic fringe Christians with the establishment of Paula White's Faith Office within the White House.
For Christian Zionists, Trump’s reward is the appointment of Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel, and now the appointment of Johnnie Moore as head of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Huckabee does not even recognize that the Israeli presence on the West Bank is an occupation. He describes the area in biblical terms as Judaea and Samaria, and regards Israel as having a natural right of possession, by virtue of what God told Abraham in Genesis 15.
Another self-proclaimed Christian Zionist is Johnnie Moore, chosen to lead the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which has been responsible for the distribution of aid since 26 May 2025. GHF seems to have the backing of the US and Israeli governments. However, it is a private not-for-profit based in Delaware, and as such is not responsible to Congress and is not subject to Freedom of Information Act requests. Its funding sources have not been made public and it is not clear who is in charge. Trump had earlier appointed Moore to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom.
Moore began his career at Liberty University, which is an explicitly six day creationist school, where he became a Professor of Religion. He was at one time a supporter of Ben Carson’s presidential run (Carson regards evolution as a lie from the pit of hell), butbecame co-chair of Trump’s 2016 Evangelical Advisory Board, was a strong supporter of Trump’s 2017 moving the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, advised the first Trump administration that “those that bless Israel will be blessed,” and welcomed Huckabee’s appointment as ambassador. He has long described himself as an advocate for Israel because of his religious beliefs, sayingthat “Israel has impacted me far, far more than almost anything else. I almost can’t think of my life as inseparable from Israel in some ways.”. He has no relevant organizational experience, and has echoed Israeli claims (see below) that reports of Palestinians being shot by the IDF are terrorist-inspired lies.
Reporting on Gaza is difficult, with BBC and other journalists complaining about lack of access. As The Guardian reports, since 7 October 2023 foreign journalists have only been allowed entry to Gaza under Israeli military escort, have no freedom of movement, and are not allowed to directly address Palestinians. Mortality has been high among Palestinian journalists and media workers, with over 180 dead, at least 19 of whom, according to the US non-profit Committee to Protect Journalists, were directly murdered by Israeli forces.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, over 54,000 Palestinians have been killed in the current conflict (as of 4 June 2025), more than 15,000 of them children. The Israeli authorities invariably dispute such figures, claim that their forces have acted in self-defense or as necessary for purposes of combat, or (especially with regard to the events discussed here) believed themselves to be threatened by unauthorized moving crowds, and have attributed deaths to shooting by Hamas, but as explained above it is difficult to verify these claims. The horrific terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel on 7 October 2023 had left 1,175 dead, including 800 civilians, with Hamas claiming to have taken some 200 hostages, with 50 more being held by other groups.
The delivery of adequate supplies of food and other essentials to Gaza is the responsibility of Israel, as the occupying power. This is not in dispute. Until March of this year, aid was distributed by UNRWA, which the Israeli government has long accused of being infiltrated by Hamas. In March, this was shut down, to be replaced by GHF, which did not begin operations until the very end of May.
There was a good report on the immediate effect of this change by Sky News, while the Guardian has described the related organizational tumult. There are only four aid distribution centers, compared to hundreds when the UN was in charge. They are poorly positioned, and aid recipients have to walk at least a mile and a half through the combat zone.
It is almost as if the main function of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is to ensure that as little humanitarian aid as possible actually reaches the people in Gaza who need it. The day before GHF began distributions, the director, a former Marine, Jake Wood, resigned, having found his position impossible. Boston Consulting Group, involved in managing the logistics, has also withdrawn, citing lack of “buy-in from multilateral stakeholders.” A recent (8 June 2025) Sky News interview with a British doctor just returned from Gaza describes the effects of the two-month interruption of aid, the effect of malnutrition on patients’ wound healing, and the inadequacy of GHF compared with the UN-based system that it replaces. Sky News is preparing a documentary, based on the experience of outside doctors working in Gaza. (Disclosure: I support their work, by donating to Médecins sans Frontieres.)
I have done my best to unravel a chaotic series of events, using several accounts from what I judged to be reliable sources. [2] There is already severe malnourishment, and according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, nearly 71,000 children in Gaza under the age of five are expected to be acutely malnourished over the next 11 months. GHF has been overwhelmed, with chaotic scenes as hungry crowds pushed over the wire fences meant to control them. On three (update; now apparently four) separate occasions during GHF’s first ten days of operation, Israeli troops fired on people seeking aid, killing 30 on June 1, and 27, including children, at the same site on June 3, with hundreds wounded. Médecins Sans Frontières has independently reported on the June 3 incident as evidence of GHF’s structural inadequacy. According to a Gaza civil defense spokesman, the IDF opened fire using tanks and drones. After this incident, GHF announced that it would temporarily be closing its centers, to avoid further casualties and for update and efficiency improvement. That same day, Tammy Bruce, US State Department spokesman, said that inquiries should be addressed directly to GHF, and that the Department would not speculate about its plans. On June 4, the US vetoed a Security Council resolution demanding a ceasefire, release of hostages, and full resumption of aid, although all other Council members, including (unusually) the UK, had voted in favor. That day GHF was urging civilians to follow routes that had been designated as safe, while at the same time the IDF was designating the same routes as a combat zone. On June 5, the German Foreign Minister asked Israel to admit more aid. This is noteworthy because German criticism of Israel is highly unusual.
As I finished writing this, there was news that, after more shootings, GHF is now planning to use its own vehicles to distribute food. It is difficult to see how such a system could be established on a scale sufficient to prevent widespread starvation.
