It's In the Code, Ep 23: Christian Health and Safety
Theologically and culturally conservative American Christians actively mock “liberal” or “progressive” or “secular” appeals to “safety” in society. And yet, the rhetoric of safety, and the related idea of “health,” have penetrated deeply into this religious culture. One the surface, these emphases represent a more inviting, less judgmental form of spirituality. But in this episode, Dan decodes this language to show that, beneath that appearance, this rhetoric harbors judgment and resentments that actively endanger huge numbers of people and that lead to lasting negative mental and emotional health consequence.
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Hello and welcome to this episode of It's in the Code, a series that is part of the podcast Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Dan Miller.
I'm professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College, and I am the host of this series.
As always, I want to thank CAP Center, UCSB, with whom we work in partnership.
Thank them for their support, and most importantly, thank all of you, all of you who support us by listening, who support us by suffering through commercials and advertisements, which I know are nobody's favorite.
Those of you who have made the decision to support us financially, we really do appreciate that, and that's what keeps us going.
We do, as Brad will often say during our weekly roundup, we do multiple episodes a week, a lot of time, a lot of work.
And that's what helps keep us going.
So if you find this podcast, this series valuable, I would invite you to consider if financial support might be something that you could consider.
As always, I welcome hearing from listeners.
My email is danielmillerswag, danielmillerswaj at gmail.com.
And this series in particular is driven by you.
It's driven by the insights that you raise, the questions, the comments, the feedback that I get.
I do the best I can to respond to as many folks as I can.
I don't always get a chance to do that.
I know that many of you who listen, even if I haven't had that opportunity to respond to you individually, will often hear the questions and comments you have posed reflected in the episodes that we do.
And this is a great form of support as well, to know that people listen, to know that people are interested, to have people kindly call me out in places where you think maybe I've taken a wrong turn, or propose alternatives, or simply keep the ideas coming, and certainly the kind affirmations and encouragements that I receive, all is welcome.
So thank you to all of you who support us in all of these really, really different ways.
The last thing I'll say before diving into this episode is to remind folks that we have our first Straight White American Jesus live event coming up next month in November.
November 18th at 7 p.m.
Mountain Time.
That's what, 9 p.m.
Eastern, 6 p.m.
Pacific Time.
We will be hosting an event called Christian Nationalism and the Future of Democracy, a couple roundtable discussions featuring a number of people who have been featured on the podcast and whose work you may be familiar with.
People like Robert Jones, Larisha Hawkins, Catherine Stewart, Samuel Perry, of course, Brad Onishi and I will be there.
Sarah Mosliner, friend of the show and sort of sometimes host of the show, will be there.
It'll be a time to just sit and get to have a kind of conversation about the midterms, which will just have taken place.
And notions of nationalism, Christian nationalism, and so forth.
So, this is a live event.
If you can find yourself in Denver, November 18th at 7 p.m.
at Denver University Davis Auditorium, you are welcome to attend.
If you can't, the event will also be live streamed.
So there are live stream tickets available, as well as in-person tickets available.
We're excited to do this, excited to see how this goes, and want, obviously, as many people involved as possible.
If you go to Brad's website, www.bradonishi.com slash nationalism.
So, bradonishi.com slash nationalism.
The information is there.
It's appearing other places as well, but that's the one that I've got sort of front and center in my mind right now.
You can see more information about it.
Certainly, feel free to contact us at the podcast about this.
You can contact me, again, Daniel Miller Swadge.
Daniel Miller SWAJ with questions about it.
Happy to hear from you on that and really looking forward to seeing as many people as we can in Denver and also hoping to have kind of an informal gathering after just a chance to maybe sit around have a couple drinks, chit-chat, get to know people that we've heard from for years in many cases and people who've heard our voices for years but to get to finally meet in person.
So if you would, consider if that's an event that you might want to participate in whether live or virtually.
So let's dive into this episode, okay?
So I want to tackle a topic today.
It's a topic that may be sort of too wide-ranging to fit comfortably.
It's one of those things where sometimes I put these together and, you know, on reflection you realize that there's more to be said and we'll see where this goes.
But as always, this topic takes its shape from a number of concerns and topics that people have reached out to me about.
And sort of putting them together, giving some shape to them, interests that people raise, they're often coming from different directions.
When I look at them, I see a kind of pattern.
And so what I want to think about today in this this episode is the language of sort of health and safety within contemporary conservative Christianity.
And I'm not talking about like OSHA stuff or workers comp or something like that, although it kind of sounds like this.
But what I want to do is Look at really these these two words or these two concepts health and safety and how they operate Because it would exceed the scope of this series, but it would be it it would be telling to take a deep dive into this topic and the different elements of conservative Christian or religious cultural life that this language structures And today is maybe, you know, sort of a bit of a surface look at this.
This is something that we might look at in more detail in other series or maybe even if I do another Straight White American Jesus seminar series or something like that.
But I'm calling this episode Christian Health and Safety.
And here's why.
OK, so on the one hand, conservative Christians and really the focus today very much is a certain discourse within conservative American Christianity.
I think in particular evangelicalism, but also forms of of conservative Catholic thought.
I welcome those who might reach out and tell me that this is part of maybe conservative Jewish commentary as well.
I just am not familiar enough with that sort of constellation of communities to know this.
But this notion of safety, of being safe, on the one hand, conservative Christians have made sort of a cottage industry in recent years in mocking what they view as kind of liberal or progressive or secular appeals to quote-unquote safety.
They mock the language of safe spaces.
They often mock or decry a focus on issues of safety involving, you know, sexual practice, things like enthusiastic consent and so forth.
They often have criticisms of current policing practices on the grounds that they are unsafe for members of particular communities, that there are communities that aren't That aren't safe because of the police.
They're very critical of this.
They oppose defenses of abortion access undertaken to preserve the health of the mother, the safety of the mother and so forth.
They mock Liberals or progressives, Christian or otherwise, as sort of snowflakes or invoke toxic conceptions of masculinity to say that society has become feminized or soft or too emotional or too sensitive.
Or what have you.
And I think it's safe to say that the more fully a conservative Christian individual, or a congregation, or even a denomination is enmeshed with the culture wars that define contemporary Christian nationalism.
So in other words, the more one's Christian identity is wrapped up in Christian nationalism, the more evident the mockery and outrage aimed at concerns for safety are.
Okay?
So this is a part of sort of contemporary conservative Christian culture war rhetoric is Sort of actively mocking those who say that you know Appeal to safety you say the society is in some way unsafe that it should be made safer and so forth Okay, so that that's one side of the coin.
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