Possibly the most important thing to happen today was President Biden’s speech. And I missed it. But here’s the video:

And here’s the official transcript.

Note that even though much of this speech was about Donald Trump, and no point in the speech did the President use the word “Trump.” It was the “former president.” As in:

And here is the truth: The former president of the United States of America has created and spread a web of lies about the 2020 election.  He’s done so because he values power over principle, because he sees his own interests as more important than his country’s interests and America’s interests, and because his bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy or our Constitution.

He can’t accept he lost, even though that’s what 93 United States senators, his own Attorney General, his own Vice President, governors and state officials in every battleground state have all said: He lost.

That’s what 81 million of you did as you voted for a new way forward.

He has done what no president in American history — the history of this country — has ever, ever done: He refused to accept the results of an election and the will of the American people.

And “defeated former president.” As in:

He’s not just a former president.  He’s a defeated former president — defeated by a margin of over 7 million of your votes in a full and free and fair election.

There is simply zero proof the election results were inaccurate.  In fact, in every venue where evidence had to be produced and an oath to tell the truth had to be taken, the former president failed to make his case.

Joe Biden is done with this crap. This was later:

Our Founding Fathers, as imperfect as they were, set in motion an experiment that changed the world — literally changed the world.

Here in America, the people would rule, power would be transferred peacefully — never at the tip of a spear or the barrel of a gun.

And they committed to paper an idea that couldn’t live up to — they couldn’t live up to but an idea that couldn’t be constrained: Yes, in America all people are created equal.

We reject the view that if you succeed, I fail; if you get ahead, I fall behind; if I hold you down, I somehow lift myself up.

The former President, who lies about this election, and the mob that attacked this Capitol could not be further away from the core American values.

They want to rule or they will ruin — ruin what our country fought for at Lexington and Concord; at Gettysburg; at Omaha Beach; Seneca Falls; Selma, Alabama.  What — and what we were fighting for: the right to vote, the right to govern ourselves, the right to determine our own destiny.

If you missed it too, do watch or read, or both, the whole thing. This was a significant speech. There is no other speech equivalent to this in American history, I don’t believe, in which a sitting president issued a major address that so directly slammed the former president and his allies. I hope this marks a recognition that ignoring Trump won’t make him go away.

Of course, Trump deserved it. He was never a President of the United States, even when he held the title. Trump was like an alien thing who took up space where a president should have been for four years. In reaction to the President’s speech, the former not-president issued a series of his trademark adolescent whines at news media in which he said nothing new.

E.J. Dionne writes of Biden’s speech that  “In what was by far the most passionate, forceful and effective speech of his presidency, he moved democracy to the center of the nation’s political debate.”

Meanwhile, the Right continues to crack. An accused insurrectionist in prison awaiting trial named Edward Jacob Lang may be starting to realize he was used.

“There should be a hundred thousand people in DC tomorrow at the very minimum,” Edward Jacob Lang, 26, told “The Stew Peters Show” in a Wednesday phone interview from jail. He continued, “I am so disappointed with Trump and with the American people at large that just do not get behind the January 6 political prisoners.”

Of course, Trump is never going to do anything for Lang or any of the other insurrectionists. He has no more use for them, and most of the Republican hierarchy is pretending they don’t exist. They are an embarassment now, an inconvenience.

January 6 was a day that will live infamy, although the perpetrators need a little more time to realize that.

Clio, muse of history, in the Capitol rotunda

Sean Hannity’s involvement in the January 6 insurrection was much discussed on MSNBC last night. We already knew that Hannity had been in contact with Mark Meadows during the riot. Hannity wanted Trump to put a stop to the rioting, which suggests that Hannity realized this was Trump’s party all along.

But yesterday the special House committee investigating the riot made public more of Hannity’s emails to White House Chief of Staff Meadows, including several communications while the insurrection was being planned. Two major points:

One, it’s beyond obvious from the released emails that Hannity saw himself as an operative of the Trump White House, part of Trump’s team, not an independent journalist. Hannity clearly was trying to protect Trump and influence what was being planned. In doing so, he sat on the scoop of a lifetime. He also can’t very well claim any sort of journalistic privilege or protection, although that’s what his lawyer did today. I’ll come back to that.

