S1.Ep3 (Re-Release): The History of the Religious Right
What if I told you the Religious Right formed on the basis of racism and not abortion? What if segregation was the real issue and the unborn were used later to justify it? That's what we discover on this episode. Brad and Dan trace the history of the Religious Right from the 60s to the present. And then Brad interviews Dr. Randall Balmer, professor of religion at Dartmouth College and one of the world's leading scholars on American Evangelicalism.
Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus episodes, ad-free listening, access to the entire 500-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/StraightWhiteJC
Order Brad's new book: https://www.amazon.com/Preparing-War-Extremist-Christian-Nationalism/dp/1506482163
SWAJ Apparel is here! https://straight-white-american-jesus.creator-spring.com/listing/not-today-uncle-ron
To Donate:
https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/BradleyOnishi
Venmo: @straightwhitejc
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
I am officially running for President of the United States.
The American dream is dead.
Please, please, it's too much winning.
We can't take it anymore.
We have to keep winning.
We have to win more.
We're going to win more.
Okay, welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
I am Brad Onishi, Associate Professor of Religion at Skidmore College.
And I'm Dan Miller, Associate Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College.
Last episode, we called it 81% and we were looking at how and why 81% of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump.
And we left the discussion with a key question.
We had put forward, or at least I had put forward, the thesis that Republican or politically conservative identity is a part of the religious identity of contemporary white evangelical Christians.
But it brought up the question of how did that happen?
There was a time in our relative lifetime when there was no religious right as we now experience it.
And so what we want to look at today is how that came to be.
How do we get from a time when to be an evangelical Christian was not necessarily to be a Republican or politically conservative and vice versa?
How did that develop?
We're going to take a look at that and then we're going to turn to Brad's conversation with Professor Randall Balmer, a Dartmouth scholar who has spent decades studying evangelicalism in America and is one of the world's, not just in the U.S., but in the world's authoritative voices on the subject.
And so that's going to be our focus today.
How did we get to this contemporary situation and this contemporary socio-political formation?
And so Brad, I'm going to throw it over to you.
Where does the story of what we now call the religious right begin?
Yeah, I mean, as a scholar, you know, we only have so much time.
And so, as a scholar, I feel like it's my duty to always preface any conversation with a disclaimer, right?
It's complicated.
People spend their lives studying these things.
We could fill—and people have—10 or 12 volumes on the subject.
Let me just say this.
The story—the modern story begins at the end of the 19th century, and that's a time of, you know, rapid industrialization.
The USA becomes, at that point, right, in the end of the 19th century, what we might call a modern nation.
And this sort of transition to a modern era brings with it growing pains, and it brings with it new ideas and new factors for Americans.
One of those is the arrival of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
I mean, this is something that is still raging today.
There are still debates about teaching evolution and creation all over the country.
Another is, and this is something that's really important to note, is the development of what's now called biblical studies.
And what that means, and this is really important for the ongoing discussion, is that scholars begin to study the Bible like they would have studied other texts.
OK, so they took the blinders off and said, OK, let's study this book historically.
Let's study this this text from a literary perspective.
Let's look at the archaeology of this of this text.
And by doing that and by deconstructing the sort of sacred text, they opened up a whole new can of worms.
OK, so we have these things happening.
And again, if you want to read about those those all of those sort of movements and all of those phenomena, there's fantastic text that happens.
But by the end of the century, there's a major split between Protestants in this country.
OK, so there's kind of two types of American Protestants that emerge into the 20th century.
One are what are often referred to as mainline Protestants or liberal Protestants.
And on the whole, and again, this is a characterization, but on the whole, this group is urban, secular, Socially oriented, meaning they participate in politics and see it as part of their religion.
They see the gospel of Jesus Christ as fundamentally about improving society, helping the vulnerable, the sick, those who are most in need.
They see Christianity as accommodating modern culture, not at odds with it.
They're open to science and they're open to biblical criticism.
Thanks for listening to this free preview of our Swadge episode.
In order to get access to the full episode and so much more, become a Straight White American Jesus Premium Subscriber by clicking the link in the show notes.
It'll take you like two clicks, I promise.
In addition to getting access to this episode, you'll have access to the entire Swadge archive, over 550 episodes.
You'll also get an extra episode every month, ad-free listening, Discord access, and so much more.
All that for less than six bucks a month, and it helps us keep our flag up and continue to safeguard democracy from religious nationalism, extremism, and rising authoritarianism.
