Weekly Roundup: The Make America Great Again Migration
Brad begins this solo roundup by discussing how provocateur worship leader Sean Feucht provoked conflict in Portland Sunday. His security team was made up of Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer, leading to reflection on what the intimacy between conservative White Christians and militant nationalists groups means for the ongoing Cold Civil War. Brad then spends extended time charting the political/ideological migration to Idaho, the fastest growing state in the country. He demonstrates how and why people are moving there in order to be in homogeneous communities where White Christians are the majority. This is a reversal of what happened in the mid-20th century, when millions of Southerners and Midwesterners flocked to the Southwest.
Brad finishes by discussing what the new census data tells us about the nation and what it means moving forward.
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What's up, y'all?
Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, and our show is hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center at UCSB.
I am alone today.
Dan is off on vacation, and so it'll just be me, and we might have a little bit of a shorter weekly roundup as a result, but there's a ton going on, and I want to talk about some important stuff.
Before we do that, I want to say that our seminar, Pure America, Religion, Race, Nation, is happening in September.
The good news is it's full, and we're capping our enrollment because we want to make sure that it's an intimate, dialogical setting where conversation can happen.
However, we know that things happen in life, and so kind of two announcements.
One, if you're interested and you haven't signed up yet, send us an email and we will definitely put you on the waiting list.
So, if you just send us an email with the subject line waiting list for seminar, we will make sure that we put you there and let you know if a spot opens up.
The other thing is we are planning to do this again, probably in January, and so you can look for that in the coming months, so this will not be the only chance to take part in a Straight White American Jesus seminar.
Okay?
All right.
With that said, let's talk about some stuff that happened this week.
It's going to be kind of a winding journey today, so I want you to prepare yourself and give me a minute to kind of connect some dots that I do think are all intertwined, okay?
So hang with me as we kind of take a little journey.
Here's where we're going to start.
I'm going to start in Portland on Sunday, a couple days ago, okay?
And there was a religious gathering, and that gathering was led by worship pastor extraordinaire, provocateur, whatever you want to call him, Sean Foyt.
I know many of you know about Sean Foyt.
He has this sort of mane of blonde curly hair, looks kind of like a surfer out of an 80s movie.
And he has been the guy who's been showing up at places.
The Capitol building, wherever, leading these maskless worship gatherings or rallies where he plays his guitar and people sing and so on and so forth, okay?
So he shows up in Portland on Sunday, and here's what happens.
This is a reporting from Zane Sparling at the Portland Tribune.
A religious gathering became the pretext for violent skirmishes between left and right-wing groups for the second day in a row in downtown Portland.
Mace was thick in the air, fireworks exploded, and airsoft rounds were unloaded as dueling groups clashed after night fell in Portland on Sunday, August 8.
The confrontation began after Christian leader Sean Foyt hosted a gathering at Tom McCall Waterfront Park, drawing with him more than 500 worshipers and dozens of armed volunteers who described themselves as a security force.
So, Foyt, in several social media posts, Advertise the fact that he had a security force with him at this rally, okay?
And so he tweeted, if you mess with them or our First Amendment right to worship God, you'll meet Jesus one way or another.
And that is accompanied by, there's a picture of Foyt with these sort of couple dozen People who are part of this armed security force that, you know, was brought along to protect him at this rally because he knew what he was doing.
He was going into downtown Portland, he was provoking a response from activists there, and he knew that there would be skirmishes, okay?
Now, what some of you have noticed on Twitter and some of you have pointed out is that the people who showed up to protect Sean were folks who were from organizations such as Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys, right?
It seems as if The people that showed up to Bishan security forces when he reached out, in his words, to churches and friends were Patriot Prayer folks and the Proud Boys.
One of them being the infamous Proud Boy Tiny Toes.
Okay?
This is all available.
I can post the links.
It's all there.
Now, when asked about it, You know, Foyt said, look, I just reached out to friends.
I reached out to churches.
I told them we needed extra security.
And this is who showed up.
You know, I don't know.
I don't know who the Proud Boys are.
I'm just saying these guys showed up.
They're ex-military.
They're folks who love our nation.
And so they were there to help me, right?
And, you know, so he's basically playing the ignorance card, right?
And saying, well, I just, you know, these are the guys that came along and they were the ones that provided me some protection because, and he says this in his video post, because we don't back down.
And I'll take you back to the tweet I read a minute ago.
If you mess with them or our First Amendment right to worship God, you'll meet Jesus one way or another.
And as Christy Stroop points out in her piece at Religion Dispatches this week, That does seem very much like a threat, right?
Like, mess with us and you will meet Jesus, as in you will meet your maker, as in you will lose your life, all right?
Now, I could go into the ways that I just think this is a true perversion of Christianity and the gospel, and I could debunk all of that.
I don't want to do that today.
What I want to do is say this.
He asked for help with security and the Proud Boys showed up.
That is not a coincidence and we cannot allow the ignorance defense to hold any water here, okay?
I went to a protest a couple of months ago organized by some folks here in the Bay Area and we were protesting Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council and Tony Perkins was speaking at the Calvary Chapel Pretty close to my house.
And so we were protesting, given the fact that Tony Perkins' views on gay, lesbian, and any member of the LGBTQ community are hateful.
He's on several lists and watches about his homophobic views, the way he talks about families and gender and sexuality, so on and so forth.
And while we're protesting, who showed up to quote-unquote protect the church?
Well, some guys dressed as Proud Boys.
There was even people who were openly wearing Nazi paraphernalia and symbols.
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