(Disclosure; I have two cousins in Israel, at opposite ends of the political spectrum there, and both of them inside Kibbutz Sa’ad next to the Gaza border, whose defenders came close to being overwhelmed by the terrorist onslaught of October 7, 2023.]
1] Dr Victoria Rose, interviewed on Sky News as discussed below, said she had never seen military uniforms or weapons when working in Gaza, other than IDF, and spelled out the fact that maintaining adequate food supplies would in any case pre-empt the possible problems of looting and control by Hamas, ostensive reasons for the new system.
2] U.S. Vetoes U.N. Resolution Demanding Immediate Gaza Cease-Fire https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/04/world/middleeast/un-security-council-gaza-cease-fire.html
US vetoes UN Security Council demand for Gaza ceasefire https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-backed-gaza-aid-group-halt-distribution-wednesday-un-vote-ceasefire-demand-2025-06-04/
Israeli troops open fire as US-backed food logistics group loses control of Gaza centre https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/27/israeli-troops-open-fire-aid-group-loses-control-distribution-centre
Starving Palestinians fear being shot dead for a bag of lentils as Gaza aid points close
2025 Gaza Strip aid distribution incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Gaza_Strip_aid_distribution_incidents (Wikipedia is frequently accused of bias by special interest groups, but gives detailed citations for its claims)
In Emaciated Children, Gaza’s Hunger Is Laid Bare https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/world/middleeast/gaza-children-hunger.html
More Than 20 Killed Near Aid Distribution Site in Gaza, Health Officials Say https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/01/world/middleeast/gaza-aid-distribution-site-attack.html
Palestinians gunned down while trying to reach food aid site in Gaza, hospital says https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/01/palestinians-gunned-down-while-trying-to-reach-food-aid-site-in-gaza-hospital-says
Israeli Soldiers Open Fire Near Gaza Aid Site. Gaza Officials Say 27 Are Killed. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/world/middleeast/gaza-aid-site-shooting-israel.html
At least 27 Palestinians killed by Israeli fire at food point, Gaza officials say https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/03/palestinians-killed-israeli-fire-aid-point-gaza-officials-say
Dozens of Palestinians massacred at US-Israel backed food distribution sites https://www.msf.org/dozens-palestinians-massacred-us-israel-backed-food-distribution-sites
Israeli-Backed Aid Sites in Gaza Close Temporarily After Deadly Shootings https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/04/world/middleeast/israeli-aid-sites-gaza.html
Gaza food hub stops operations for second day as access routes remain ‘combat zones’ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/04/israel-warns-palestinians-against-travel-on-roads-to-gaza-aid-hubs-labelling-them-combat-zones
See also embedded links. Coverage certainly incomplete. Information as of June 9, 2025
My Brother Mike, Autism, and the Ignorance and Incompetence of RFK, Jr.
by William Trollinger
If it weren’t so terrifying, the ignorance and incompetence of the Trump Administration would be hilarious.
We have a Secretary of Homeland Security who has no idea what habeas corpus is or where in the Constitution it is detailed. We have a Secretary of Defense who shared details of a secret military operation in Signal group chats that included his wife and an Atlantic editor. We have a Secretary of Education who refers to AI as A-1 (like the steak sauce), and who thinks banning racist Indigenous high school mascots is, well, racist.
This is just the tip of the Iceberg of Ignorance and Incompetence when it comes to officials in the Trump administration. Take, for example, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who – among other things – has claimed that COVID-19 poses little danger to children, and that the real danger to kids is the COVID vaccine itself.
And now Kennedy has weighed in regarding autism. According to Kennedy, autism “destroys families.” Children with autism “will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go on a date,” and “many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.”
More ignorance from the Trump Administration. And when it comes to autism, this is very personal.
My brother Mike was born with autism spectrum disorder. Contrary to RFK’s absurd statement, Mike paid taxes, held multiple jobs, played baseball, wrote short stories, and – I can’t believe I have to say this – used the toilet unassisted. And while his autism challenged our family, it absolutely did not destroy our family. In fact, there are all sorts of ways in which Mike brought our family together.
Mike died May 20, in Denver. The memorial service was last Friday, and I gave one of two eulogies. An abridged and slightly revised version of that eulogy is below.
It is a distinct honor to have this opportunity to say a few words in behalf of my brilliant, creative, hilarious, and sweet – most of all, sweet – younger brother.
Mike was 17 months younger than me. Growing up with him there were times when I felt as if we were attached at the hip. Not only did we walk to and from elementary school together every Monday through Friday, but I roomed with him until I went off to college at the age of 18.
But from an early age I knew why I was walking to school with Mike and why I was rooming with him. He was different. Mike was born with autism spectrum disorder, which is characterized – as many or most of you know -- by difficulties in social interaction and communication, a great need for predictability, a dislike of being touched, a struggle to understand emotions, and more. In 1994 he was diagnosed as having Asperger’s Syndrome, which is a type of autism spectrum disorder. He was the second adult so diagnosed in the state of Colorado.
But that was 1994. When Mike was born in 1956 autism had yet to be defined. There was no autism diagnosis; there were no special services for those with autism; there were no special accommodations. When it came to Mike, the educational and medical authorities were worthless. The result was a child and adolescent who was often isolated from his peers, who was repeatedly called the “r word” (and not just by kids), who was bullied and sometimes beaten up.
My parents were at a loss as to what to do about Mike. But what my mother figured out – and this was a recurring theme throughout his life – was that he needed to be protected. And while she did that at home, when Mike went off to school, she gave that job to me. What that meant was that I would walk with him to and from elementary school; I would respond when kids taunted him; I would intervene to keep him from being beaten up. I was not the best at that latter task: while I had a very smart mouth, I was not – much to my father’s chagrin – a great fighter.