The committee has requested Hannity appear and answer some questions. According to Axios,

In a letter to Hannity, Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) wrote that they seek “voluntary cooperation on a specific and narrow range of factual questions” and are not seeking “information regarding any of your broadcasts, or your political views or commentary.”

Two, Axios says that Hannity is being represented by Jay Sekulow, a lawyer on Trump’s legal team. The excellent Heather Cox Richardson points out in her email newsletter,

Hannity is apparently being represented in this matter by Jay Sekulow, a lawyer on Trump’s legal team, rather than lawyers from the Fox News Channel. While Sekulow has indicated he will object to the committee’s invitation on First Amendment grounds, the fact that the Fox News Channel seems to be standing back suggests that the corporation does not see the committee’s invitation as a First Amendment case involving freedom of the press and in fact might well be concerned that one of its lead personalities is connected to an event that should have been reported to the FBI.

Sekulow has complained to the committee that the request raises “serious constitutional issues including First Amendment concerns regarding freedom of the press.” Seriously? Again, these were not the communications of a journalist or investigator seeking information, but of someone trying to counsel and guide White House plans while studiously keeping these plans secret from the public.

Update: See Erik Wemple, Sean Hannity’s bottomless corruption.

Sean Hannity in happier (for him) times.

I believe I have found something to be hopeful about, or at least less pessimistic. It appears there is turmoil in the fever swamps, and the alligators are turning on each other. Drew Harwell writes at WaPo, Since Jan. 6, the pro-Trump Internet has descended into infighting over money and followers.

After months of failing to disprove the reality of Trump’s 2020 presidential election loss, some of the Internet’s most popular right-wing provocateurs are grappling with the pressures of restless audiences, saturated markets, ongoing investigations and millions of dollars in legal bills.

Two of the alligators, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Dan Crenshaw, are opening feuding with each other. Last week Rep. Crenshaw (R-nación liberada de Tejas) suggested using FEMA to set up covid testing sites, which was a remarkably normal idea coming from Crenshaw, although I believe FEMA had been doing that already. Rep. Greene (R-Anglo-Saxon) dismissed the omicron variant as “sneezes, coughs and runny noses,” adding that Crenshaw “needs to stop calling himself conservative, he’s hurting our brand.” She tweeted this right before her Twitter account was, blessedly and permanently, suspended.

Crenshaw fired back, “Hey Marjorie, if suggesting we should follow Trump policy instead of Biden mandates makes you mad, then you might be a Democrat – or just an idiot.” These two will never be mistaken for the Algonquin Round Table.

Getting back to Drew Harwell —

The result is a chaotic melodrama, playing out via secretly recorded phone calls, personal attacks in podcasts, and a seemingly endless stream of posts on Twitter, Gab and Telegram calling their rivals Satanists, communists, pedophiles or “pay-triots” — money-grubbing grifters exploiting the cause.

The infighting reflects the diminishing financial rewards for the merchants of right-wing disinformation, whose battles center not on policy or doctrine but on the treasures of online fame: viewer donations and subscriptions; paid appearances at rallies and conferences; and crowds of followers to buy their books and merchandise.

Do not doubt that a whole lot of people, from the likes of Paul Manafort and Rudy Giuliani to the local guys still selling off Trump 2020 campaign merchandise, jumped on the Trump train mostly to fatten their own wallets. Much of the American Right has been a grift for a long time.

But it’s backfiring on them now. Trump is still raking in money from various sources, but he’s not sharing it. The Trump enablers who aren’t in jail yet are facing many lawsuits that could wipe them out. And I can’t imagine anybody is paying Rudy Giuliani to do anything right now, except maybe to keep quiet.

Kyle Rittenhouse is feuding with Lin Wood, who appears to be feuding with just about everybody else. QAnon followers are angry with Michael Flynn for calling their beliefs “total nonsense.” Some are angry with Donald Trump because of his recent statements encouraging people to get vaccinated.

Harwell interviewed Mike Rothschild, a conspiracy theory researcher unrelated to the famous bankers and author of a book on QAnon. The conflicts among the Trumpers and their factions are keeping the rubes engaged, Rothschild said, and giving them a chance to prove their loyalty by buying the books, T-shirts, coffee mugs, and other merch all these grifters are selling.

QAnon is “the easiest money that you could possibly make if you don’t have a conscience, but there’s only a certain number of people you can fleece. It’s not a renewable resource,” Rothschild said.

