Weekly Roundup: Independent Senate Marriage Theologies
CORRECTION: We said on this episode that TH Warren is Episcopalian. She is not. She is part of the Anglican Church of North America. The former is a progressive LGTB+ denomination. The latter is not. We apologize for this mistake - it was made in the heat of the moment. We will do better in the future.
Brad and Dan begin by discussing the results in Georgia and what they mean going forward. Their conversation is tinged by the announcement that Senator Sinema has left the Democratic party and is now an independent. Dan highlights the ways that the small majority (assuming Sinem'as cooperation) gives Dems majorities on Senate committees and will help them get judges through to the bench. Brad notices how close the run-off was and warns that it's a sign of a persistent threat.
In the second segment they discuss the recent article by Tish Warren Harrison at the New York Times on the supposed class between the civil rights of gay people and religious freedom. Brad and Dan put on their theological caps to dismantle the argument on biblical, historical, and civic grounds.
In the final segment they discuss the SCOTUS case on independent state legislature theory - a case that could spell the end of democracy in the USA as we know it. They also comment on the release of Brittney Griner.
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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.
Here today with my co-host.
Dan Miller, professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
Nice to see you, Brad.
Still a little under the weather, but I'm back in the saddle today, though I am, as you know, having some technical difficulties.
So apologies to everybody if the sound is a little roomy, as they say.
No problem.
I, uh, I'm starting to feel like it's that time of year for Festivus because the grievances are like piling up, you know, some of you are too young for Festivus, but it's a Seinfeld bit.
And I, you know, I feel like as somebody who's not all that religious these days or religious at all, and who doesn't really celebrate Christmas in that way, I am glad that there's like holidays at this part of the year, Dan, because I just, you know, you get to a point where you're so tired and you're so fed up with, like, how the world works that, you know, you need light and you need celebration and joy because, like last night on Twitter, I just was in there with someone else and we were just taking on a troll.
And I don't even engage trolls on Twitter.
I had time last night for some reason at midnight to like you know take on this racist and it felt good for a minute but I didn't mean to be up that late and uh you know there's there's so there's someone else who's gonna you know feel the wrath of my grievance here in this episode uh in a minute I'm we're gonna I'll give you uh Teaser on that.
I'm not going to share exactly who yet, but anyway, that's how I'm feeling.
It's Festivus time.
I got to air the grievances and start new in the new year.
You know what I mean?
It's Festivus for the rest of us.
Yeah.
Well, remember the reason for the season, right?
To plug upcoming themes, it's in the Code Series.
We can have the reason for the Festivus season, and yeah, everybody who's like not old like us will now be googling that, be like, what is Festivus?
Is that Roman?
Yeah.
So yeah, the ancient Roman god Festivus.
All right, before we get started today, I want to talk about the Baptist Joint Committee.
We talk a lot about Christian nationalism on this show, and one of the organizations we've worked with in the past, and we worked with at Denver, It is the BJC for religious liberty.
The Baptist Joint Committee fights for everyone's religious freedom, and it's the home of something that we think is really important, and that's a program called Christians Against Christian Nationalism.
You can join the movement as a Christian against Christian nationalism at ChristiansAgainstChristianNationalism.org.
You can sign a statement there and then check out resources to help all of us combat Christian nationalism, including curriculum for small groups, video presentations, and more.
So if you're in a church or if you're in a community where you'd like to fight Christian nationalism, this is a great place to look.
We're thankful for the Baptist Joint Committee.
They're Baptist in the ways that Dan always talks about being Baptist, fighting for the separation of church and state and believing that the freedom of religion comes from the freedom from religion in many ways.
I'm just going to throw out to that point, the Baptist Joint Committee, I believe it used to be the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, and it was a wing of the Southern Baptist Convention that was eventually forced out of the Southern Baptist Convention when the Southern Baptist Convention was taken over by theological conservatives.
We don't need the history of traditional Baptist views of separation of church and state, but there are sort of old-school Baptists who stuck to their guns on that and had to become basically an independent entity and were forced out of the Southern Baptist Convention because the Southern Baptist Convention was not opposed to separation of church and state.
It was becoming increasingly Christian national.
So, just to throw that out there and plug the Baptist Joint Committee work.
One other thing I want to mention here is that if you missed Denver, so we had a great event in Denver and you all know that.
Some of you weren't able to attend and so if you'd like to see the recording and just, you know, listen to and watch the two great panels.
Check out our show notes.
You can, you can do that.
The conversations were rich.
The questions were great.
And I think you'll learn a lot.
So if you missed it, you weren't able to find it.
You weren't able to be there that night.
You had your uncle Jerry's 65th birthday or something or kid's soccer game.
Then check it out.
It's in the show notes and it's all there.
All right, Dan, let's get into it.
We're going to talk about a bunch of things today.
We're going to talk about Georgia here at the top, and that'll include, I think, some discussion of other things, like some statements from the former president and a certain senator in Arizona.
I want to talk about some reactions to the House formally passing the Marriage Reform Act that will protect, in some ways at least, Same-sex marriage and interracial marriage.
I want to talk about SCOTUS, who's hearing a case that we talked about months ago and warned people about, and that case is now up on the docket.
And then I want to talk about Brittany Griner coming home and some of the reactions to that.
Uh, that event and what it says about the country.
So let's start in Georgia, Dan.
Uh, I don't think I need to tell anyone listening that Raphael Warnock won his, uh, reelection bid.
Uh, he beat Herschel Walker.
It, again, was very close.
And, uh, again, there was no kind of, um, huge margin of victory for Warnock, despite the fact that Herschel Walker was a truly terrible candidate.
If Herschel Walker had won, Dan, I think Tommy Tuberville would have been sad because there would have been a competition for the least competent senator in the Senate.
I mean, Tuberville and Walker really would have had to tussle that one out.
So we still have tubbies, flubbies, and we will not, we will not get Walker in the Senate.
Let me just say one thing about it and I'll throw it to you.
And that is that I said this in Denver.
I've said it since Denver.
It's just another example of how We avoided the worst case scenario in these midterms.
The Secretaries of State, the Carrie Lakes, the Doug Mastranas didn't win.
We also had some really bad scenarios.
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