(Excerpt) Prophets and Patriots: Faith in Democracy Across the Political Divide
An excerpt from Prophets and Patriots: Faith in Democracy Across the Political Divide by Ruth Braunstein. With an introduction by the author. Continue Reading →
Tag: tea party
Brokenheartlands: Arlie Russell Hochschild’s Strangers in Their Own Land
Patrick Blanchfield reviews Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right by Arlie Russell Hochschild. Continue Reading →
Liberty, the Word
From Ryan Lizza’s profile of Michele Bachmann at The New Yorker:
Liberty is the concept—or at least the word—most resonant with the Republican Party’s Tea Party faction, which Bachmann’s Presidential aspirations depend upon. It is a peculiarity of the current political moment that a politician with a history of pushing sectarian religious beliefs in government has become a hero to a libertarian movement.
The Past upon Its Throne
by Scott Korb
A look at Jill Lepore’s The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party’s Revolution and the Battle over American History
In her recent book, The Whites of Their Eyes, Harvard historian and regular New Yorker contributor Jill Lepore takes a close look at the Tea Party and calls it fundamentalist. The Whites of Their Eyes is a book almost entirely set in greater Boston: at Tea Party gatherings in Green Dragon Tavern, where in 1765 the Sons of Liberty themselves began gathering; at the Old South Meeting House, at re-stagings, by children, of the debates that led to the Boston Tea Party; on the field where the Battle of Lexington and Concord was fought, where on the morning of the annual reenactment Lepore’s family (and “some other sleepy-headed colonials”) wage their own little “battle on the green.” (One thing to note about the book is how often the facts of Lepore’s own Cambridge life enter the story—in this case, the family’s annual failure to get out of bed early enough to make it to the actual reenactment; they’re there in time for the parade that follows.)
Tea Party fundamentalism—or what Lepore calls “historical fundamentalism”—is of a different kind than the religious fundamentalism The Revealer typically notes, though the two are not mutually exclusive, nor are either particularly wholesome. Continue Reading →
Small-r Rebellion
Gary Younge, a feature writer for the Guardian, has written that the Tea Party is “not a new phenomenon. It’s simply a new name for an old phenomenon – the American hard right.” A disparate, loose group of previously unnamed ideas and motivations, with a boat load of money and its own TV channel.
The relationship between these organisations [The Tea Party Express, FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity, Tea Party Patriots] and the base of people who call themselves Tea Party supporters is episodic and erratic. They show up in different places where they sense an opportunity for a breakthrough, throw money at it, attract media attention for it, and then see what sticks.
Which is the point that Terry Mattingly (aka tmatt or editor) at Get Religion is hinting at in his recent post on a story at WaPo about Rick Santorum’s presidential bid water-testing. Continue Reading →
Hog-Driving Cleric
From Michael Miller’s profile of the new Archbishop of Miami, Thomas Wenski, printed this week in the Miami New Times:
Wenski is unlike anything the church has ever seen. He’s a hard-charging, hog-driving cleric and licensed pilot who speaks six languages fluently. In the past seven months, he has come on like a blessed freight train, booting dozens of longtime priests from their too-comfortable parishes and suing the City of Miami for $140 million. He’s risked the ire of Miami Cubans by engaging the island’s communist government and had his phone tapped by the Castro regime. Just two weeks ago, he helped open the first seminary in Cuba since the revolution.
But on social issues, he has become a rabid, Tea Party-style conservative whose ban on even discussing condoms might have led to hundreds of Haitians contracting HIV.
The Tea Party Finds Newt's God
This week Digby wondered if Former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, is making a move to appear more Godly in order to get the Tea Party nomination for president in 2012. It’s a worthy question, now that a multitude of observers (read Jonathan Kay, Barbara Bradley Hagerty, Sarah Posner, David Dayen, Laurie Lebo, Ari Melber, Jeff Sharlet) have concluded that the religious right has successfully got its firm grip on the Tea Party. Gingrich will appear at Liberty University’s convocation today — the title of his talk is “Rediscovering God in America” — and then meet with Chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr. and others after the talk. Which all would induce a giggle — Gingrich, motivated by God?! — if we didn’t remember how skilled Gingrich is at mongering fear for power. And money.
But a more important question is this: How was it so easy for tax-loathing, live-free-or-die discontents to cede their “leaderless” movement to the long-standing insiders who have worked for self and corporate interests in the name of a “family values,” “pro-life” God? Perhaps they are not discontent with what they think they are discontent. Continue Reading →
The Tea Party Finds Newt’s God
This week Digby wondered if Former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, is making a move to appear more Godly in order to get the Tea Party nomination for president in 2012. It’s a worthy question, now that a multitude of observers (read Jonathan Kay, Barbara Bradley Hagerty, Sarah Posner, David Dayen, Laurie Lebo, Ari Melber, Jeff Sharlet) have concluded that the religious right has successfully got its firm grip on the Tea Party. Gingrich will appear at Liberty University’s convocation today — the title of his talk is “Rediscovering God in America” — and then meet with Chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr. and others after the talk. Which all would induce a giggle — Gingrich, motivated by God?! — if we didn’t remember how skilled Gingrich is at mongering fear for power. And money.
But a more important question is this: How was it so easy for tax-loathing, live-free-or-die discontents to cede their “leaderless” movement to the long-standing insiders who have worked for self and corporate interests in the name of a “family values,” “pro-life” God? Perhaps they are not discontent with what they think they are discontent. Continue Reading →
Tea Party Theology
From “Is the Tea Party becoming a religious movement?” by Jeff Sharlet at CNN.
Liberals and centrists wring their hands over Miller and giggle about O’Donnell, hoping that her political hopelessness somehow proves that the movement isn’t going. They compile lists of what they take to be her craziest statements, such as her confession that as a young woman she dabbled in witchcraft.
That’s a strategic mistake, because they’re mocking what is, in fact, a mainstream evangelical view — that witchcraft and “spiritual war” are real — and a narrative with powerful resonance in American life. Consider not O’Donnell’s words, but her theme: Once I was lost (making bad choices), but now I’m found. Who didn’t do something stupid in their youth?
But it’s the “found” part that reveals the religiosity of the Tea Party movement, spirituality not at odds with the Tea Party’s economics but intertwined with it.
But is it Evangelism?
by Daniel Schultz
A church down in Gainesville is planning to hold an “International Burn A Quran Day” on 9/11, part of its larger “Islam is of the Devil” campaign. The pastor talks about the point of the event in an interview with the Friendly Atheist:
Do you think Muslims will turn to Christ as a result of this?
This is our prayer and desire that they would seriously reexamine their religion. They will then come to the conclusion that Islam is of the devil and Christianity is the only true religion.…
Have any of the media reports of this event portrayed you unfairly or inaccurately? Would you like to set the record straight on any particular issue?
We have been accused of being racist. We are not attacking a race. In other words, we are not attacking the Moslem. We love the Moslems and hope that they would come to true salvation. What we are attacking is Islam, the religion, and Sharia law, the political system.
This leads Cathy Lynn Grossman at USAToday’s Faith and Reason blog to ask, “Is it evangelism?”* Continue Reading →