QAnon has been drifting since Q went silent and Trump got kicked off social media. Right now they don’t know who they are supposed to be following, which may be why hanging around in Dallas for the second coming of JFK and Junior might seem like as good an idea as any. It’s always possible a living being will step into the vacuum and take over, but otherwise QAnon is likely to dissipate. How long that might take, I cannot say.

Qanoners, unsure where to go next.

But if you really want Sidney Powell drink tumblers, maybe they’ll go on sale soon.

Speaking of merch, Melania Trump is auctioning off a hat she wore to welcome President and Madame Emmanuel Macron of France to the White House in 2018. She is also selling art in the form of nonfungible tokens. I don’t know what those are, either. Apparently it’s digital stuff she acquired while in the White House that’s not covered by the Emoluments Clause.

Melania hopes to raise at least $250,000 from the auction, “a portion” of which will be donated to Melania’s “Be Best” initiative, it says here. In other words, Melania is keeping the money.

I want to say that I’m looking forward to Merrick Garland’s speech tomorrow on the January 6 investigation. Maybe he’ll announce that the Justice Department really is pursuing criminal cases against the Trumps and their enablers. I hope I’m not disappointed. See also Merrick Garland Needs to Speak Up at Lawfare and Trump’s Legal Fate Haunts Garland’s DOJ a Year After Jan. 6 Riot at Bloomberg.

At the Philadelphia Inquirer, Will Bunch wrote, America gave up on truly educating all its kids. Then Jan. 6 happened. Coincidence?

Some background — In Pennsylvania there’s a court battle going on about whether disparities in public school funding across the state violate the state constitution.  The lawyer representing “budget-crunching GOP lawmakers” actually argued that children in poor districts don’t need the same education as in well-to-do-districts.

PA school funding lawsuit really illuminating what policy makers think of poor kids’ career potential: “What use would someone on the McDonald’s career track have for Algebra 1?”https://t.co/r4YpGh2DIw

— Samantha Melamed (@samanthamelamed) December 28, 2021

Note that this isn’t just a black versus white disparity, but also an urban versus rural disparity. I believe the specific area being short-changed of school funding, north-central Pennsylvania, is overwhelmingly white. And a majority of voters in this area supported Trump in 2016 and 2020.

Will Bunch writes,

I’ll even go way out on a limb here to argue you can draw a straight line between the country’s collective decision — hardened somewhere in the late 20th century — to stop seeing education as a public good aimed at creating engaged and informed citizens but instead a pipeline for the worker drones of capitalism, and the 21st century’s civic meltdown that reached its low point nearly one year ago, in the Jan. 6 insurrection.

A word that gets thrown around a lot these days is “meritocracy.” A “meritocracy” is supposed to be a system in which the most skilled and accomplished people are put in charge of things. The problem is that we’ve created a system that gives the children of upper-income white people, especially the boys, easy access to aquiring skill and accomplishment, but puts up barriers to everyone else. This explains how so many of our political and business leaders are mediocrities with Ivy League degrees. (See “Our Decadent Aristocracy” from 2019.)

The issue of school funding is an old one. Across the nation many school systems are primarily funded by local property taxes, so obviously schools in areas with higher tax assessments are funded more generously. Attempts to make the system fairer are usually slapped down by the aristocracy, who are often able to bamboozle the poor badly educated peasants into supporting the aristocrats’ position.

I’m thinking now of New Jersey. Back in 1990 a court decided that the state must ensure that as much money would be spent educating the children of the poor as it did the children of the wealthy. To accomplish this, Gov. Jim Florio proposed a very progressive income tax increase that would have sent lots of money to schools as well as pay down the state’s debts and provide property tax relief. The graduated tax increase kicked in at $55,000 annual income, which in 1990 was equivalent to about $114,000 today. The state also added 1 percent to the sales tax.

And the whole state went crazy. I wrote about this back in 2007:

My state income taxes didn’t change at all, because my income wasn’t all that glorious. But people all around me were going nuts over the tax increase, whether it affected them or not. I saw “Dump Florio” bumper stickers on cars of people who appeared to make even less than I did. In fact, at one point a secretary where I worked was going around with a big “Dump Florio” pin on her chest, and I knew good and well she made less than I did. When I told her that her taxes weren’t going to go up, and explained to her how much one actually had to make before they did, she was dumbfounded. She’d been worried she wouldn’t have enough money left over from the new state taxes to live on.