But here’s the thing. Through all of this Mike remained an incredibly sweet human being. My friends (especially my dear friend, Jim Bryan) loved him, and did not mind in the least when I brought him along on various excursions, including Denver Bear baseball games or Denver Rocket basketball games. Actually, by junior high I had developed the “Mike Test”: if you couldn’t be kind to Mike, if you couldn’t overcome the fact that he was different, I couldn’t be friends with you. (And I came to regret the couple of times when I did not hold to this test).
Mike followed me to Bethel College (MN), where he was a popular and hilarious fixture in the office of the college newspaper where I was editor (just a few days ago I received an email from my associate editor, telling me how much she liked Mike – and it was clear Mike had a crush on her). And when I graduated from Bethel he went off to Colorado State University, where he happily roomed with Jim and other members of the CSU baseball team. He was protected, he was happy, and he was incredibly sweet.
Sweetness. This was Mike. The reality is that Mike was not defined by his “disability,” as so many people assumed he was. Such mistaken assumptions are all too common regarding people with disabilities. But the disability is not who they are as human beings. So it was with Mike. He was so much more than his autism.
There are many examples of this, including his happily energetic work as a volunteer at the American Red Cross and at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. But, oddly enough, I think it became most evident that Mike was much, much more than his autism spectrum disorder after his leg injury in 2013 (which happened at our house in Ohio, a day after we took him to the Creation Museum, a place that he experienced as unbelievably bizarre). As a result of this injury Mike spent the last twelve years of his life in assisted living residences. Protected and cared for by folks who loved him (and whom he loved), Mike was free to indulge his brilliant, creative, inexhaustible intellectual energy.
For example, in these years Mike created and managed (with my brother Paul’s crucial assistance) the website Each Day in History, which includes thousands of birthdays of famous people as well as innumerable historical events. I am a historian, but it’s my computer-science-major brother who created this. Even more remarkably, this man located on the autism spectrum wrote and self-published four books of fiction . . . and just a month or two before he passed he and I had a series of conversations about what was to be his fifth book, another collection of short stories about people who have seemingly (but not totally) disappeared.
Autism absolutely did not define Mike. But he hated that he was on the autism spectrum – he talked about it as his great regret. And in the last few years he asked Paul and myself – more than once, actually – if he would be autistic in heaven. Well, heaven is where he is now: completely protected, and tightly wrapped in love.
But I am very sad for us. His departure leaves such an enormous hole, such a sweetness deficit. We love you, Mike.
One final comment. Lots of experts on autism have “the data” to demonstrate that Mike – as a person with autism spectrum disorder – was not an anomaly in his rich life and experience. That the creative potential, intellectual and artistic abilities, and social warmth of people with autism would be erased in a few sentences uttered by the Secretary of Health and Human Services is shameful. If you agree, consider signing this petition.
Klandamentalism: Bob Jones at the Intersection of Revivalism, Politics, and White Supremacy
An Interview with Camille Kaminski Lewis
by William Trollinger
Camille Kaminski Lewis is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. She holds a Ph.D. from Indiana University in Rhetorical Studies with a minor in American Studies. Her book, Romancing the Difference: Kenneth Burke, Bob Jones University, and the Rhetoric of Religious Fundamentalism, was a scholarly attempt to stretch the boundaries of both Kenneth Burke’s rhetorical theory on tragedy and comedy as well as stretch conservative evangelical’s separatist frames. (The story of that publication is available at The KB Journal.) In 2020 she published an edited volume, White Nationalism and Faith: Statements and Counter-Statements on American Identity (Peter Lang). In 2023 she published a remarkable piece here at rightingamerica: “The Unholy Trinity in Fundamentalist Parenting: A Rhetorical Analysis.” And in the past few weeks Clemson University Press has published her newest book, Klandamentalism, which is the focus of this interview.
1. In Klandamentalism you critique (rightly so, I have to say) the ways in which both Bob Jones University-trained historians and outside historians have told the story of Bob Jones in particular, and the KKK-fundamentalism connection in general. Could you talk a little about what you find problematic in these historical treatments?
There are three problems with the historical treatment of Bob Jones, Inc. First of all, gross inaccuracies get repeated. Secondly, scholars have no desire to interrogate those inaccuracies. Lastly, there is an inability to look across several sources at once.
Let me explain how these problems happen: Scholars presume that if you want to get the facts about anything, you need to go to “the source.” They presume that the information you get there will be comprehensive and accurate. I have noticed over the years that if I read an article or a book that mentions that they visited the BJU archives in their research, then their conclusions will pivot toward an overly glowing view of all things BJU.
I surmise that in the scholar’s process the BJU archivist insinuates himself (gendered pronoun is intended). I have several examples of this over the years – where a BJU alum pivots to BJU’s Aura of Goodness.™ I don’t mind including those, but it’s a little off-topic. Since I am banned from the BJU campus, I cannot go to the archives. So I had to start elsewhere or even everywhere else. Frustrating this presumption that “the source” is accurate and comprehensive is a simple failure to check the source’s story.
Maybe it’s a lack of curiosity. Maybe it’s a need to prove a different point and not wanting to get waylaid, to get too far into the weeds. I think there’s a naivete in all this. Since fundamentalists claim to be super-duper pious, they wouldn’t lie, would they? ::clutches pearls::
I know BJU, Inc. lies. So I started there. What actually happened with X? What does BJU, Inc. say happened? What do BJU’s neighbors say? Their allies? Their antagonists? And what shape does their lie take? Is it consistent?
