The Overview (Monday, February 15)
Karen Swallow Prior kicks a hornet's nest, my alma mater chips away at the liberal arts, and new research on deepening divisions in our politics and churches
In less than a week, Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial began and ended. The trial ultimately did not produce sworn witnesses, as Senate Democrats were perhaps looking to pivot swiftly toward President Biden’s agenda, while most Republicans did not believe the trial was legitimate in the first place. While Trump was the first president to be impeached twice, he is now also the only president to be acquitted twice — and, with a final vote was 57-43 (67 votes are needed to convict on an article of impeachment), he is the first president to have members of his party vote against him.
The trial was not without drama. House impeachment managers shared several videos—many of which were new to the public—of the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. These videos, taken mainly from Capitol security footage, show the chaos behind the scenes as lawmakers and Vice President Pence moved quickly to avoid the mob of rioters. One video showed a police officer—Eugene Goodman, who was lauded as a hero for his efforts on January 6—ushering Sen. Mitt Romney away from danger, while another particularly eerie video captured a rioter calling out for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Following the second day of the trial, Karen Swallow Prior—Research Professor of English and Christianity and Culture at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary—took to Twitter to declare her displeasure with Republicans in Congress who would not condemn the president’s influence on the January 6 riot:
To those who are not aware of her writing and public statements beyond this tweet, Prior’s conservative bona fides are well established. She has a long record of supporting the pro-life movement. She has taught at conservative Christian institutions of higher education for more than two decades. KSP is not a squish.
With that in mind, consider the following response to her tweet:
There’s a lot one could dig into in this tweet, from the impression that Prior is somehow excusing the violence that took place in many cities last summer (she isn’t, and she hasn’t) to the suggestion that breaking into the U.S. Capitol, disrupting Congress’ constitutional duty to count electoral votes, and aggressively searching for lawmakers is somehow on par with rioters vandalizing private businesses.
But what’s most frustrating about this response is the implication that Prior’s criticism of certain Republicans somehow means she is not only committing her support to the Democratic Party, but is also pledging her allegiance to everything Democrats stand for. KSP can criticize lawmakers for failing to disown a figure she believes has tainted the legitimacy of her party without abandoning her sincerely held ideological principles. She can complain about the order of her house without wanting to burn it down or turn the keys over to her opponents. Criticism is not equal to abandonment.
It takes a serious lack of political imagination to watch conservatives criticizing the Trump administration and conclude that they are somehow in cahoots with Trump’s enemies on the other side of the political spectrum. Moreover, when this kind of view takes hold, it erases the value of deeply-formed ideology and replaces it with allegiance to a person or personality. Conservatives like Prior and David French are told they are no longer “conservative” when the Republican Party has become the party of Donald Trump. As Christians, we should be slow to yoke a political ideology to whomever is at the helm of a political party; we risk embarrassing ourselves and bearing false witness against our brothers and sisters of conviction.
With that, here’s the Monday, February 15 edition of The Overview:
1) Speaking of Karen Swallow Prior, she writes in Religion News Service of her history with the Baptist tradition and why she is unable to distance herself from that community, despite recent problems in the denomination. Here’s a taste:
Over the past few years, in the midst of the turmoil the church and the country are enduring, I have received countless messages of pain and lament from fellow evangelicals (and especially Baptists), asking me what to do, where to go, whether to stay in the church or to leave.
I understand many have been hurt or betrayed by the institutional church. And while my wounds are not as deep as those of so many, I now count myself among them. I don’t always know what to say to people in their pain. But one thing I do know to say is, “The bride of Christ needs you. Don’t abandon her to those who exploit and abuse her. Christ loves his bride too much for us to let her go.”
If this isn’t the sort of personal and thoughtful reflection one expects from KSP, I’m not sure what is.
2) Writing for the Crescent, George Fox University’s student newspaper, Aurora Biggers reports that the Oregon university will be making significant changes to its liberal arts programs, including eliminating majors in sociology, chemistry, theater, and politics, among others. George Fox becomes the latest university in the CCCU—and in higher education in general—to revamp its academic offerings, with traditional liberal arts majors often on the chopping block.