Then what’s everyone so worked up about? she asked. You tell me, I said. You’re one of the people who is worked up; I’m not.

A “grassroots” citizens’ revolt was organized by John Budzash, a postal worker from Howell Township. Budzash was a very useful tool and got a lot of attention from media, no doubt nudged by the aristocracy. When it was pointed out to him that his own children went to schools that were to benefit from the tax increase, he still wasn’t swayed from his campaign.

A few years later, when Republican Christie Whitman became governor, she lowered the Florio income and sales taxes. But to pay for this she cut the amount of state money going to public schools, fiddled a bit with state pensions, and outsourced the New Jersey Department of Motor Vehicles to demons from the Fourth Circle of Hell. In many parts of the state property taxes had to be cranked up even more to make up the difference.

Note that Whitman didn’t just fiddle with state pension funds, she raided them to balance the budget as required by state law, setting up problems the state probably is still dealing with. But this is why we can’t have nice things.

The roots of Republican disparaging of public schools really goes back to the desegregation era, 1950s-1960s. As I am sure I’ve mentioned before, I can remember when conservative white people in the Bible Belt were mostly supportive of local public schools. Then came the end of “separate but equal,” and all of a sudden they wanted their kids to go to (white) Christian schools. That was about the time that it became an article of faith among convervatives that “throwing more money” at public schools didn’t make them any better, even though copious data argued otherwise. Since then Republicans have figured out how to divert tax dollars into “charter” schools and “voucher” programs that have failed to live up to promises of better educations. Note that some of these programs have been in effect for decades; if they were going to work, they would have done it by now.

And speaking of educated mediocrities, Betsy DeVos comes to mind. DeVox cut funds to already struggling rural schools, among other atrocities. She was big on “educating the workforce,” as I recall.

But schools aren’t just educating the Amazon warehouse workers of the future. They are educating citizens and voters. And what’s crystal clear after recent years is that a ton of U.S. citizens and voters have no grasp of science or history and don’t know how their own government works. And they can’t critically think their way out of a wet paper bag. Will Bunch:

True, that carpenter hammering drywall wouldn’t have to call on a knowledge of basic genetics, presumably — but education isn’t only about facts, but also about developing respect for the wider processes of knowledge, and how we find it. When I poked around, I wasn’t shocked to learn that McKean County — where a school superintendent concedes that math and science education is struggling — also has one of the lowest COVID-19 vaccination rates in Pennsylvania, just 38.1%, compared with 52.7% statewide. …

… He [Stephen Rodriguez, president of the Pennsylvania League of Urban Schools Caucus of superintendents] told me that, of course, a would-be carpenter would benefit from “a foundational knowledge of biology” — in a world where being a good citizen depends on honing an ability to understand what is true and what is misinformation.

“If we do not give our children a good basis for an understanding of their world, how will we know if our government lies to us about anything?” added Rodriguez, who specifically mentioned the spread of QAnon, the baseless conspiracy theory centered on child sex trafficking that animated so many of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists.

One thing I’ve noticed in online “discussions” over covid mitigation is that righties have absolutely no concept of risk assessment. If masks don’t work 100 percent of the time, there’s no point to them. If a small percentage of vaccinated people get “breakthrough” cases of covid, then vaccines are junk and not worth taking. You can give them data about odds and percentages, and they can’t or won’t understand it.

And, of course, a big, dumb, angry, undereducated population can be manipulated by just about anybody with enough money and clout to get mass media access.

Now schools are under fire for teaching history, for Pete’s sake, and a loud faction of ignorant white bigots is threatening to take over school boards and replace what history is taught with white supremacist myths. And these people are, of course, the same ones who can’t grasp covid risk assessments and think climate change is a hoax. I don’t see education getting any better in the U.S. any time soon.

Following up my post from earlier this week, here’s some much ignored but significant data. In 2017, white Christians became a minority in the U.S. for the first time. And current projections say that Christians of all races will be a minority in the U.S. by 2050.

This is a shift that’s been going on for some time, driven partly by immigration but mostly by millennials. There is a long-standing pattern of young people skipping church attendance when they first leave home, but in the past they’ve returned to religious affiliation when they marry and have children. Millennials, however, are leaving religion and not coming back.