Here are two mistakes that, I believe, can be eliminated when you look across several sources: One of the mistakes I found was from an exceptionally fine historian, Wayne Flynt. He repeated a mistake about the 1889 Dothan Farmer’s Alliance riot. In Poor But Proud, he said it occurred in 1899 (254). If you dig into his footnotes, his source is a single Alabama newspaper that cited the wrong date. It happens. And it’s not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. Because of the digitization of American newspapers, I can look across many, many locales, dates, and audiences. While Professor Flynt was likely looking at a microfilm version of a single-page of a single edition of a newspaper, digitization allows the scholar to go back and forth looking in every which way to get a fuller picture.
Another fine historian Sean Wilentz uses the “Stollenwerck Panorama” in the introduction of his Oxford UP book, Chants Democratic. It kind of cracked me up because he uses that invention to describe Pierre Martin Stollenwerck as a kind of “Yankee Yeoman,” a middle-class everyman. Nothing could be further from the truth. Just a few years prior his family was trafficking human beings in the Caribbean as part of the Code Noir. Is this important to Wilentz’ larger point about upward mobility in the early 19th-century? Heck yeah, it is! If the Stollenwercks were able to come to this country because of the wealth they accumulated from enslaved labor, that says a lot about the white supremacy cloaked in “upward mobility.”
2. At the heart of this book is the metaphor of a puzzle. How you make use of that metaphor in the book? And when it comes to Bob Jones, what is the final piece of the puzzle?
I struggled for a way to explain all this data I collected from fifty years of Bob Jones’ life. Kathleen Turner’s metaphor of the puzzle in her Rhetorical History seemed like a concrete and accessible explanation. Rhetorical theory is just a metaphor that has been cemented in some way after all. While I was thinking all that through, we were putting together that “magic puzzle” at my in-laws that Thanksgiving. And everything made sense to me too.
The final piece of the puzzle is this: Bob Jones, Sr., the founder of my alma mater Bob Jones University, was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. He repeatedly denied it. His biographers ignore it or deny it. Other historians don’t want to take it on (for whatever reason). But after all of all my work, the evidence is plain.
3. You make the argument that “throughout his entire career, at least from 1911 through the 1940s, women are his most consistent target.” And you back this up with innumerable examples, including his infamous “Modern Woman” sermon. What did Jones in particular and the KKK in general have against women?
This one was the hardest one for me to confront. It really, genuinely alarmed me. And frankly, I’m still processing this one. If I were to say it simply, it would be this: women do not conform to the middle-class masculine code of conduct (whatever that means), and, thus, they are nearly impossible to control.
Now others don’t conform to that code of conduct either. Anybody who is not-them (cis-het-white-Protestant men) cannot have power. There are some men that are not yet at the center of power, but they might grow up to be. And the Klandamentalist power players are fine with them. But everyone else must be kept on the sidelines. The Klandamentalist must receive all the attention.
Women can keep busy with their womanly things: childcare, housekeeping, cooking, praying. But those are all done outside of the masculine sphere. So, in sum, I think what they have against women is that they are potentially uncontrollable and distracting.
4. What sorts of responses to this work have you received/do you imagine receiving from folks within the Bob Jones University orbit? Put another way, given how thoroughly you have researched this story, what possible objections could they make?
Funny story: A few weeks ago in a BJU alumni “in good standing” Facebook group, an unwitting member posted a link to this book from Clemson University Press. I am not a member of this group, by the way, because I am a Persona Non Grata in fundyland. But countless people sent me the screenshots of this conversation. Within twenty-four hours, the post was deleted. So most BJU alumni will pretend this book doesn’t exist.
I sent a copy to Bob Jones III with a note saying that I hoped he would read it because when “we know better, we can do better.” I doubt he will read it. His second wife has a Ph.D. in Rhetoric, so she might, but I doubt it.
The hate hasn’t come yet, but I am bracing myself. When you live in Greenville, you are an easy target. I anticipate that someone will try to bring me up on charges for church discipline or threats. Both of those things have happened in the recent past, so it might happen again.
5. In your conclusion, in particular, you connect Bob Jones and his Klandamentalism with Donald Trump and contemporary Klandamentalism. Could you elaborate on this connection?
This startles me too. I can’t NOT see the parallels, to be honest. Donald Trump and Bob Jones, Sr. are both the centers of their universe, both demand complete loyalty (as they capriciously define it), and both have no credentials. Further, both demand a certain “appearance” for women around them, both have a cadre of young and compliant men to do their bidding. They both superficially use a vocabulary of religion, both draw stark divides between themselves and their cohort and everyone else, and they both violence on the “everyone else.” Donald Trump and Bob Jones, Sr. are both malignant narcissists, what we rhetoricians used to call demagogues.
If I were to continue this analysis, I would need to map out Trump’s rhetoric. I mean, is he the subject of all his sentences? If he is, then Donald Trump and Bob Jones, Sr. are the same.
6. Given the prodigious research involved in producing Klandamentalism, it makes all the sense that you take a break from research and writing. That said, do you have any projects in the work?
In my 2023 self-evaluation at Furman, I summed up the year be calling it a “year of rejection.” I had so many rejections that year. It was demoralizing. I have a book chapter coming out this year in from University of Pennsylvania Press, Bodies and Beliefs: Purity Culture and the Rhetoric of Religious Trauma. My chapter is called, “A Working Brain, Womb, and Mouth: The Female Body in Bob Jones University’s Purity Culture.” It’s an autoethnography, so that was a different kind of interrogation of the same thing.
