Brad and Dan begin this MLK weekend show by going over the outlines of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the Selma marches, and King’s missives to White moderates. They link this to the current fight for voting rights and the misugided logic of Senator Synema, who continues to stand in the way of new voting rights legislation. They then transition to new scholarship that shows White Christian nationalists are on the whole in favor of making it harder to vote and are unwilling to admit that voter suppression is a factor in American politics. The show ends with reflections on the sedition charges against a number of Oath Keepers–and the Christian nationalist logic they use to defend their traitorous actions. In a bonus segment, Brad and Dan discuss the NFL MVP race as a referendum on White identity politics.
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Episode produced by Brad Onishi and Daniel Miller.
Episode edited by Shannon Sassone.
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Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, faculty at the University of San Francisco.
Our show is hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center, 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, on one coast where it's significantly warmer than here today.
I'm sure that this saddens you greatly, having left central New York to be in much warmer places.
It does not.
And I know you love the winter, which, as I've said before, it makes me not trust you sometimes.
But, you know, that's a whole other thing in our friendship that we have to work through.
So, hey, Dan, before we get going, I want to I want to talk about another podcast.
We don't do this very often, but I want to give a shout out to Un-F-ing the Republic.
That is the Safe for Work You know, pronunciation.
So just so you all know, but on F-ing the Republic, UNFTR is a podcast about politics, economics, socioeconomic issues, and so on.
It's pretty loose, maybe a little looser than ours, Dan, a healthy dose of profanity.
And they just use a lot of the things we use, thorough research, And humor to kind of dig into big topics.
They also just have really sharp production, right?
And Dan, we do our show three times a week, and it kind of prevents us from a lot of sound design and other sorts of things.
But their production is top-notch, and it's actually something I'm pretty jealous of.
And so what do they do?
They source their material, they provide historical context to sort of help listeners understand crucial democratic issues in a shared language in a way that just like we do, Dan, people can kind of get to.
And they touch on a lot of the issues that we do, right?
The influence of the far right on public policy, the unholy alliance between Christian nationalists and free market neoliberals, all those kinds of things.
What I will say, Dan, is we do our show three times a week, and we're just always sort of moving through what's happening in the moment.
We're also doing series that really touch on important things.
Uneffing the Republic is amazing because it does this in a way that's a little slower paced.
And so while it doesn't appear as often, it does provide these in-depth looks at things like libertarianism, right?
Or neoliberalism.
And so if you like what we do research-wise, if you like what we do in terms of like taking complex Academic and and really sort of intricate concepts and making them accessible.
I would say you should check out on Effing the Republic.
So just a shout out to them and and what they're up to.
They've been featured in the New York Times, which is pretty cool.
The New York Times says they're one of the eight podcasts you should listen to in the post Trump era, which is pretty amazing.
So anyway, alright, Dan, that's that's a plug for on Effing the Republic and just wanted to shout them out today.
Alright, Dan, it is Martin Luther King Jr.
weekend in terms of the holiday.
It is another week of a lot going on in the world, but I just want to start with some historical facts and historical narration, if that's all right, okay?
1965, okay?
We have three marches in Selma, in March, and those marches are famous, right?
I think everybody listening knows that there were marches in Selma, and they were marches against Obstacles for the vote in the South that were being placed on African Americans.
So, there's a, you know, a recent movie about this.
Some of you can see in your mind, you know, Martin Luther King Jr.
standing with John Lewis, standing with a whole host of others crossing the bridge and marching in the Selma marches.
Okay?
Going from Selma to Montgomery three times.
In 1965, during the 3rd March, there was a famous sermon given by one Jerry Falwell.
We've talked about this on our show, but I'll talk about it again.
Jerry Falwell took great lengths in 1965 while the 3rd March was happening.
To denounce the civil rights movement, to say that real Christians didn't reform the outside but transformed the inside.
He called into question the faith of Martin Luther King Jr.
and also his patriotism.
Ministers in Marches was basically a Christian nationalist shot at the black Christians who were marching in Alabama for voting rights.
However, Dan, that did not stop the passage of the Voting Rights Act.
On 6th of August, 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, and he says the Voting Rights Act was, "...a triumph for freedom as a huge victory as any that has ever been won on any battlefield." This was, of course, in the wake of Selma, and it was a huge sort of win for the Civil Rights Movement, for Martin Luther King Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Why was the Voting Rights Act necessary, Dan?
Well, there were poll taxes, there were poll tests, right?
Literacy tests that people had to pass in order to vote.
There was so many things put up as obstacles for people to exercise their universal constitutionally given right to vote in elections.
King wrote in Selma, We see a classic pattern of disenfranchisement, typical of the Southern Black Belt areas where Negroes are in the majority.
He pointed out, Dan, that this was a systematic issue and that it needed to be protected, right, by a federal law that would ensure regardless of the locale, regardless of the state, people would have the opportunity to vote as they were guaranteed in the Constitution.
I bring that up Dan because it is the weekend where we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.
and it is a weekend where we are talking about voting rights once again.
We're talking about voting rights because voting rights are under attack.
There are dozens of bills all over the country that are trying to once again restrict the vote.
And I just want to point out, and I know that y'all listening know this, but we need to say it.
This comes in the wake of an election where Donald Trump lost in close races in places like Wisconsin, places like Arizona, places like Pennsylvania.
A lot of the doubt cast on votes, Dan, came from places and cities like Detroit, right?
In Michigan, one of the most majority black cities in the country.
Places like Milwaukee, right?
Same thing.
In Arizona, right?
There's a lot of people of color voting these days, right?
So this is not a coincidence.
It's in fact history repeating itself.
Now, As we've chronicled, the Democrats are pushing to reform voting rights after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act a couple of years ago.
They're trying to pass federal protections, but they only have a 51 to 50 majority, and two of their senators have not gotten on board.
One of them we talked about a couple weeks ago, and that is Kyrsten Sinema, who gave a speech this week.
She talked about how she sees the need to protect voting rights, but she says, I quote, I will not support separate actions that worsen the underlying disease of division infecting our country.
She also talks about how she does not want a tyranny of the majority.
And so, while she recognizes voting rights are sacred, she also says she can't change the filibuster rules in order to pass such measures, because to do so would lead to a tyranny of the majority and even further divisions.
I want to give you one more thing here, Dan, and that is a passage, very famous passage that we've actually talked about on the show before, but do it again, from Martin Luther King Jr.' 's letter from Birmingham Jail.
This is from a few years before the SOMO marches, but I think it applies to everything we're talking about today.
I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers.
First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the White Moderate.
I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Council or the Ku Klux Klan, but the White Moderate, who is more devoted to order than to justice.
More devoted to order than to justice.
Who prefers a negative peace, which is the absence of tension, to a positive peace, which is the presence of justice.
Who constantly says, I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods.
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