We’ve reached a point at which a reactionary faction among Christians appears to have taken over a large part of state and federal government, including the Supreme Court. They are now actively campaigning to either destroy or take control of the public school systems in conservative states. One wonders if this backlash to secularism and modernity isn’t partly driven by shrinking church memberships. Christians are losing control and feeling threatened.

A few years ago, there was much hand-wringing because the older, non-evangelical Protestant churches were losing members. Catholicism and evangelical denominations were doing fine. But Catholicism has benefited from immigration from South and Central America, which kept its numbers stable in spite of a loss of young adult members. And now evangelicalism is eroding.  “Only 8 percent of young people identify as white evangelical Protestant, while 26 percent of senior citizens do,” it says here.

A big reason for this shift, according to several researchers, is changing views on morality. Younger people are less likely than their parents to be knee-jerk homophobes, for example. Sex before marriage is now openly normal.  Conservative Christianity, with its rigidly absolutist Bronze Age moral code,  is increasingly out of touch with 21st century western culture. And culture is winning.

“Changing views about the relationship between morality and religion also appear to have convinced many young parents that religious institutions are simply irrelevant or unnecessary for their children,” it says here.

Those of us old enough to remember the Eisenhower Administration can probably remember when white Protestant Christianity was simply assumed to be America’s Religion, and white Protestantism dictated America’s accepted moral sensiblities.

How white America saw itself, 1950s

Needless to say, between then and now there’s been a huge erosion of white Christian hegemony. Some People aren’t ready to accept this.

I suspect much of the corrupt state of U.S. Christianity can be traced to the rise of televangelism. Let’s face it; most televangelism is a freak show. It also made some well-known televangelists fabulously wealthy. This no doubt encourages them; religious freak shows make money. A kindly pastor tellng viewers to love their neighbors can’t compete with the likes of flamboyant Jimmy Swaggart, or with Joel Olsteen’s feel-good, guilt- and sacrifice-free prosperity gospel. But while these sideshow acts draw a lot of followers, they repel many more. If all you knew of religion is what you saw on television, you’d probably stay clear of it, too.

Earlier this week I wrote about the weird phenomenon of white evangelicals refusing to get covid shots. Writing in the Washington Post, Michael Gerson agrees that there is no Christian religious doctrine that discourages taking a covid shot. Just the opposite, actually; there’s an overwhelming argument to be made from Jesus’ words that people should just get jabbed.

Robert Jones of the Public Religion Research Institute, wrote that “in the upside-down world white evangelicalism has become, the willingness to act in self-sacrificial ways for the sake of vulnerable others — even amid a global pandemic — has become rare, even antithetical, to an aggressive, rights-asserting white Christian culture.” Golden Rule, anybody? Love your neighbor? Love your enemy, even? I guess not.

This objection to vaccines includes the widespread belief that the vaccines either contain aborted fetal cells (not true) or were originally cultivated in fetal cells. This is true of Johnson and Johnson, but the Pope says take it anyway. It’s not true of Pfizer or Moderna. And, anyway, whether Some People agree or not, there is no explicit biblical teaching forbidding abortions.

The objections of evangelicals to vaccine mandates is framed in the language of religious liberty. But, Gerson argues, that doesn’t fit. What the evangelicals are really arguing for is libertarianism, which has nothing whatsoever to do with Christianity. They have replaced Jesus’ moral and ethical teachings (which, you might recall, emphasized taking care of our neighbors, and everybody is a neighbor) with a libertarian position that individual rights supercede everything else, including the well being of others. And that the greatest evil in the world is government coercion, no matter what purpose is being served. “This is heresy compounded by lunacy,” Gerson says.

Writing in Salon earlier this year, an evangelical minister named Nathaniel Manderson said pretty much the same thing.

Over the last 70 years, Christian theology has been steadily replaced, within the evangelical world, by Republican or “conservative” ideology. … This shift is most obvious around the issues of gun rights and immigration. If you want to reject the foreigner, build a wall and own a private artillery, go right ahead. That is your right. But it is not your right if you sincerely want to follow the teachings of Jesus. We are not gun owners; we are pacifists. We are not provided with the gift of freedom and independence by God just to make sure no one else can have it.

