Daniel José Camacho

Lately, I have been asking myself the following question: How can sincere Christians embrace white nationalism? My question stems less from surprise and more from a desire to understand the mechanics. In church circles and in seminary, I heard about Barth, Bonhoeffer, and those who resisted. But I rarely heard about the majority of white Christians who supported a demagogue whose rhetoric had violent consequences.

A new study published in Christianity Today claims to debunk dominant narratives around the 81 percent of white evangelicals who voted for Donald Trump in 2016. New York Times columnist David Brooks shared it and concluded: “Many Evangelicals voted for Trump, reluctantly, because of economics and health care more than abortion and social issues.” If this sounds too good to be true, it’s because it is.

“How can we afford it?” That’s the perennial question that confronts anyone who dares to propose progressive policy changes. A recent example is CNN’s Jake Tapper grilling congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over whether tax money could fund items on her platform such as Medicare for all, a federal job guarantee, and the cancelation of student loan debt. For those who are religious and politically progressive, this question is particularly challenging. While many are good at articulating the moral imperative of providing health care to all or protecting the environment, they can stumble on the issue of economic feasibility.

My parents converted to Protestantism after participating in Catholic Charismatic Renewal groups and in Cursillos de Cristiandad, a retreat for lay people. I grew up watching my mom as a lay preacher in an immigrant United Methodist congregation, before our family eventually joined Baptist and Pentecostal congregations. The particular denominational distinctions mattered less than the larger tradition we were now a part of. We were Evangélicos.

“Most newsrooms have an enormous blind spot about class,” says journalist and author Sarah Smarsh as she speaks at Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C. She’s touring the country for her first book about her upbringing which happens to smash stereotypes about her home state of Kansas and rural life in America.

Jesus once told a parable about a rich man who produced a great abundance of crops. Not sure what to do, the man decided to tear down his barns and build larger barns that could store all of his wealth. But God says to him: “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” I thought about this parable when I heard someone untied a $40 million yacht owned by Betsy DeVos' family last month.

I understand that the urge to call white Christian nationalism a distortion of Christianity comes from a good place. But I think it’s mistaken.

While sitting in an Alabama jail, Martin Luther King Jr began writing a letter about the moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. He invoked the legal maxim originating with St Augustine that an unjust law is no law at all. This week, attorney general Jeff Sessions quoted the bible to justify a cruel policy that is, in fact, not a required law: the forced separation of immigrant families at the border.

If a Muslim man planted bombs in predominately white neighborhoods before blowing himself up, you could bet that the White House and various media outlets would label him a terrorist and draw some connection between his religion and his violent acts. But the case of the Austin bomber reveals an enduring double standard: white Christian terrorists continue to get a free pass.

When Michelle Alexander quit teaching law in 2016, she made a memorable statement which included the following words: “This is not simply a legal problem, or a political problem, or a policy problem. At its core, America’s journey from slavery to Jim Crow to mass incarceration raises profound moral and spiritual questions about who we are, individually and collectively, who we aim to become, and what we are willing to do now.” Dominique DuBois Gilliard’s book Rethinking Incarceration is the perfect addition to a larger conversation sparked by Alexander’s The New Jim Crow.

I grew up enthralled with the fantasy worlds depicted in the “Star Wars”and “Lord of the Rings”films. But there was always something missing. Virtually no one looked like me. The people of color that did exist in those films either stood as caricatures or floated in post-racial space. How can one imagine a future in which black people exist in various roles while simultaneously not erasing the legacy of racism? “Black Panther”powerfully fills this void.

In the realm of U.S. politics, the "religious left" is often imagined as the direct counterbalance to the religious right. Some claim that Trump's allegiance with conservative evangelicals has inevitably awakened this powerful opposition. Yet, despite all the noise, what flies under the moniker of the religious left lacks the political coherence and viability of the religious right.

Folks are sleeping on Joey Bada$$. In the midst of a spiritual renaissance within hip-hop, Kendrick Lamar’s radical Christianity and Chance the Rapper’s black Christian joy have typically received more attention. They’ve both rekindled debates about asceticism, joy, and wrath. Yet, Joey Bada$$’s commentary in All-Amerikkkan Bada$$ should not be overlooked. It’s nothing less than a theologically rich, frontal attack on our political order. I first found out about Joey through his song Paper Trai

Stephanie Kelton is a professor at Stony Brook University and a former chief economist for the Senate Budget Committee Democratic staff. If there is such a thing as a prophetic economist, she might just be it. Kelton is not afraid to rattle the status quo. A former adviser to Bernie Sanders (she recalled her trip to the Vatican with him), she is now also providing economic advising to Rev. Barber’s new Poor People’s Campaign. Kelton’s public intellectual work has drawn attention to how a bipartisan fear of the deficit has distracted politicians from fixing problems in the real economy. Below is an edited transcript of our conversation.

RNS asked some of the country’s top faith leaders, scholars and activists to consider what changes the religion landscape will see in 2018. Find all their predictions here. (RNS) — The new Poor People’s Campaign will be one of the biggest religious stories of 2018. Spearheaded by Rev. Dr. William Barber and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, this campaign is consciously taking up the radical politics and unfinished work of Martin Luther King Jr.

A large majority of white evangelicals voted for Roy Moore – 80%, according to exit polls – in Alabama, in the deep south, in a solidly red state. And they lost. The results of Alabama’s Senate race are an omen for the future of white evangelical politics. White evangelicals, as a whole, are still flexing some political muscle. But their future outlook is of an embattled political bloc with extremist views and diminishing power to decide elections. Moore was a fundamentalist Christian hero. He

Spirituality enables people to see more within the world and within others. It’s no surprise that this leads to a greater sense of fulfillment. A new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute has found that higher levels of spirituality are strongly correlated with higher life satisfaction.

Donald Trump should be the last person to speak on moral values. Yet, on Friday, he received standing ovations for his speech at the Values Voter Summit in which he claimed that his administration is “stopping, cold, attacks on Judeo-Christian values.” This accentuates the moral hypocrisy of the religious right which has wedded itself to arguably the most immoral president in the history of the United States.

When I signed up to do pulpit supply, I hadn’t realized I would be preaching the first Sunday after the election in November. It was my fault. Of the available slots, I chose November 13 without considering the possible weight of this date. The church lacked a pastor and was relying on a steady stream of guest preachers, including seminary students. It was located just south of Durham, and I didn’t know a single person there.

Barack Obama finally came for Donald Trump’s White House. In a statement released on Facebook, Obama called Trump’s move to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) program, which protects 800,000 young migrants from deportation, “cruel” and contrary to “basic decency”. This is the kind of political leadership that our country is sorely lacking right now.