I graduated from George Fox in 2008 with a degree in political science, before the major was rebranded as politics. And while politics will apparently transition to a concentration in the history major, it’s still disappointing to read about these changes. It’s also a bit odd that George Fox’s announcement detailing these changes is headlined “Building a Better University” — it’s as if my hometown Portland Trail Blazers announced a “Building a Better Basketball Team” campaign by shedding assistant coaches and elements of the practice facility.1
The pressures on most of higher education are intense, and will only grow in the years ahead. Still, it’s frustrating to see the direction most institutions are heading.
3) The American Enterprise Institute is out with a detailed report on the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election and what this portends for the next several years in America. The study, led by Daniel Cox, covers a variety of subjects, including the influence of the QAnon conspiracy theory on our politics.
In covering the report for Religion News Service, Jack Jenkins highlights the support for QAnon among the white evangelical community: more than a quarter (27 percent) of white evangelicals believe QAnon is completely or mostly accurate. Whether this community is actually familiar with QAnon or is simply taking what is essentially the partisan position on this question (29 percent of Republicans believe QAnon is at least somewhat accurate), this is a discouraging and concerning finding. Writing for Christianity Today, Kate Shellnut says that pastors are in a tricky position:
For some pastors, steering away from explicit political issues is a way to avoid conflating faith with a certain party or position, challenging congregants to focus on their identity in Christ rather than political stances. But Christians have also seen how a lack of discipleship around political issues has made way for outside influences that can distort views of God.
“A significant challenge moving forward is going to be getting pastors to stop abdicating their responsibility for discipling the public life of their church members. Too many pastors take pride in saying, ‘I don’t preach about politics,’” said Jenista Kuykendall in DC. “But what I hear in that is an abdication to take responsibility for the discipleship of Christians who vote and protest and sign petitions and serve on local school boards … if we don’t talk about what it means to love God in public, there are 24-hour channels and blogs and conspiracies that will gladly speak out over our silence.”
I wrote about the insidious temptation of conspiracy theories last year. Given AEI’s report, it appears the problem is only worsening.
4) Ruth Graham of the New York Times reports on the growth of the Christian prophet movement in the United States. This movement, rooted in the charismatic tradition and emphasizing an individual connection with God culminating in revelation, found an ally in the Trump administration, with many of the former president’s faith advisors coming from this community. One sociologist of religion said there’s a reason this movement is thriving:
As denominational Christianity declines almost across the board, magnetic independent leaders have stepped into the void. “There’s this idea that you can’t trust anybody except these trusted individuals,” said Brad Christerson, a sociologist at evangelical Biola University. “It’s a symptom of our time. People don’t trust institutions, and people think that all mainstream institutions are corrupt: universities, science, government, the media. They’re searching for real sources of truth.”
5) Finally, writing for Religion News Service, Robert Vischer distinguishes between Christian nationalism and Christian political engagement:
Christian nationalism is not Christian political engagement. We are not a “Christian nation” in the sense that Christian nationalists mean. We are a nation in which our political discourse has long been shaped by Christian values, on both the left and the right. The civil rights movement was infused with Christian images and principles. The progressive push for immigration reform prominently features Christ’s admonition about welcoming the stranger.
Christian ideas should only be an entry point to a broader conversation with Americans of any (or no) faith tradition, not as a sledgehammer to stop their contribution to the debate. On the issue that’s been the most contentious over the past half-century, abortion, the most effective pro-life voices have been steeped in Christian principles. But the core of their arguments has been grounded in observations about fetal development and articulations of life’s value in terms that are accessible beyond Christianity.
Vischer is right. The response to Christian nationalism should not be the retreat of Christian engagement from the public square, but rather reimagining what faithful Christian political engagement looks like in the face of a pluralistic (and increasingly skeptical) society. Christians will inevitably disagree on strategy and process, but we ought to be united in our posture.
Would you consider linking to George Fox's "Building a Better University" site to allow your readers the opportunity to see that the announced changes included more than "shedding assistant coaches and elements of the practice facility." Those changes included adding a new graduate program in Occupational Therapy, decreasing the time to graduation (and hopefully reducing debt) by cutting the 126-credit requirement to 120, redesigning the G.E. package to provide a common experience for graduates and connect them with more full-time professors than before. It is true (and painful) that the university will not be offering some low-enrollment majors to future students, but the changes go beyond those you highlighted.