I’m also in the middle of producing an edited volume with several fine scholars, called William Jennings Bryan: Haunting American Populism for 100 Years through University of Tennessee Press. Bryan died 100 years ago this summer, so we are looking back at his legacy as a way to understand our current political climate.
But the thing I’m most excited about is this: a volume called She Sang, He Sang: What Dolly and Bruce can Teach America. I’m working on this with my ethnomusicologist friend, Joanna Smolko. She and I both see hope in how Dolly Parton and Bruce Springsteen respond to public conflict. That’s what I’m working on this summer.
When America Goes Nativist, America Becomes Less Christian
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, is the focus of this interview. And there are more books to come!
Thanks to Donald Trump and his MAGA cult, nativism is having one of its extended moments in our nation’s history. Nativism is the political policy of promoting or protecting the interests of native-born over those of immigrants, and it often includes the support of extreme anti-immigration laws.
Nativism as a movement opposes immigration on the basis of fear. Immigrants are “poisoning the blood,” “distorting or spoiling” American values. Of course, and as seen in social media memes, the irony of white people claiming to be natives isn’t lost on Native Americans.
- “You have to walk to school fifteen miles in the snow, uphill both ways? Try walking to Oklahoma.”
- “Immigrants threatening your way of life? That must be tough.”
- “Feed a man corn, he eats for a day. Teach a man to plant corn, he steals your land and kills you.”
Of course, nativism has a long history in the USA.
- In the 1830s President Andrew Jackson’s nationalism, populism, and commitment to democracy was deeply charged with racial hatred and the defense of white supremacy.
- In the 1850’s white evangelical fear of Catholic influence led many evangelicals to find a home in the American, or “Know Nothing,” Party. The Know-Nothing Party was built on the belief that American was a Protestant nation. The Know-Nothing Party, like MAGA, had a flag banner with the words: “Native Americans: Beware of Foreign Influence.”
- WWI saw a deep fear of German immigrants, to the point that speaking in German was banned in some states.
- In the 1920s the Ku Klux Klan – which had 4-5 million members across the nation – was virulently anti-immigrant, and (with the help of Klansmen in Congress) pushed through the Immigration Act of 1924, which eliminated immigration from Asia and drastically limited immigration from southern and eastern (i.e., Catholic and Jewish) Europe.
- WWII stoked both anti-German and anti-Japanese fears, and resulted in internment camps.
All movements share the ebb and flow of popularity and slump. When it comes to politics, there are flashes of populism and nativism. Something disturbs the usual hospitality of Americans and turns it into something quite ugly. A frightened, aggrieved and angry people are woven into a collective.
The current mixture of populism and nativism, a real devil’s brew, is enjoying a longer shelf life than usual. The natives are restless. Even in towns and villages with no immigrants, Americans have been aroused by images of immigrants as rapists and murderers. The whole movement takes on an religious apocalyptic tone. The protections of the “people” from hordes of immigrants pouring across our borders have broken down. The illegal immigrants are taking “our jobs,” killing our children, and destroying America. In biblical terminology, they are like a plague of locusts.
The current outburst of nativism feeds off a MAGA evangelical faith “grounded in a highly problematic interpretation of the relationship between Christianity and the American founding,” according to historian John Fea. “It is a playbook that too often gravitates toward nativism, xenophobia, racism, intolerance, and an unbiblical view of American exceptionalism. It is a playbook that divides rather than unites.”
A major nativist theme has been saving America from destruction. This fits the evangelical fear of losing the country to immorality. And this evangelical fear is old.
For example, see fundamentalist Baptist preacher, J. Frank Norris. In the 1920s and 1930s Norris worked overtime to stoke nativist fears. In keeping with the Second Ku Klux Klan, Catholics were his focus: “They would behead every Protestant preacher and disembowel every Protestant mother. They would burn to ashes every Protestant Church and dynamite every Protestant school. They would destroy the public schools and annihilate every one of our institutions.” But in places like El Paso and Birmingham, “the American people, the real white folks, the Protestant population rose up and put the Catholic machine out of business, and a Roman Catholic is not even allowed to clean spittoons in the Court House of City Hall in Birmingham.”
According to Norris, Catholics could not be real Americans. He called the Catholic faith “anti-American and unconstitutional.” Anti-Catholicism, American nativism, and white supremacy mixed together as one. Norris saw Russian Jews, Mexicans, and others as “low-browed foreigners.” “Let other do as they may,” he said. “As far as we are concerned …. we stand for 100 per cent Americanism; for the Bible, for the home, and against every evil and against every foreign influence that seeks to corrupt and undermine our cherished and Christian institutions.”
Norris and his nativism faded from the public eye. With the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960, Catholicism became more acceptable in mainstream America. This positive development is now undermined by MAGA’s anti-immigrant outrage.
At stake here is the public rise of nativism in tandem with the rise of Trump authoritarianism. Kenneth Burke named this experience consubstantiality. The magic of consubstantiality is its ability to merge people together in language that is also material. Burke says it is about being “both joined and separate, at once a distinct substance and consubstantial with another.” The various entities “stick” to one another.
For example, at Trump rallies, red Trump hats bob alongside American flags and Hitlerian emblems. Patriotism, nationalism, white nationalism, and antisemitism meld. The #MAGA hashtag of Trump’s campaign sloganeering accompanied Sieg Heil salutes in person and Twitter celebrations of the violence by “Proud Boys” identifying as “western chauvinists who refuse to apologize for creating the modern world.”
All the fears and hatred of various interest groups have merged into MAGA. Journalist Natasha Lennard noted, “This is not to say that each, or even the majority, of the hundreds of pro-Trump attendees sympathize with the Venn Diagram of white supremacist, alt-right, antisemitic, and neo-Nazi groups which intersect with the president’s broader support base.” Rather, “the point is that the constellation of hate gets interwoven at all levels irrespective of varying individual attitudes.”
