The Overview (Monday, August 24)
Reflections on the pro-life movement, new data on vote choice, Christians, and COVID-19, and the state of race relations in conservative churches.
What a week.
The first week of the semester is now behind us. I've been impressed with students taking university guidance to heart, in terms of wearing masks and maintaining distance in the classroom. All this is very unnatural, of course, which makes the efforts of these students--some of whom are away from home for the first time--even more remarkable.
It remains to be seen whether this behavior is sustainable over the course of the whole semester. At some point it seems likely that some (many? all?) students will hit a breaking point. When that happens, faculty and staff will need to be there to continue to encourage responsible behavior, all in the spirit of generosity and love for neighbor. And this is to say nothing of the burdens this guidance is putting on university employees, some of whom have explicitly questioned the necessity of such measures at all.
Simply put, we're in the thick of things now. Pray for perseverance.
With that, here's the Monday, August 24 edition of The Overview:
1) Bonnie Kristian of Christianity Today interviews author, speaker, and Dallas Theological Seminary student Kaitlyn Schiess for a conversation about her forthcoming book The Liturgy of Politics. "The book’s thesis is that our political formation shapes us in spiritual ways," Schiess says, "but also that our spiritual formation should shape us in political ways." I've been waiting to read this book for a while, and am looking forward to welcoming Schiess to our campus for next month's Reimagining Faith and Public Life.
2) Kelsey Dallas of Deseret News explains how the coronavirus pandemic has posed challenges for not only religious freedom, but also for trust between faith communities. Dallas interviews folks from different sides of the political spectrum, finding that some are sincerely fearful about the future of religious freedom in an era when government can prohibit in-person worship alongside other "nonessential" services, but also finding that some see these objections as abusing the whole notion of religious freedom. "I think the people who have pushed hard for religious exemptions during the pandemic believe that, if they can win on this front, they can get a free pass out of just about any regulation," said one skeptic.
3) The Washington Post's Sarah Pulliam Bailey highlights the state of racial reconciliation in white and Black churches. She reports on tensions within the Southern Baptist Convention--the nation's largest Protestant denomination--over race issues, interviewing one prominent Black pastor who announced his congregation would be leaving the SBC after Al Mohler, president of the denomination's flagship seminary, announced his endorsement of President Trump. "It was like, wait a minute, I think the rest of the world is getting it,” the pastor said. “In order to show solidarity with disenfranchised communities, you can’t have moderate steps."
4) Political scientist Ryan Burge breaks down new data on the relationship between faith, COVID-19, and vote choice in the upcoming presidential election. There's a lot of interesting data in here, but perhaps the most fascinating nugget involves white evangelical Christians who know someone who has contracted the coronavirus: 60 percent of these Christians say they plan to vote for Donald Trump in November, compared to about 70 percent of those white evangelicals who don't know someone who has gotten sick.
5) Two important articles on the pro-life movement in the United States: First, the Atlantic's Emma Green discusses the future of the pro-life movement should Roe v. Wade be overturned by the Supreme Court in the coming years. Green suggests that activists have already started to think about a post-Roe nation, and to grapple with the policy implications of such a situation. "What if there were a lot more God-given babies," said one activist, "and we were, as a community, completely unprepared to help their mothers?"
Second, the Dispatch's David French rebuts the critique that Christians who do not vote for Donald Trump have (as more than one critic of his suggested) "the blood of dead unborn children on [their] hands." In a detailed and lengthy response French says (among other things) that: a) presidents don't typically have a great deal of power over the abortion issue; b) Supreme Court justices have tended to be forces for stability rather than change in the abortion debate; and c) state legislatures are the venue to focus on in the abortion conversation. French has been at the forefront of the pro-life movement for decades, and should be a trusted voice in this discussion. The whole article is worth a careful read and serious reflection.
6) Finally, Napp Nazworth has a podcast! The political scientist and former Christian Post analyst/editor has a great newsletter on the intersection of religion and politics in the United States, and now he has a podcast. The first two episodes are up, featuring interviews with author, speaker, and radio host Carmen Laberge, as well as Calvin University historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez.