You're Not Welcome Here, Ep. 13: "But it’s really about politics, right?”
How do we understand a complex social and political phenomenon like Christian nationalism? Does it represent a strategic coalition of different identity groups (e.g., political conservatives, conservative Christians, etc.)? Or is it something else? Dan argues that understanding something like Christian nationalism requires a different understanding of social and political identity. Instead of a strategic coalition, a phenomenon like Christian nationalism represents the emergence of a single new, complex social identity.
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Axis Mundy What are the connections between purity culture and race?
Why does purity culture work so hard to disembody people, make them feel as if they're not living in their own skin?
And what do these things have to do with each other?
Well, we're incredibly excited to announce our next Straight White American Jesus Seminar, Purity Culture, Race, and Disembodiment.
In this class, the instructor, Dr. Sarah Mosliner, who is a leading researcher on purity culture and the leader of the After Purity Project, We'll take participants through various histories and ideologies as they relate to the racist origins of purity culture and how disembodiment is a tactic used by white evangelical leaders and others in order to achieve cultural, political, and religious dominance.
Sarah Mosliner is the author of Virgin Nation.
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and someone who's been studying this topic for over 15 years.
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Hello and welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Dan Miller, Associate Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College and also a trauma resolution practitioner with the Center for Trauma Resolution and Recovery.
And you are listening to the ongoing series that I've been putting together on identity, identity politics called You're Not Welcome Here.
And, as always, I thank those of you who are listening.
I thank those of you who support Straight White American Jesus, both in spirit and financially.
And I also want to thank the Kapp Center at UCSB, with whom we are hosted in partnership.
So, we're continuing on talking about identity and identity politics, and I want to begin by just imagining a scenario.
And this is a scenario that I've made up, but I think it'll be familiar to a lot of people.
Made it a little bit more real world.
I've been talking about my Denver Broncos fandom for a while, so this is something different.
But I want you to imagine that the place where you work, imagine that you work in, I don't know, some sort of company or an office building or something like that.
Sort of, you know, big enough to have more people than just you.
And imagine that there are discussions about implementing a new policy.
My institution does this all the time.
I know lots and lots of other businesses do.
Maybe it's a policy that's being implemented or maybe they're talking about changing insurance providers or maybe they're trying to rework the structure of vacations and paid time off and how you have to put in your name for that or whatever it is, okay?
And they are soliciting feedback from the rank-and-file, right?
And we all know this is, you know, if we're talking about a company, especially in the neoliberal world in which we live, that feedback may or may not amount to anything.
But they have said, we want to know what employees think.
We want feedback on this.
And you know what your position is.
You know how you feel about it.
You hate the insurance provider you have and you've read all the literature and you want to change to something else.
But you also know that not enough other people agree with you or you don't think that they do.
And so you're trying to figure out what you can do to try to make it so this thing that really matters to you goes the way you think it should.
And maybe you know that, let's say, Lisa.
Lisa, who works in accounting, whose office is down the hall, you know that Lisa thinks what you think.
But here's the issue.
You and Lisa, you don't really get along.
Right?
Maybe some of it's a personality issue, right?
Maybe you and Lisa just have different personalities, but more of it is about work stuff because you disagree about a lot.
You're on different sides when there are debates that go around in your company about referring to the end of your event as a holiday party instead of a Christmas party.
You just don't see eye to eye on this and you get a little red in the face talking about it.
Maybe you were on different sides about how things worked out in, you know, the way that the company communicated about open enrollment last time around.
You just really didn't agree with it.
Or maybe because Lisa's in accounting and you're in, I don't know, whatever you're in.
Maybe you work in the shipping department or something like that.
It just really bugs you that they're always pushing for policies or paperwork or forms that you find onerous and they take a lot of time.
The point is, you and Lisa, you don't agree on a lot of different things, but But you see eye to eye about this latest issue.
You know that Lisa thinks the same thing about changing insurance providers that you do.
She feels as strongly as you do, and you also know that a lot of folks with her in the accounting department They might go the way Lisa does.
Maybe Lisa's a, she's a little bit of an influencer in that accounting department, right?
Maybe she's been there for a while.
Maybe she's just kind of a senior person and a lot of people defer to her.
So you know that not only does she think what you think, but a lot of other people might go with her if she were verbal about that.
So you arrange a time to talk.
You say to Lisa, hey, you want to meet me for lunch, or maybe let's get a cup of coffee, or we can chat for a few minutes, you know, after work someday, or whatever.
And you sit down and you say, look, I get it, we haven't always been on the same page, water under the bridge, all of that.
Let's just set that aside.
We have a common interest here, right?
We have a common position.
We have a common interest.
We think the same kinds of things.
So I think on this, we should join forces.
I think to bring about our common interest, we should set aside those other disagreements, at least on this.
We'll fight about the holiday party when the time comes.
But on this, we should work together.
And Lisa agrees.
And so you sort of team up.
Now, this doesn't mean that you're besties.
Doesn't mean that you're always going to be friends.
Doesn't mean you're even going to be allies on a lot of, you know, office politics sort of stuff.
But on this, you're going to work together.
And what you've essentially done is you've formed a coalition.
You have created a kind of strategic alliance that serves both of your respective interests.
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