Weekly Roundup: Is COVID-19 a Punishment from God?
Brad and Dan begin by discussing a the demand for in-person church meetings in Kansas, Liberty University's attack on the press, and Bill O'Reilly's comment that most of those who have died from COVID-19 were "on their last legs anyway." They then examine Franklin Graham's and Pope Francis' theologies on why this pandemic is plaguing the globe (14:00).
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I am Brad Onishi, and I'm Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Skidmore College, and I am here today, as always, on this Good Friday, Friday with my co-host, I'm Dan Miller, Associate Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College, and as Brad kind of indicated, for any who are observing religious holidays over the next few days, hopefully from a safe and appropriate distance, we wish you well.
Yeah, good Friday today and Passover this week, so lots happening.
Lots happening too, Dan, as usual with religion and politics and the COVID era.
Just seems like it never stops.
You know, last week we had some great stories from you about being a strapping lad in Oxford.
You know, lots of fan mail.
I mean, thus far you've resisted posting the pictures, so...
You know, despite all the fan demands for that.
Any comments?
I don't have any comments except that, as you know, we've also had some more colorful and entertaining Facebook Messenger discussions with some of the other key players.
So it's been... Yeah, but I'm holding out so far.
We'll see.
We'll see if the pressure mounts.
I think that's smart.
I think you should.
Well, for me, Dan, this week on Did You See That?, the thing that came up for me was Bill O'Reilly, former Fox News host, said that, you know, he was talking to Sean Hannity and he said, you know, most of these folks who have died of COVID-19 were
Quote on their last legs anyway, and we've brought this up before but you know just anytime somebody says they're for a culture of life They want to save just one one fetus at a time from abortion and this kind of thing We have talked about this endlessly about how that
Culture of life is very limited and it seems very politically motivated and at times disingenuous and Hannity's or I'm sorry O'Reilly saying well yeah who cares I mean most of these folks are on their last legs anyway and trying to downplay the severity of COVID-19 in a time when New York City is building mass graves in order to bury people.
You know, it seems like just a little bit morbid, perverse, and nefarious.
What about you?
What did you have for, did you see that this week?
Yeah, well one, if I'm sort of playing, you know, spin the wheel on like which topic to address first.
Kansas, and for people who follow like religion and politics stuff, or like culture war stuff, Kansas is kind of like the Florida of like the religion and politics world in some ways.
But the Democratic governor of Kansas, Laura Kelly, issued an executive order, I think earlier this week, maybe it was last week, prohibiting gatherings of more than 10 people in Kansas, including religious gatherings.
And so church meetings, synagogue, mosque meetings, etc.
And so this week, the GOP-led legislature, so it's very, very partisan, voted to rescind that order in the name of religious freedom, right?
And we said, "Enter in," right?
This is Easter week for Christians.
I read one description of this that, you know, Easter is normally like Super Bowl Sunday for Christians and so forth, ostensibly because they said this was a violation of their religious liberty and so forth.
I understand that now Kelly is suing the GOP leadership about that executive order and so forth.
But number one we already kind of talked about this some of the mentality behind this insistence on meeting and is it really an issue of religious freedom and so forth.
What I wanted to highlight was stuck to me about this was I want people to imagine for a minute If this was a religious minority community making this demand, right?
If this was a mosque in Kansas, and yes, there are mosques in Kansas, right?
Or a Muslim community center.
If this was a synagogue, I wonder how this would be received, or if it would be playing the same way, I don't think it would, with the GOP legislature, right?
I think what you would run the risk of is you would have this discourse that comes out, kind of a classic kind of racist and xenophobic discourse that, oh, these people aren't real Americans.
If they were real Americans, they would abide by this order.
They're threatening all of us, right, that us-them construction, that religious minorities are not somehow as truly American as others.
And it sort of struck me, and the reason it struck me in that way is because rights protections, protections to religious freedom, traditionally they've existed for religious minorities, right?
But this shows the complexity of that when we're talking about American evangelicalism because numerically, yes, evangelicals are a religious minority, but culturally, they're not, right?
They sort of, we've talked about this a lot of times, right?
They have disproportionate power.
Certainly in Kansas, they are not A minority religious group claiming their rights.
And so it just sort of struck me, number one, that this is kind of a farce, that this is somehow an argument about religious freedom.
It's not.
But it also, I think, highlights, if we think through those counterfactuals, the way that when religious conservatives and evangelicals talk about religious freedom, they mean the freedom of Christians and particularly evangelicals to do what they want.
And it's really about maintaining their kind of cultural authority.
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