As I wrote in the previous post, evangelicalism wasn’t always like this. Originally it was a big and very diverse movement. In the 18th century evangelism was defined by its emphasis on a personal relationship with God — without priest and church as intermediaries — and on a “born again” experience in which one makes a personal commitment to that relationship.

There have long been tensions between conservative and liberal movements within evangelicalism. In 19th century U.S., white southern evangelicals were marked by their support for slavery, while northern evangelicals called for Abolition. Some denominations split apart, some permanently.

But now some are beginning to wonder if evangelicalism is sustainable at all. Evangelicalism is breaking apart writes Peter Wehner at The Atlantic.

“The root of the discord lies in the fact that many Christians have embraced the worst aspects of our culture and our politics. When the Christian faith is politicized, churches become repositories not of grace but of grievances, places where tribal identities are reinforced, where fears are nurtured, and where aggression and nastiness are sacralized. The result is not only wounding the nation; it’s having a devastating impact on the Christian faith.”

Wehner talked to many ministers and church leaders, many of whom have walked away from their former churches. “How many people look at churches in America these days and see the face of Jesus?” one said.

Wehner’s is a really excellent analysis of how contemporary evangelicalism came to be hollowed out of Christian doctrine and replaced by politics and grievance. Churches have been putting more effort into being entertaining — which keeps people in their seats and puts money in the offering plate —  than in teaching.

And large numbers of conservative white Americans who happen to be evangelical are insisting that their churches perfectly reflect their political views, or they will take their offering plate money elsewhere. This is more likely to happen among evangelicals, who have a long tradition of anti-institutionalism, than “mainllne” Protestants. The Southern Baptist Convention, for example, sees itself as a kind of confederation of independent churches rather than as a single hierarchichal organization.

Finally we get to Jennifer Rubin, who writes that Trump idolatry has undermined religious faith. Worth a look. Trump really is the Golden Calf.

Getting back to the projection that Christians will be a minority of Americans by 2050 — for a long time I’ve heard that Europe is “post Christian.” This doesn’t mean there still isn’t a lot of Christianity in Europe, but it’s no longer the default. For some time, a growing majority of younger Europeans are “nones” — no religious affiliation. This is especially true in western Europe. The “nones” are not necessarily atheist. They just don’t consider themselves to be Christians or part of any other religious tradition. This is happening in the U.S. also, although the U.S. is a tad behind Europe. This phenomenon is not happening in places dominated by other religions, however in particular Islam and Hinduism. Globally, Christianity is expected to experience a greater net loss in the coming years than other religions.

Between 2015 and 2020, Christians are projected to experience the largest losses due to switching. Globally, about 5 million people are expected to become Christians in this five-year period, while 13 million are expected to leave Christianity, with most of these departures joining the ranks of the religiously unaffiliated.

I could be wrong, but it’s possible that the influence of Christianity on culture and events peaked in the 19th and 20th centuries and is about to go into a decline. If so, it has only itself to blame.

It feels like the end of an era.

Jarvis DeBerry, MSNBC Opinion Columnist, writes that White evangelicals dying of Covid after denouncing vaccines are wasting martyrdom. He begins,

“This year we’ve seen a number of conservative personalities, including the late evangelical leaders Marcus Lamb and Jimmy DeYoung, who succumbed to Covid-19 after minimizing the risks of the disease or making disparaging remarks about the vaccines. What is such opposition if not an arrogant attempt to put God to the test, no less problematic, say, than stepping off a great height and counting on being caught by angels?”

For those of you who missed Sunday School, that last comment is a reference to Matthew 4:5-7, in which the devil told Jesus to throw himself off the highest point of the temple so that angels would catch him. Jesus replied, ” It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” Some translations render this as “You shall not tempt the Lord thy God.” There are many centuries of sermons and commentaries on Matthew 4, but most of them I’ve seen boil down to “Don’t try to manipulate God into performing a miracle to save your ass so you can show everybody what a Big Shot Holy Person you are.”

DeBerry points to a survey by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) that shows white evangelicals are the only “religious” group in the U.S. in which a majority believe people should be able to get a religious exemption from covid vaccine mandates. (I have “religious” in quotation marks because DeBerry apparently thinks that “religion” consists entirely of Christianity and Judaism. PRRI lumps all the world’s other religious traditions under “Other non-Christian religion,” none of which appear to have religious issues with vaccines.) A majority of all the other religious groups surveyed thought there should be no religious exemption for vaccines.