Racism, xenophobia, homophobia, Islamophobia, misogyny, nativism, Christian nationalism, anti-science and anti-history ideologies, Nazism, white supremacy – all the demons of American political hell are now consubstantial, of one substance, with the Evil One.
We now face a legion of J. Frank Norris disciples, as fear gives rise to demons.
(Editor’s note: For an excellent biography of J. Frank Norris, see Barry Hankins, God's Rascal: J. Frank Norris and the Beginnings of Southern Fundamentalism.)
“Compromising Biblical Authority”: Ken Ham, Answers in Genesis, and the Christian Right
by William Trollinger
Last Friday Ken Ham -- sadly and emotionally -- tweeted his concern about evangelical leaders whose inconsistent approach to the Bible is leading folks to abandon the faith:
It’s our contention that compromising Christians (as I call them) have an inconsistent approach to Scripture that unlocks a door to undermine biblical authority in Genesis – and puts people on a slippery slope toward unbelief through the rest of Scripture. And I’m passionate about not compromising biblical authority. In fact, because we are so burdened by the rampant compromise in the church regarding Genesis, we work hard in contending for the faith by exposing and challenging this compromise. This is particularly true when it comes to Christian leaders and Bible college/seminary professors. . . . That’s why, as much as I hate it, it’s so important for us at AiG to do all we can to passionately reach out to these leaders. We plead with Christian leaders to apply a consistent hermeneutic to Scripture and reject compromise that undermines the authority of the Word, which has such a negative impact on the people they influence.
If Ham is really so determined to challenge and correct compromising Christian leaders, it would make sense that he start with the fellow he sees in the mirror.
In doing our research for Righting America at the Creation Museum, Susan Trollinger and I were surprised by the fact that, for all the supposed emphasis on the Bible, what was presented to visitors was a multitude of placards with tiny (sometimes just a few words) snippets of biblical text. More stunning was the museum’s strikingly loose approach to the Bible, As we note in the book, we discovered at the museum an “inconsistent use of translations; . . . the creative editing [of biblical text]; the lack of ellipses indicating where text has been removed from a passage; [and] the failure to provide relevant context for the passages that are displayed” (pp. 136-137)
How does all this fit with Ham’s commitment to biblical inerrancy?
Then there are the Jesus Rooms, which were added to the Museum ten years after its 2007 opening. There one finds the “Teachings of Jesus” placard, which includes a section entitled “Rebukes” (which would better titled “Condemnations”). Here’s one of the condemnations included on this placard: “Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41). Given the emphasis on culture war at Answers in Genesis (AiG)– training evangelicals to become culture warriors is a (if not “the”) central aim of AiG – it seems obvious that the museum expects visitors to understand the “cursed” as those individuals who are LGBTQ/LGBTQ-affirming, those women who have had abortions and/or are not submissive to their husbands, those folks who are secular humanists and hold evolution to be true, those individuals who believe in the separation of church and state, and so on.
These culture war commitments help explain why the Creation Museum excised the verses that follow Matthew 25:41. Here’s the full passage:
“Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.” Then they also will answer, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?” Then he will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.” And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life (Matthew 25: 41-46).
Is it possible to imagine a more blatant example of “compromising biblical authority” than the removal of these verses?
Well, ok, perhaps it is matched by the 46 (!) point AiG “Statement of Faith” that all employees must sign. Each of these 46 propositions is accompanied by Bible verses that allegedly provide a divine imprimatur for that particular statement. Here, for example, is proposition #29 (a proposition which fits neatly with the biblical excision noted above): “The concepts of social justice, intersectionality, and critical race theory as defined in modern terminology are anti-biblical and destructive to human flourishing” (Ezekiel 18:1-20; James 2: 8-9).” But when one looks at these verses, one finds nothing to confirm that social justice, intersectionality and critical race theory are anti-biblical.
How is blatantly using the Bible as a mere prop for right-wing culture war arguments NOT the quintessential example of “compromising biblical authority”?
For all their bluster about Christians who “compromise” the Bible, the folks at AiG and elsewhere in the Christian Right elide the fact that it is their own compromises, their own turning from the Gospel, that have driven people away from the faith. As I pointed out in my 2021 essay, “Religious Non-Affiliation: Expelled by the Right,” the “quantitative and qualitative evidence strongly support the argument that the Christian Right has been a primary reason for the remarkable rise of the religious nones in the United States since the 1990s” (186).
I ended this essay on a personal note:
With the Christian Right’s enthusiastic support of Donald Trump . . . their cover is blown. We can now see (some of us had already seen) that the Christian Right is not about personal morality and Christian/religious values, but is instead about a particular right-wing politics – a politics in keeping with the history of fundamentalism – involving white nationalism, hostility to immigrants, unfettered capitalism (which includes a disinterest, at the least, in global warming), and intense homophobia . . . [And] if I thought the Christian Right = Christianity, or Christian Right = religion, I would want nothing to do with it, either. But as a person of faith, I understand Christianity to be something else. I understand it to be centered in the Gospels, in the message (stated quite clearly in Matthew 25) that in the end, we are to be judged on how we treat our brothers and sisters, on how we treat “the other.” So while I appreciate the clarity with which we can now see (much of) white evangelicalism, I am also saddened by the fact that the secularizing of America occurs in part because the Christian Right has been so successful in articulating what it means to be Christian (189-190).
