Brad and Dan discuss how returning to normal after the pandemic is tragic in contemporary America: from the murder of Daunte Wright during the Derek Chauvin murder trial to the propagation of White replacement theory by prominent pundits and politicians to the Evangelical reticence to get the vaccine. They draw on the work of James Baldwin and others to draw connections among these disheartening facets of American life.
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All right.
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Good.
There we go.
Yeah, it wasn't showing my mic earlier, but now it is.
Cool.
Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, faculty of religion, Skidmore College.
Our show is hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center at UCSB, and I'm here today with my co-host.
I'm Dan Miller, associate professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
It's good to see you, Brad, in like balmy mid-April where I'm looking at like four inches of snow out my window here in Massachusetts.
I'm sure you're really sad you're not physically sitting in upstate New York right now.
There's always that bitter late April snow.
Like everybody, there's always the like 68 degree day in April in that northeast region.
And everyone's like spring is here.
And then like a week later, it's snowing and everyone is so bitter because in February, you're like, yeah, it's supposed to snow.
But April of 16 April 26th.
Yeah, you get pretty mad about it.
Before we get going today, Dan, I want to say we have reached a trifecta with the Holy Trinity.
And by that, I mean, straight white American Jesus has been attacked by or mentioned.
I'm sorry.
There's there's people on Twitter who will get upset if I say attack.
So mentioned by Albert Muller, Southern Baptist Convention, your old your old home there.
Focus on the Family, Jim Daly, and now Timothy Keller has responded and is on a tweet storm against straight white American Jesus as we speak.
And so the Gospel Coalition.
So we have the Gospel Coalition, Focus on the Family, Southern Baptist Convention.
I take that as a sign that we are doing something right.
So I wanted to mention that as kind of a nice achievement that we've got for the last month.
All right, today we want to talk about, I think, a couple of things that are in our minds related.
We want to talk about police brutality and the shooting of Daunte Wright and of others.
I mean, there's so many There's so many acts of cruelty in this country that it seems like a police shooting coverage is always interrupted by news of a mass shooting.
And then the mass shooting news is interrupted by news of a new police shooting.
So we want to talk about that.
We want to talk about white replacement theory that Tucker Carlson is touting on his show.
And we want to talk about evangelicals Extending the pandemic by refusing to get the vaccine.
And so I want to start with this, Dan.
I have been feeling some despair, if I'm honest, this week, just in light of all of the news and tragedies related to police brutality, to the murder of a young child.
I mean, there's a 13-year-old boy who was killed.
And the footage came out just yesterday in Chicago.
We woke up today to eight people being the victims of another mass shooting.
Dan, one of the things I've thought a lot about this week is that we are returning to normal.
The country is opening up.
And for some, that represents the chance to sort of reinvigorate the idyllic life and idea they had of this country.
For many others, returning to normal means feeling unsafe.
It means feeling as if they are targeted.
It means feeling as if they don't have a chance in the system.
It brought me back to James Baldwin and his essay, Down at the Cross, A Letter from a Regent in My Mind, which is included in The Fire Next Time.
And he says in that essay, The white man's heaven, sings a black Muslim minister, is the black man's hell.
One may object, possibly, that this puts the matter somewhat too simply, but the song is true, and it has been true for as long as white men have ruled the world.
He goes on to talk about the arrogance and cruelty of Christianity as a sort of vehicle and weapon of white supremacy.
Dan, one of the things I can't stop thinking about this week is that returning to normal for some is a chance to return to the idealistic freedoms that supposedly Americans experience.
Jim Jordan was yelling at Dr. Fauci yesterday about this.
When do we get to go back to normal and our God-given freedoms?
For others, it brings back a hellish existence that includes feeling like there is no recourse to safety, to protection, or to the pursuit of the American dream.
And we are seeing that in the fact that there is a trial going on for the murder of George Floyd.
A couple miles down the road, Daunte Wright was shot.
We are getting more news about other police shootings, namely from Chicago, and a 13-year-old who was shot by the police.
There was claims he had a gun and he was holding a gun and pointing a gun, and now we know that video footage shows that he was not.
One of the guests on Hannity the other night, Dan, said that the shooting of Daunte Wright was a good shooting because it was justified and it was something that was necessary.
I want to ask this question, and it's one that Brie Newsom asked on Twitter, so these are Brie Newsom's words, not mine.
How does it make sense to have a state where the death penalty is outlawed, meaning you can have full due process in a court of law, and the judge can't sentence you to death, but a police officer is empowered to summarily execute people based on his singular subjective reaction?
Just to add to that, what does it mean about a civilization where that includes children, Dan?
That includes 13-year-olds and 17-year-olds and young people who may be considered adults but who remain to be 18 or 19?
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