Friday, January 20, 2023

A restored medieval depiction of the Crusades shows how England embraced Islamic culture

Floor tiles from Chertsey Abbey in England, the subject of a new exhibition, resemble Muslim and Byzantine silks that crusaders brought back as souvenirs.

Digital reconstruction of Richard the Lionheart and Saladin and proposed

reconstruction of surrounding text. Eames design 466.

Photo © Janis Desmarais and Amanda Luyster

January 10, 2023

(RNS) — An 800-year-old puzzle about a set of 13th-century floor tiles has added to historians’ thinking about the relationship of Europeans and Arabs at the time of the Crusades.

Amanda Luyster, assistant visual arts professor at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, has spent more than two decades studying the so-called combat series, a group of floor tiles uncovered in the 1850s at the ruins of Chertsey Abbey, some 20 miles southwest of London.

Luyster’s research findings underpin the exhibition “Bringing the Holy Land Home: The Crusades, Chertsey Abbey, and the Reconstruction of a Medieval Masterpiece,” which runs Jan. 26 to April 6 at the college’s Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Art Gallery.

The tiles, which were illustrated and annotated with Latin inscriptions, are among the most significant medieval objects of their kind from England, if not all of Europe, according to Luyster. But since the discovery of the highly fragmented tiles, scholars had largely focused on reconstructing the illustrations, which include scenes of Richard the Lionheart battling Saladin in the Third Crusade a half-century before. The Latin text was too badly broken up at the time to be pieced together and read.

Working with colleagues who coded programs to digitally fit the letters together and cross-referenced them against known Latin texts of the era, Luyster assembled about half of the Latin inscriptions to her satisfaction. She also arranged the illustrations as her research suggests they would have appeared on the abbey floor.

Once restored to their original look, the new design reminded her of Muslim and Byzantine silks that Crusaders brought back as souvenirs.

Digital reconstruction of the Chertsey combat tile mosaic pavement. Photographic composite showing roundels surrounded by partial Latin texts. Photo © Janis Desmarais and Amanda Luyster

Luyster has no illusion that the Crusades, waged from 1095 to 1291, were anything less than major confrontations. But she sees the tiles as telling visual evidence that England during the Middle Ages had robust contact with the rest of the world and that Christian Europe was more porous than historians have believed.

Instead, Luyster said, while the tiles depict Europeans clashing with the Muslims who ruled Jerusalem and the Near East, their manufacture and design reflected familiarity with, and admiration for, Arab artistry. They support the idea that far from thinking of themselves as European, the English who went on Crusades and came back to create these tiles were in deep conversation with Arab culture.

“The Crusaders and other Western Europeans see themselves as Westerners becoming Easterners. Their whole identity is changing, as they move and start living in the area around Jerusalem,” Luyster said.

This cultural fluidity is at odds with a picture of medieval English society as isolated, purely Christian and culturally homogeneous — a view that is increasingly outdated among historians of the period, even as white supremacists in England and the United States have latched onto it.

The key to Luyster’s insight are tiles illustrating the English King Richard I, known as Richard the Lionheart, wounding the Muslim ruler Saladin with a lance, and of a Muslim soldier with an arrow piercing his forehead.

Amanda Luyster at the British Museum photographing the Chertsey tiles in 2017. Courtesy photo

Historians had long known that Richard and Saladin appeared in the overall design of the abbey’s tiles, but other tiles were thought to represent other battles. Luyster’s high-tech detective work on the Latin inscriptions showed, she concluded, that the entire design, not just the Richard and Saladin illustrations, depicted the Third Crusade, led by Richard.

That Crusade had ended in a draw, however, and Richard had never met Saladin on the battlefield, much less speared his foe. The rewrite suggested to Luyster that the tiles were not a faithful history, but rather propaganda generated by King Henry III and his queen, Eleanor, aimed at pumping up Christians for another Crusade. Portraying Richard slaying Saladin in a victory for Christendom would help them carry out their plan.

“This commission of the floor is their way of drumming up attention to the idea that another English Crusade could be successful like the last one was, apparently,” Luyster said.

But the very propaganda meant to excite would-be Crusaders borrowed its form from Muslims, Luyster said. This borrowing, and the fact that church inventories of the period in England and elsewhere included Islamic textiles, known as Saracen cloth, used even as vestments for Mass, shows how highly English Christians valued Arab culture, according to Luyster.