Call for Articles
Foundations
American Baptist Historical Society
Atlanta, Georgia
“Evolution, Creationism, and Faith/Science”
It has been a century since the Scopes Trial, and Christians continue to debate the scientific merits of creationism and evolution, a debate that raises all sorts of questions pertaining to the relationship of faith and science. Foundations invites articles that reflect on some aspect of this century-long debate among Christians, that take into account the challenges this debate poses for public education, and that help us think more clearly about the faith/science relationship.
Send an abstract to wtrollinger1@udayton.edu and ABQeditor@ABHSarchives.org.
Abstract deadline: 1 August 2025
Final paper deadline: 1 February 2026
Forget the “Sweet By and By”: For MAGA Evangelicals, Apocalypse is Now
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, is the focus of this interview. And there are more books to come!
As a child in a North Louisiana Baptist Church, I wondered why we were grinning while singing, “Are You Ready for the Judgment Day?”
But now I realize we were grinning because we were sure we were the sheep, the chosen people of God.
Nothing has previously thrilled MAGA evangelical hearts like preachers describing the end of the world. Evangelical dreams of apocalypse have always been a dark secret of wanting revenge on the wicked even though they couch their message as one of love and salvation. Rev. Robert Jeffress has written several books on what he thinks will happen. All the scenes he depicts contain chaos, destruction, annihilation, and the wrath of God loosed upon the wickedness of humanity.
But now, these resentful and angry MAGA evangelicals -- tired of waiting on Jesus to return, frustrated that Jesus isn’t doing anything to help them – have decided to release the wrath of God now. Jesus is an afterthought. His name is invoked, but the power behind this movement is Trump. “It’s judgment day in America. Bring it on!”
Don’t be fooled by Trump’s fake offer of “Make America Great Again.” This is a salvation by demolition and destruction. As Lance Wallnau once said of Trump, “He’s the chaos candidate.” And now he is unleashing the terrible swift sword of God’s eternal wrath on liberals.
The rhetoric of dismantlement and destruction now lays waste the foundation of our government – the civil service. As Trump rules by executive order, he seeks to destroy all in his sight. His imperial militancy knows no bounds.
Rhetorical scholar Robert L. Ivie says, “Trump personifies chaos. Demolition is his rhetorical hammer. Cataclysm is the political entailment of demolition.” MAGA evangelicals are on board with the unfolding scenes of destruction.
MAGA has manufactured a national narrative of a chosen people in a Christian nation with an apocalyptic mission, an innocent righteous people opposed by the forces of evil. Trump has always offered a message of salvation, but it is clothed in lies. Ivie labels it “a true revelation of crisis but a false diagnosis of what is wrong and how best to respond.” And “Trump’s deception hinges on a facile promise of national salvation. It is a puerile discourse of redemption by demolition and deal making.”
For example, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s purge of tens of thousands of federal workers has halted efforts to collect data on everything from cancer rates in firefighters to mother-to-baby transmission of HIV and syphilis to outbreaks of drug-resistant gonorrhea to cases of carbon monoxide poisoning. If a nation doesn’t have safeguards in place for the appearance of epidemics and plagues, the door swings open for a real apocalypse.
The evangelicals have long warned of the four horsemen of the apocalypse as pestilence, war, famine, and death. Now, the four horsemen of apocalypse are a ream of executive orders, a group of compliant billionaires, and a compromised Congress. Instead of bombs dropping from the sky, we have a chaotic tariff policy, the destruction of entire departments of the federal government, and revenge on Trump’s personal enemies.
The point is revenge.
Apocalypse now makes MAGA evangelicals giddy with excitement. Dropping all pretense of salvation, they now unashamedly promote Trump’s horrible campaign of revenge. This is the evangelical war to end all wars. MAGA has taken on the task of forcing the nation into line. Eric Metaxas, after the election of Trump, exclaimed, “Let the AWESOMENESS begin! God bless America!” Our ambassador to Israel, former Gov. Mike Huckabee says President-elect Trump might as well be called “President Lazarus” after his sweeping victory.
Owen Strachan couldn’t contain his glee: “We have been granted a reprieve, a temporary stalling of evil as driven by the modern political left. God has shown up. God has answered our prayers. Let us use this truth to keep praying, and keep hoping, and keep loving …. It’s morning in America.”
Evangelicals are not talking about the devastation to nations cut off from needed food and medicine by the severe cutbacks at USAID. They ignore the tragedies of government workers fired without cause. They don’t care about Trump trampling on the Constitution and eroding the First Amendment. Legal immigrants kidnapped by ICE agents in plainclothes and disappeared are cheered. Evangelicals are a happy bunch. This is like a Trump rally where Trump and his followers enjoy one another’s cruelty; but now it’s better because real people are being punished.
MAGA evangelicals would be dancing if they danced. Given the absolute absurdities of MAGA evangelical theology in its capitulation to Trumpism, I’m wondering, “How many evangelicals can dance on the head of a pin?”
The gleeful, giddy evangelicals are heedless of the innocent casualties of the culture wars they started. War always destroys more than soldiers in combat. Civilians died from genocides, massacres, bombings, disease, and starvation. According to statistics from The National WWII Museum, 45 million civilians were killed in WWII.
Trump’s apocalypse has disrupted thousands of innocent bystanders. Civil service workers have been fired without explanations. Elon Musk, with no apparent plan, has rampaged through the government in a helter skelter way to close departments, reduce departmental efficiency, and fire workers. The image of Musk with a chain saw is suggestive of his approach. When any reformation of the federal government should require precise surgical tools, Musk and his crew are loose with chainsaws. This apocalypse has become a “chainsaw massacre.”