There is no record I could find of evangelical leaders opposing vaccines on religious grounds in the past, before covid. The current objection appears to be some kind of shift in doctrine, even though no one is explaining what that doctrine is.

So the question is, on what basis should a religious exemption from covid vaccine mandates be allowed, from an evangelical perspective?

Although faith healing is not unknown in evangelicalism, I’m not aware of any situation in the Bible in which people were berated for consulting a physician instead of relying on God’s grace for healing. There wasn’t much in the way of medical science in those days, of course, although Greek and Roman physicians had figured out how to treat some things by Jesus’ day. But even the Romans employed prayers and chants as part of medical practice. The point is that there is nothing explicit in the Bible, and no argument from centuries of Christian theology before the 19th century or so, that provides Christians a clear religious exemption from getting covid vaccines or seeking any kind of medical treatment. Yes, this includes abortions.

In the 19th century all kinds of new religions emerged, some ostensibly Christian and some not. These include the Church of Christ, Scientist, which began in the 1870s. Christian Science has a complicated belief system about medical care that I can’t say I entirely understand. They go to medical professionals for some kinds of health care but rely on prayer alone for other kinds. From what I have read these beliefs aren’t based on the Bible or any previous school of theology. However, even the Christian Scientists these days are not rigidly dogmatic about vaccines and encourage practitioners to make up their own minds.

Here’s an article from the Council on Foreign Relations that provides some historical background on religious objections to vaccines in the U.S.. In brief, in the past there really hasn’t been much objection to vaccines based on religious beliefs. One scholar noted that American religious leaders in the 1950s and 1960s praised vaccines as gifts from God.

One of the patriarchs of evangelicalism, John Wesley (1703-1791) not only approved of the medical science of his day, he also opened free clinics and pharmaceutical dispensaries for the poor. He encouraged people to have faith and pray, also, but he encouraged people to take their physical ailments to doctors for treatment.

But evangelicalism itself has changed a lot from its origins. Many 19th century evangelicals were the flaming liberals of their day. Northern evangelicals were leaders of the Abolitionist movement, and later many were active in the Social Gospel movement, which in turn gave birth to the Progressive Era of the early 20th century. There were conservative evangelicals also, of course. But a century and more ago evangelicalism was distinct from fundamentalism, a reactionary religious movement of the late 19th century that formed as a backlash to the Social Gospel and Darwin and modernism generally.

These days evangelicallism and fundamentalism have become synonyms. The reasons for that are complicated, but very briefly over several decades fundamentalism evolved and fused with Christian nationalism, and these movements merged with conservative evangelicalism and took over one congregation after another, driving out the liberals. And this mashup makes up most of today’s “Christian Right.”

It hasn’t been that long since the liberal Jimmy Carter was not shy about calling himself an evangelical. I’m not sure he still does. There are denominations that used to be considered evangelical — the United Methodists, for example — that don’t seem to use the word “evangelical” to describe themselves any more. Likewise the liberal United Church of Christ originally grew out of the evangelical movement but has nothing to do with evangelicalism these days.

The PRRI survey made an interesting distinction between personal religious beliefs and the religious teachings of Christian denominations. “White evangelical Protestants are the only religious group among whom there is a difference between the two statements on religious prohibitions: 21% agree that getting vaccinated against COVID-19 goes against their personal religious beliefs, compared to 13% who say it goes against the teachings of their religion,” it says.

But I wonder if the refusers who say getting a covid vaccine somehow violates their religious beliefs, whether personal or institutional, could articulate how that violation occurs, if you put them on the spot to explain it. I strongly suspect what we’re seeing is a lazy assumption that if one feels getting a covid vaccine is wrong, somehow, then the Bible must agree. Somehow.

Maggie Siddiqi, senior director of the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative at the Center for American Progress, writes that Covid vaccine and mask mandates expose alt-right Christian hypocrisy: “For many on the religious right, religious freedom only matters if it supports a right-wing political agenda.”

… for many on the religious right, religious freedom only matters if it supports a right-wing political agenda. Indeed for years, extreme-right Christian groups have been misusing religious freedom to do everything from discriminating against LGBTQ people to denying access to reproductive health care. Far from a legitimate effort to protect the right to worship freely, religious freedom has been manipulated into another tool in the Christian nationalist playbook to circumvent any law or regulation they see fit.

