August 17, 2020

News

1. "Why Jerry Falwell Jr.'s social media 'yacht' posts were the final straw for Liberty University" 

Religion News Service has verified that Falwell has liked a handful of images posted on the social media platform that show young women in swimsuits in the past month.

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While young women posting swimsuit selfies is an innocent Instagram activity, liking them is “certainly unbecoming for the president of, as he calls it, the largest Christian college in the United States,” Fea said.

That’s particularly true at a place like Liberty, whose founder, the Rev. Jerry Falwell Sr., was head of the Moral Majority and whose rules stress values like sexual purity and abstaining from alcohol.

2. "5 faith facts about VP pick Kamala Harris – a Black Baptist with Hindu family" 

Her name, Kamala, means “lotus” in Sanskrit, and is another name for the Hindu goddess Lakshmi. She visited India multiple times as a girl and got to know her relatives there.

But because her parents divorced when she was 7, she also grew up in Oakland and Berkeley attending predominantly Black churches. Her downstairs neighbor, Regina Shelton, often took Kamala and her sister, Maya, to Oakland’s 23rd Avenue Church of God in Oakland. Sen. Harris now considers herself a Black Baptist.

3. "Democrats tap array of faith leaders for convention" 

The Episcopal bishop of Washington, D.C., who criticized President Donald Trump after he held a Bible aloft at a photo op at a historic church in her diocese, is among the diverse group of faith leaders selected by Democrats to speak at their presidential nominating convention.

Opinion

1. "Kamala Harris exacerbates Biden’s existing problem with religious voters. He must work to reassure them." 

None of this will seem particularly extreme to the rising generation of Democratic leaders. Herein lies the problem. Such social views are perceived as extreme in much of the country. And for conservatives who want to support an alternative to Trump, it isn’t just a perception problem.

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And it is not too much to ask for Biden to provide assurance that he respects the rights of religious institutions and individuals, even when he strongly disagrees with them on divisive matters. This is what pluralism at its best is about.

2. "Trump couldn’t be more wrong about Biden’s faith" 

As a White House staffer, I had the opportunity to see Vice President Biden up close. Trump’s assertions could not be more wrong. With these remarks, Trump has demonstrated once again that he doesn’t tell the truth and doesn’t understand faith, religion’s role in American public life, or Joe Biden.

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Biden is also a regular churchgoer. Even when Vice President Biden was on the road during the Obama-Biden administration, he would quietly find a church to attend. His focus was on worshipping, not on being seen doing so.  

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As vice president, Biden wanted to have real, robust exchanges with faith leaders. One meeting (of many) he convened with religious leaders was about increasing background checks for guns in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre. Participants in the meeting were religiously and ideologically diverse, including the Rev. Franklin Graham of Billy Graham Ministries, Sister Marge Clark of Network, Rabbi David Saperstein of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism and the Rev. Michael McBride of Faith in Action. Biden carefully navigated the diversity of views, listening to everyone. He always kept the focus where it should be — on problem solving, especially for those who are vulnerable.

3. "A Protestant Defense of the Common Good" 

Much like the related concept of social justice, contemporary discussions of the common good have been fraught with misunderstanding, dismissal, and polemic. The theoretical relationship of the individual to the community represents a challenge for constructive engagement with the common good for many today. There is an ongoing skepticism of ideas such as the common good and social justice because of their association, arising at least partially out of the crucible of the Cold War, with communism and socialism. Good and proper concern for the inviolable dignity of the individual human person unfortunately can lead to rejection of the reality of social structures, institutions, and communities, as well as corresponding moral duties. Atomistic individualism really only allows for aggregate conceptions of goods rather than for communal goods that are in some sense greater than the particular constitutive elements.

Research

1. "Religious Identity and the 2020 Presidential Election" 

White Americans who identify as evangelical Protestants or Mormons, or who are active Catholics or lapsed Catholics, or who associate with other Christian denominations, are significantly predisposed to vote for Trump in this election, with White evangelicals standing out as Trump's most loyal faith group. A key question will be Biden's ability to leverage his Catholicism to reach out to less active Catholics, along with the possibility that his faith could be effective in reaching less active White Protestants. Trump also has a current edge among White Mainline Protestants, although they certainly will be more susceptible to Biden's campaigning than other more evangelical White Protestants.

Events

1. Webinar: Trinity Forum, "Engaging Politics with Love and Truth, with Justin Giboney and Shirley Hoogstra," Aug 28, 2020, 1:30 PM. 

On August 28th we will welcome AND Campaign President and author of the best-selling new release 'Compassion (&) Conviction', Justin Giboney to discuss the timely and thorny topic “Engaging Politics with Love and Truth.” As the election rapidly approaches, and the level of national division and rancor seems to correspondingly increase, how do Christians discern ways of engaging culturally and politically that pursues justice, the common good, and love of neighbor? How do we live in truth and out of love? We are delighted that Trinity Forum Trustee and Council of Christian Colleges and Universities CEO Shirley Hoogstra will serve as a special guest moderator for this conversation.

2. Webinar: Virginia Tech: "Drinking with Historians - Sarah Posner & Kristin Du Mez," Aug 21, 2020 06:00 PM. 

Like Drunk History but with historians and (perhaps) a bit less drunk and a bit more history.

Join Matt Gabriele (Virginia Tech - @prof_gabriele) and Varsha Venkatsubramanian (UC-Berkeley - @varsha_venkat_) for a very special episode this week.

We have 2 guests this week! We're pleased to welcome Sarah Posner (@sarahposner - Type Investigations - author of UNHOLY) and Dr. Kristin Kobes Du Mez (@kkdumez - Calvin College - author of JESUS & JOHN WAYNE), 2 of the preeminent experts on white American Evangelicals.

Odds & Ends

1. Podcast: Faith 2020: The Biden Campaign's Faith Outreach 

Michael Wear talks with Josh Dickson, the National Faith Engagement Director for former VP Biden’s presidential campaign. Michael asks Josh about how he’ll approach his job over the next three months, and how the Vice President plans to make his case to faith voters.

2. "AEI Director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies Yuval Levin announces a new lecture series, 'E Pluribus Unum: Sources of our Unity'" 

AEI’s Director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies Yuval Levin announced today the inauguration of a new lecture series, titled “E Pluribus Unum: Sources of our Unity.” The series is a program of the Robert P. George Initiative on Faith, Ethics, and Public Policy, and will be jointly sponsored by AEI and the University of Dallas.

The subject will be finding unity across lines of difference in our society—left and right, religious and secular, urban and rural, and more. The series will run for a year, with lectures twice a quarter.

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The first event in the series will be held on September 9 at 1pm, and will be an online conversation with Rabbi Jonathan Sacks about his new book Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times. Levin will moderate a conversation between Rabbi Sacks and Robert George.

3. Mark Galli newsletter: Corruption on the Evangelical Right

I wish I would have made one thing clearer in my now infamous 2019 December editorial in which I questioned President Trump’s moral fitness for office: when speaking about evangelicals who supported him, I was addressing only those evangelicals who had compromised their faith—that is, they had crossed the line from legitimate support for a political candidate to idolizing him; refusing to acknowledge, and even defending, his serious character flaws; and using messianic language to talk about him.  I wasn’t addressed the many evangelicals who felt caught between a rock and a hard place, and voted for Trump for prudential reasons, all the while holding their nose.

4. 750,000 men attended a Promise Keepers livestream event from July 31 to August 1.

Books

Michael Brown talks about his new book, Evangelicals at the Crossroads: Will we pass the Trump Test? on Mornings With Carmen.