Weekly Roundup: Christian Nationalism is Not Imposter Christianity
Dan is joined by guest co-host Dr. Sara Moslener. They begin by the calls by Mike Pence and others for a national abortion ban. Dan puts this in the context of the "culture of life" many Christian conservatives tout as their reasons for implementing inhumane reproductive rights policies. Dan zeroes in on the slogan, "Save the Babies, Save America" as a nationalistic straw man with tragic consequences.
In the second segment, the hosts discuss the Turning Point USA conference, which is a vehicle for radicalizing young conservatives. Dr. Moslener shares her personal run-ins with the organization and the scary tactics they use to threaten and harass professors and teachers.
In the final segment, the hosts dig into the CNN article that claims Christian nationalism is "imposter Christianity." They argue that Christianity is what Christians do- and so CN is Christianity, even if it's violent, inhumane, and down right bad for the world.
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Hello and welcome to Straight Wide American Jesus.
I am one of your hosts, Dan Miller, Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College.
Brad Onishi is off today, so good for him.
But I'm joined by a guest co-host, was with us a couple weeks ago, has been with us other times, Sarah Mosliner.
So, hello, Sarah.
Hello, Dan.
It's great to be with you again.
And so a couple of things.
I just want to remind folks that we appear in partnership with the CAP Center at UCSB, and so we want to thank them.
As always, I want to thank everybody who supports us, whether it's just the encouraging emails that we get.
I got a great email today from somebody who said that they love my rants and to stop apologizing for them.
So that was...
That was encouraging, because there aren't many people in my life who say that, as well as people who support us financially.
We can't do this without you.
And so a couple just general things.
I will say on my end, there have been some technical issues today.
We had storms and power outages, and now there is work going on near where I am, and so there will be noise.
So I apologize to everybody.
A couple announcements.
I do want to remind folks that Sarah's seminar is coming up starting in August, August 18th.
It runs on four Thursdays.
You can just go to the Straight White American Jesus website and check that out.
And I'll let Sarah say something about it in just a moment.
But I do want to say a lot of people have expressed a need for scholarships for it.
And if you would just sort of put an appeal out, if you would be willing to contribute to sort of the scholarship fund for these, this is an evolving thing as we develop the seminars.
We want to be able to do that and aren't always able to.
If that's something you think you'd be interested in, if you could contact the podcast, you can contact me, danielmillerswage at gmail.com is my best podcast email, I guess, or contact Brad or contact us through the website or wherever, and we'd be happy to figure out the best way to do that.
So, Sarah, I'll throw it over to you if you want to just say a word about the seminar coming up here in just a couple weeks now.
Yeah, I'm looking forward to it.
This will be our second time doing this particular seminar.
It's called Purity, Race, and Disc slash Embodiment.
And it brings together a lot of the thinking I've been doing around purity culture, and specifically around purity culture as a racial project.
So many of our conversations, so many of the interviews I've conducted for my own research focus on purity culture as a sexual project, as a gender project.
But when we look more deeply at the roots of the concept of sexual purity, we see how it is deeply tied to notions of race and specifically race in the United States.
So we'll be doing a lot of A lot of work thinking about how purity culture and the concept of sexual purity has shaped our nationalistic discourses and how certain groups have been sort of anointed as populations to represent the entire nation, particularly the innocence of the nation.
We're going to be talking a little bit more about that in just a little bit, but this will be kind of four intensive evenings.
We'll be meeting, you know, four weeks in a row, Thursday nights for two hours to really talk through some of the deeper histories and implications in a way that just doesn't happen in other conversations.
And I employ a different kind of pedagogy in these seminars in that I have us really be grounded in our bodies and not just in our brains.
And I have found that to be a really great way for people to connect, even though we're all online and that it feels like the right thing to do, given the topic.
That we are the topics we are investigating.
So not just sexuality, but also race and race, you know, especially for white people is a very disembodied experience.
So that's another reason why I like to bring in embodiment practices, especially to a group that's that will most likely end up being predominantly white people.
So just sort of keep doing that work.
So yeah, so I look forward to meeting any and all of you, so I hope you will sign up.
And if you've, as Dan mentioned, if you have done the seminar before, if you've done a seminar with Dan and you want to make that opportunity available to other people, consider making a donation to the scholarship fund.
That would be incredibly helpful and appreciated.
Thanks for listening to this free preview of our Swadge episode.
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