Weekly Roundup: Conspiracy and Corona Virus, Title IX and Discrimination, and the Appeal of Biden
Brad and Dan discuss the conspiracy theories Evangelicals and the President are pushing about Corona Virus (0:30), Title IX exemptions for universities that discriminate against LGBT+ people (17:50), the surprising surge of Biden and his popularity with African American religious voters (27:05), who is the most "religious" candidate left (44:05), and a one-minute explainer on why COVID-19 is a serious threat to public health (as opposed to what Fox News is telling your mom or nana) (50:50).
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All right, welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi.
I am Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Skidmore College, and I'm here with My name is Dan Miller.
I'm Associate Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College.
So Dan, it is March 13, 2020, and we have really sort of crossed a threshold as it comes to coronavirus.
It seems like it's sort of Taking over, I went on a one-night camping trip on Wednesday night and then came back Thursday.
And when I came back Thursday, you know, had cell service and internet and stuff.
I was expecting, I don't know what I was expecting, but I came back to Tom Hanks is diagnosed.
The Prime Minister of Canada's partner or wife is diagnosed.
The NBA season is cancelled.
March Madness is cancelled.
So we've really kind of crossed the threshold here.
It's kind of, at least for me, I was born in 1980.
I've never really lived through a public health crisis that's set in this rapid.
I know those who lived through the AIDS epidemic will have their memories, but this is just set in so quickly and so universally that it's just something I've never lived through.
Yeah, I haven't either.
It's been really interesting.
And like you say, it's sort of moving really, really fast.
The other piece of news that keeps coming out are like all the people that our president has like interacted with who've been diagnosed now.
And we still keep getting insistences, publicly at least, that he doesn't need to be tested and so forth.
But yeah, it can be a little unnerving.
We're going to talk about that later, you know, to some extent and sort of what to maybe do about that.
But yeah.
Well, I want to say just from the jump, folks, that I know this is a weird week.
I don't know about you, but my news outlets and Twitter feed and everything else are basically just all coronavirus.
We are going to talk about it.
We're going to talk about some other religion and politics stuff.
I just want to say off the bat, we don't pretend to have any answers that anyone else has.
We're not going to stand up here and say that we have some wisdom that can make sense of the very, very, very fluid news cycle and kind of changing public health situation.
So we're going to do our best today to talk a little bit about coronavirus, but also some other news.
And maybe this will be a way to get your mind off it as you do the dishes or take a walk.
If some of you are kind of, you know, at home or You know, your routine is drastically changed.
Maybe this will just be a nice way to get away from from that for a little while.
And anyway, that's where we're at.
We're not going to pretend to have any more info than anyone else.
So let me just jump in and say the one thing I do want to talk about, Dan, is that one of the things we've gone over over again on this show is that evangelicalism is prone to Conspiracy theories, right?
It's prone to explain things in a way that avoid facts, avoid evidence for its own purposes.
And one of the things I saw Anthea Butler, who's a public intellectual and professor at UPenn, say on Twitter last night is that Trump is not far away from many evangelicals when it comes to a kind of non-evidentiary response to very important things.
So let me tell you what I mean, and this is our first segment.
Did you see that?
Yesterday, there was a briefing with the House of Representatives and several Congress people walked out.
This is Mike Quigley of Illinois.
I don't think anyone is going to leave the briefing satisfied with what's going on with testing right now.
Sean Maloney of New York said it was simply the worst briefing I've ever received in seven or eight years in Congress.
And so you might say, well, those are Democrats, right?
We would expect that out of them.
But there's just a lot of other evidence that the Trump response has been really, really poor.
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