At the start of the pandemic, when states were compelled to issue emergency public health orders to shut down in-person gatherings, including at houses of worship, the same groups who cried “religious freedom” at any law they disliked did so once again. It quickly became clear that if they could win exemptions from emergency public health orders on religious freedom grounds — even in the face of a deadly, highly contagious disease — they could win any claim by exploiting religious freedom.

If it were not apparent enough that these supposed claims of religious freedom ring hollow, an entire industry of anti-vaccine activists have now combined forces with Christian nationalists. Some clergy are even offering to provide religious exemptions — if you pay them. Liberty Counsel, the law firm that represented Kim Davis, the county clerk in Kentucky who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, is a major player in providing legal guidance and representation to those seeking to use religious exemptions to circumvent Covid-related requirements.

But religious freedom does not matter, it seems, when Jewish groups state that life begins at birth, not at conception, and that denying the right to prioritize the life of a mother violates Jewish religious beliefs. Religious freedom does not matter when faith-based health care providers say they are morally, religiously obligated to provide care for all, without discrimination.

I am not expert in all of the world’s religions. There may be a sect somewhere that has a genuine doctrinal objection to mandates I don’t know about. But it seems to me there are no legitimate religious exemptions to the vaccine mandate.

This is not really answering the question of why so many white evangelicals are hostile to covid vaccines. I think the answer to that has nothing to do with religion. The problem is that what passes for religious doctrine among many evangelicals is nothing but consuming tribal loyalty to hard-right political views and Donald Trump. John Wesley wouldn’t recognize any of it.

New Yorkers line up for smallpox vaccines, undated illustration

However unsettled the world has become, at least my grandson Dylan has a plan to take charge of Christmas. Have a happy!

The U.S. Justice Department has filed a brief against the state of Missouri’s stupid “Second Amendment Preservation” law. The brief says the law “poses a clear and substantial threat to public safety” and has “seriously impaired the federal government’s ability to combat violent crime in Missouri.”

I wrote awhile back about the state of Missouri’s Second Amendment Preservation Act that went into effect in June. Very basically, the act is an attempt to nullify federal gun control laws. Missouri has close to the weakest gun control laws in the nation. See When Missouri repealed a key gun law, few protested. The result: More deaths than ever, in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 8, 2021.

The brief was filed in regard to a suit brought by St. Louis city and county against the law last June, which I wrote about at the time — St. Louis Sues Missouri Over New Gun Law. According to the Kansas City Star, “A Cole County court this year upheld the law, a decision being appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court.”

The Kansas City Star also reports today,

“After an Independence police officer was killed in a shootout in September, Missouri state law enforcement initially refused routine federal assistance in tracing the murder weapon. The same month, a Missouri State Highway Patrol trooper released a federal fugitive after a traffic stop.”

I’ll pause for a moment’s reflection. I’m still looking for details about the released federal fugitive.

“The incidents are described in a blistering court brief filed Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Justice outlining the consequences of the Second Amendment Preservation Act, a new state law that prohibits Missouri police officers from helping enforce certain federal gun laws. The document paints a stark portrait of how SAPA, also known as House Bill 85, has disrupted cooperation between federal, state and local law enforcement.”

This is insane. The DOJ has been sending letters to the governor and making lots of other noise about how blatantly unconstitutional the Missouri law is. A brief is a baby step beyond “noise,” I believe. Andrew Jackson would have sent troops by now. But the Missouri Supreme Court is famous for nonsensical rulings, so I have little hope the court will overturn the law.

Earlier this year, St. Louis Mayor Tish Jones was giving a news conference on gun violence prevention when gunshots could be heard in the distance. This is life in St. Louis, folks. It’s a shooting gallery.

In other news — Trump suddenly is taking credit for creating the vaccines and telling people to get vaccinated. Most are assuming this is a signal he’s planning to run again in 2024. The vaccines are the only positive thing his administration managed to do, that I can think of. This might give the MAGA-heads whiplash. Denial of covid and the vaccines is so much part of their tribal culture I’m not sure they can let it go, even on Trump’s say-so.

Former police officer Kim Potter has been convicted of first degree manslaughter for fatally shooting Black motorist Daunte Wright.