To MAGA evangelical eyes, the demolition is long overdue. They righteously believe this is the true judgment of God. President Trump has the full backing of an evangelical crowd convinced beyond any semblance of doubt that he is doing what must be done.
We are not witnessing a reformation of our government; we are witnessing a feckless mob of people who have gathered to witness the mayhem.
MAGA have presumed the right to be at God’s right hand as judges of the nation. They parade and preach as if they have just returned from the top of Mount Sinai with stone tablets of instruction from God entitled, “The Destruction of the Deep State.”
Their fondest dreams are coming true before their eyes. Paul Dans, the former director of Project 2025, the apocalyptic blueprint, says he is delighted with Trump’s policies. “It’s actually way beyond my wildest dreams,” Dans said.
Even as Project 2025 and Trump’s executive orders look like exact copies, Dans insists any correlation is merely the result of great minds swimming in the same sea. Still, Dans claims, “Trump is seizing every minute of every hour. I’m not sure that you’d be able to implement Project 2025 without Donald Trump’s ability to bring people together and Elon Musk’s ability to focus the direction of the work.”
As for MAGA evangelicals, they are acting as if the Rapture has occurred in the second coming of Trump. They are busy selecting targets for the president. Wallnau wants Trump to really go after the universities because he believes they are “the hotbed of resistance. Time to make them a priority of reformation. For real!” As Trump attacks history and science, he embraces the two greatest enemies of the evangelical tribe.
MAGA evangelicals like Jeffress, Wallnau, and David Barton are doing flips over Trump’s executive order targeting history and the Smithsonian. Now, at last they see an opening for their fake, revisionist history claiming America was created according to God’s will and as a Christian nation.
Ken Ham must be deliriously happy as he watches Trump destroy the department of Education and attack science on multiple fronts. What more could a man who believes the earth is only 6,000 years old want more than the undoing of real science?
A political power determined to demolish and destroy can’t be allowed to dominate American politics. The MAGA evangelicals are no longer harmless Bible-thumpers; they are giving President Trump all the support he needs to create Apocalypse Now. And as Trump would put it, “It’s happening. It’s happening. It’s happening.”
And MAGA is not prepared for the horrific outcomes.
A(nother) Frontal Attack on Democracy: The Trump Administration Eviscerates the National Endowment for the Humanities
by William Trollinger
On April 03 the Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE) sent an email – from a nongovernmental email address (which meant that many of these emails ended up in SPAM folders – this is efficiency?) – informing hundreds of recipients that their National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grants had been terminated. These grantees include museums, teachers, and state humanities councils. As the American Historical Association (AHA) has rightly pointed out, “this frontal attack on the nation’s public culture is unpatriotic, anti-American, and unjustified” and “imperil[s] both the education of the American public and the preservation of our history.” These grant terminations are in keeping with other Trump executive orders that “prioritize narrow political ideology over historical research, historical accuracy, and the actual historical experiences of Americans.”
This attack was then amplified by an email sent the evening of April 03 – again from a nongovernmental email address – informing 75-80% of NEH staff that they were being placed on “administrative leave.”
One of the casualties of this anti-American assault is the Ohio Humanities Council (OHC). The OHC has funded a variety of projects that “tell stories that are essential to our cultural infrastructure,” including the remarkable documentary film, “The Lincoln School Story,” which tells the story of African American mothers in Hillsboro, Ohio and their heroic effort to desegregate the local school. More than this, it is OHC policy to “serve everyday Ohioans statewide, from school children to veterans, living everywhere from one-stoplight communities to big cities.”
The OHC is an invaluable resource for the state. And besides everything else it does, it maintains a Speakers Bureau which includes 27 scholars in the humanities. Libraries, museums, and the like apply for (modest) OHC support to bring in one of these scholars to speak at an event that is free and open to the public.
Sue and I are both Ohio Humanities speakers. Sue gives presentations on “Moving Off the Farm and Trying to Stay Amish” and “Rebels in Corsets: The Embodied Rhetoric of the Women’s Suffrage Movement”; I speak on “Statues, Flags, and the Ongoing Battle over the Meaning of the Civil War” as well as “Terrorizing Immigrants and Catholics: The Ohio Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s.” And in keeping with OHC’s stated goal to serve Ohioans “living everywhere from one-stoplight communities to big cities,” in the past decade we have given talks in the following locations (sometimes we have each spoken in the same locale, and sometimes we have given both of our presentations at the same venue):
- Athens
- Barberton
- Bellville
- Celina
- Cincinnati
- Columbus
- Coshocton
- Dayton
- Granville
- Greenville
- Lima
- Loudonville
- Marietta
- Milan
- Niles
- Northmont
- Peninsula
- Sandusky
- Shawnee
- Springboro
- Versailles
- Wapakoneta
- Warren
- Zanesville
- Zoar
We have thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to see towns we would never have visited otherwise. Even better, we have thoroughly enjoyed the people we have met at these events. In particular, we have been repeatedly struck by how eagerly folks want to learn the history we have to share – which is contrary to the bad rap that the humanities often receive in contemporary American culture (sometimes even in institutions of higher education). More than this, attendees are quite eager to interact, with questions that are often terrific and smart (“how is that there are now Catholics in white Christian nationalist organizations, given that they used to be the enemy?”), and with comments that expand our knowledge (“if a Swartzentruber Amish person shows up at the hospital, you have to give them your immediate attention, as it has to be very serious since they never seek medical treatment.”)
The public humanities work supported by the NEH and state humanities councils really does matter. And the Trump Administration’s attack on the public humanities is, indeed, thoroughly unpatriotic.