“While there’s all this discourse about how awful Muslims are in written and political arenas, in visual culture something else is going on. There’s a generalized feeling that English and other Crusaders can hate the people, but love the stuff,” Luyster said.

“But then we think, ‘If you love the stuff, your hatred of the people must also include some kind of strand of respect, even if you don’t admit that truth,’” she said.

Two historians of the Crusades who were not involved with the exhibition agreed that the Crusades were much more complicated than a clash between East and West.

Researchers at the British Museum discuss the Chertsey tiles in 2017. Courtesy photo

“It’s pretty well established now in the mainstream of medieval studies that Western Europe, including England, was plugged into a much wider, cosmopolitan world of trade, cultural contacts and exchanges,” said Brett Whalen of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Violence between Christians and Muslims in the Middle Ages was “only one small part — maybe not the most important part — of a much bigger picture, as evident in objects like the Chertsey tiles,” he added. “The reductionistic ‘clash of civilizations’ model is a relic of 1990s thinking in the aftermath of the Cold War and tells us little to nothing about the medieval world.”

What’s more telling than illustrations of Christian-Muslim violence, said Christopher Tyerman, professor of the history of the Crusades at Oxford’s Hertford College, was the “greater contact between an increasingly prosperous Western Europe and the wealthier — in all senses — culture and economies of Byzantium and the Near East.”

Cultural and commercial exchange accelerated at the time. “The construct of an eternal ‘clash of civilizations’ is historically just plain wrong and also conceptually muddled,” Tyerman said. That construct is “concocted by conservative zealots of all persuasions and faiths to justify (and) explain unrelated coincidental modern conflicts.”

Christians and Muslims often fought with co-religionists, and both crossed religious lines, allying with those of other faiths. And Christians and Muslims did business together during the Crusades.

“Trade knows no religion,” he said.

King scholar applies his philosophies of truth to a ‘post-truth age’

‘Dr. King argued that no religion has a monopoly on truth,’ said Lewis V. Baldwin, emeritus professor of religious studies at Vanderbilt University.

“The Arc of Truth: The Thinking of Martin Luther King Jr.” and author Lewis V. Baldwin. Courtesy images

January 13, 2023

Adelle M. Banks

(RNS) — The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is known as a civil rights activist, a minister and a world leader who gained the Nobel Peace Prize.

In a recent book, longtime King scholar Lewis V. Baldwin adds other titles to the man whose birthday is marked with a federal holiday on Monday (Jan. 16), including: ethicist, theologian and philosopher.

In a thick volume, “The Arc of Truth: The Thinking of Martin Luther King Jr.,” Baldwin continues his study of King. After previously concentrating on King’s cultural roots and his prayer life, the emeritus professor of religious studies at Vanderbilt University focuses on what the leader had to say about truth.

“We’re living in an age of lies and conspiracy theories and alternative truths, disinformation,” he told Religion News Service in an interview. “I wanted to write a book that would speak to that and since I am a King scholar, I thought King would be a great case study for getting at these kinds of challenges because King had a lot to say about the power of truth, of truth telling and of truth sharing.”

Baldwin, 73, spoke to RNS about how King defined truth, how his legacy has been distorted and how 20th-century civil rights activists compare to 21st-century protesters.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Since your book is titled “The Arc of Truth,” perhaps we should start with how you think the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. defined truth.

Dr. King defined truth in some of his speeches as the legitimate extension of facts. He saw the relationship between facts, truth and reality. At other points, he speaks of truth as coming to terms with reality. He used that kind of terminology especially when he spoke in terms of objective truth, objective truth being those truths that are universally accepted and those truths that are verifiable.

You say that King “who sought, spoke, and acted on truth” in the 20th century has become “the target of so much untruth” in this current century. What are some of the examples of this that concern you most?

The man and his legacy are being distorted. His legacy is being hijacked, misinterpreted. For an example, on the extreme right of the political spectrum, there are those who argue that Dr. King was opposed to affirmative action, and they make that argument without any proof at all. There are also those on the right who make the argument that Dr. King, if he were alive, would be opposed to critical race theory. Some have argued that he would be a Republican if he were alive. So all of these claims are made without any foundation whatsoever. Because the people who make the claims obviously have not read Dr. King. They don’t understand his message. So in a sense Dr. King has become a victim of this post-truth age because right-wing extremists have made him a convenient and useful symbol in an orchestrated and coordinated effort to promote their own conservative social, cultural and political agenda for this nation.

