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How the Push for Christian Nationalism Is an Act of Unbelief

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Among right-wing Christians there seems to be a real psychological compulsion to “make America a Christian nation.” It looks to outsiders as more than just wanting everyone to be “saved” but as a driven emotional need to religiously justify themselves and their world-views and feel their worth through a vindicating retribution over those who, even religiously, don’t accept their zealous compulsion. In many ways, it’s been a key to their agenda since the days of the “Moral Majority” in the 1960s in reaction to civil and human rights movements and victories for those who challenged the prejudices of the times. They’ve even rewritten their own American history to claim that the country was founded to be a “Christian nation” by its Deistic, Transcendentalist, and other more liberal Christian founders. That compulsion became popular over generations through a political program pushing for what at the end of the last century came to be called federal “faith-based initiatives” with both polit...
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Is Labeling People a Barrier to Understanding Them?

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The Democratic Party is in the midst of arguments about whether some of them should identify themselves as “democratic socialists.” Without getting into all the perceived or real political, personal, and strategic issues involved in this, the results of recent elections indicate that the label of their candidates is less important to voters than whether the candidates are fighters or folders when representing those voters and their concerns in these precarious times. We know that how one labels one's enemies and opponents is often a conscious political strategy that is used to demean them. Political strategists, particularly in one party under the influence of someone like right-wing consultant Frank Luntz, intentionally impose negative labels on their political enemies. We also know from psychologists that when children are given a label in childhood or tracked in school through some such judgement, they eventually internalize the label and begin to live as if it has some influenc...
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Why Are We Marching Anyway?

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Whatever the cause – whether it’s a No Kings Rally or a display of LGBTQ+ Pride – there are numerous personal reasons to march, protest, and demonstrate. Some are based upon our own self-worth and personal values while others are guaranteed to produce frustration, burn-out, and bitterness in the long run. Further, if we take on leadership roles – particularly for demographics with a history of being marginalized and demeaned in a culture – various conscious or unconscious expectations we’ve attached to leadership, whether healthy (for us) or unhealthy, are likely to eventually surface.   Sociological observers can almost predict the problems that result when anyone takes on activist leadership of oppressed groups who have a history of hurt and pain. So many movements and institutions seem to run into leadership issues when they're at their greatest strength. And the result is many of those issues cripple the very movements.   People aren’t used to examining their own past unhe...
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How Religion Has Been – and Still Is – Used for Bigotry

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The current U.S. administration has turned the use of religion into an art form. Their modus operandi is to mainstream the idea that “Christianity” truly means doing ones best to destroy those over which they want to feel superior. Even those who object to it all have adopted their language and call what they are doing “Christian” Nationalism as if to confirm that what these users of religion are calling for isn’t just one sectarian religious interpretation of everything historically that has been called Christian but somehow represents all or at least the truth of what “Christianity” is. The use of “Christianity” or any of the religions to support the powerful, those who wish to impose their beliefs on everyone else, and those who are protecting their own financial and publicity portfolios has a long worldwide history that’s as old as we have human records. And it actually doesn’t have its origins in any of the religions it uses. Yet people on most sides of debates about religions con...
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In Messages for Equality, Keep It Simple

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Two examples of how in this day and political climate we need short, bumper-sticker size slogans to get our messages across hit me this past weekend. Today’s reality, whether we like it or not, is that people are not reading long and extended discussions with nuanced “there’s this, and then there’s that” arguments in a society where religionists and one of the political parties have fully embraced the tactic that words are less to inform and more a means to excite, scare, and anger people. The first example is what struck me at the local “No Kings’ rally I attended where people held signs up along a busy suburban-like thoroughfare. The busyness of those who drove by and had no time to stop and read lengthy lists of why someone was out there, even if they honked in support, was instructive. It meant that the short and sweet and more provocative signs were the ones that got a message across. Keeping it simple reached more people even if one would like them to take the time to know more a...
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