Are there concerns that you have about people on the left and how they have depicted King in these days?

Not really. I think King, for the most part, has been depicted in a proper way. The only problem I have with the left is that there has not been enough of a pushback on what is happening on the right, in terms of their distortion of Dr. King’s message, his ideals.

You write of King’s kitchen vision after he received a phone call from a white supremacist in 1956, threatening his life. What difference did it make for his ministry and activism to have that moment?

Dr. King actually came to a clearer sense of himself as an ethical prophet through that vision in the kitchen because the voice that spoke to him that night, around midnight, said, “stand up for justice, stand up for truth. And lo, I will be with you, even until the end of the world.” Those are the words of Jesus from the New Testament. So he found through religious experience what he had not been able to find in philosophy and theology.

You note that King wrote: “There is some element of truth in all religions.” How did his connection with leaders like Mohandas Gandhi, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and Thích Nhất Hạnh enhance his interest in religious diversity and distaste for religious bigotry?

Dr. King came up with a new and creative approach to interreligious dialogue, rooted in a Christian-Jewish-Hindu-Buddhist-Islamic solidarity against structures of oppression and exclusion and injustice. He tried to intersect people of different religions in his struggle for both civil and human rights. I think it speaks not only to his universal concern for humankind. It also speaks to his theological and philosophical liberalism, because you don’t have fundamentalists talking about respecting other religions. But Dr. King argued that no religion has a monopoly on truth.

How do you analyze what you call “the truth-telling about who and what King was as a human being,” specifically that he fought against racism so much and less so about sexism and he was described in some reports as an adulterer?

I explain that in terms that Dr. King used himself. Dr. King argued that we’re all paradoxical creatures. We have a capacity for good and a capacity for evil. And the struggle in life for him, he said, was always to keep that good self in control of that evil self. We have both, and at times we all fall, and that’s just a fact of life. And he admitted over and over that he was not a saint, that at times he had fallen short. But the important thing was that he was always interested in doing the will of God even if he failed. Interestingly enough, when it came to the philandering, the adultery issue, Dr. King ultimately admitted to his own wife that this had occurred. I think that speaks to his capacity as a truth teller.

Dr. King argued that truth grows. I think, if he were alive today, he would be very supportive of women’s liberation. But it was not a major issue in that time, and he did make statements, of course, against this idea of women being subservient to men.

You also said that marching along Southern highways and in the streets was for King a “visual message about not surrendering to the machinations of evil and untruth.” Do you think more recent protests, including by supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement, and maybe others, are accomplishing the same goal, or are they different in some ways?

This is how Dr. King understood the civil rights movement: When you go out and march, boycott and hold prayer vigils in the street, demonstrations in the street, all of that is designed to expose evil in society and to force people to confront and deal with that evil. So I would say, in that sense, Black Lives Matter demonstrations, the MeToo movement demonstrations, demonstrations held by students in the March for our Lives against guns, they are all the same in that regard.

ARCHIVE: MLK50

Pell’s ‘catastrophe’ memorandum stains his legacy

Pell was cowardly and disloyal in authoring an anonymous memorandum attacking Pope Francis.

Australian Cardinal George Pell stands near the body of the late Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI lying in state inside St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, Jan. 3, 2023. Pell, who was the most senior Catholic cleric to be convicted of child sex abuse before his convictions were later overturned, died Jan. 10, 2023, in Rome at age 81. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia, File)

January 17, 2023

Thomas Rees

(RNS) — I always tried to give Cardinal George Pell the benefit of the doubt, which is why it is so disappointing to find out that the Australian prelate, who died Jan. 10, was the author of a memorandum attacking Pope Francis.

The memo, published on a Vatican blog last March under the pseudonym “Demos,” was circulated to members of the College of Cardinals in anticipation of the next conclave. After the cardinal’s death it was revealed as Pell’s work by the Italian journalist Sandro Magister.

Pell first came on my radar screen when Francis put him in charge of Vatican finances. My friends Down Under, where he had been archbishop of Melbourne and Sydney, were happy to see him go to Rome because he had been more pugnacious than pastoral. A former Australian rules football player, he was always ready for a brawl with anyone who opposed him.

Although these are not the qualities you look for in a bishop, they were exactly the qualities needed for someone reforming Vatican finances. The pope needed someone who would not be intimidated by high-ranking clerics with fancy titles, someone willing to take on an entrenched bureaucracy.

I thought the appointment was brilliant. It got him out of Sydney and put him where his talents fit the job. I did not care about his theological views as long as he rooted out corruption and inefficiency in the Vatican.

Pell was attacked by insiders for not understanding the culture of the Vatican, for not understanding how things work. But Pell did not come to Rome to make friends. He came to upset the status quo, and I cheered him on.

Cardinal George Pell, the most senior Catholic cleric to face sex charges, leaves court in Melbourne, Australia, on May 2, 2018. (AP Photo/Asanka Brendon Ratnayake)

When he was accused of abusing an altar boy, I neither condemned him nor defended him. I was willing to let the Australian justice system do its job. Australia’s highest court eventually ruled in his favor.

Pell did not hide the fact that he was a doctrinal conservative who opposed modifications that made the church more pastorally sensitive to people in complex situations, such as LGBTQ and divorced Catholics. Since Francis had urged members of the synod of bishops to speak boldly and not be afraid of disagreeing with him, I cannot criticize Pell for speaking his mind.

But in authoring an anonymous memorandum attacking Francis, Pell crossed a line.

By not taking responsibility for the memo, Pell for the first time in his life showed himself a coward. He was not willing to publicly stand behind his words. This was totally against character for a man who never avoided a fight. What a disappointment.

Second, Pell seemed to have forgotten that Francis was the one who called him to Rome to be part of his team. Francis encouraged open discussion and debate but expected his team to support his decisions.

It is one thing to argue with the pope behind closed doors; it is another thing to stab him in the back. In his memo, Pell refers to the Francis papacy as a “disaster” and a “catastrophe.” You don’t do that to your boss, especially when he had stood by you when you were indicted. Shame.

Third, Pell forgot that he was a bishop, not an op-ed writer. His memorandum is a diatribe of indictments, not a reasoned argument.

Cardinal George Pell at the Vatican, June 29, 2017. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Compare this memo to the writings of Cardinal Walter Kasper and Archbishop John Quinn. Both of those prelates were known to have disagreements with Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, but they wrote in a fraternal and scholarly tone that respected the papal office. Pell, on the other hand, joined Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò in mudslinging. What a disgrace.

During the papacies of John Paul and Benedict, conservatives accused anyone who disagreed with them of being heretics or of being “cafeteria Catholics,” who picked and chose which teachings they would accept. Many of these conservatives were themselves cafeteria Catholics, for that matter, because they ignored John Paul’s and Benedict’s teaching on economic justice, peace and the environment. Their hypocrisy became even more evident with their rejection of Francis.

In a Sept. 27, 2021, column, I offered five rules for disagreeing with the pope. They are worth repeating:

First, be respectful.

Second, if you disagree with a pope, be sure to emphasize the positive things that he has done.

Third, describe the pope’s position accurately and completely; do not create a straw man that can be easily knocked down.

Fourth, never speak or write when you are emotionally upset.

Fifth, ask yourself, would you speak this way to a parent or someone you love?

Our internal church discussions should follow the same rules as our ecumenical dialogue: Disagreements should lead to fuller knowledge and improvements and ultimately consensus.

That way, as the old song goes, “They will know that we are Christians by our love,” rather than knowing we are Catholics by our fights.

Hamline University retracts ‘Islamophobia’ charge as instructor sues

The art history instructor sued the university in Minnesota district court, alleging religious discrimination and defamation.

Old Main at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. Photo by Eoin/Wikipedia/Creative Commons

January 18, 2023

Yonat Shimron

(RNS) — Hamline University retracted its characterization of an adjunct professor as “Islamophobic” on Tuesday (Jan. 18) and has revised a previous statement about academic freedom.

The retraction comes in the wake of a firestorm of criticism after the St. Paul, Minnesota, university did not renew the contract of the adjunct, who showed a 14th-century painting of the Prophet Muhammad in her online class last semester.

The change in the university’s position came on the same day the adjunct professor sued the university in Minnesota district court, alleging religious discrimination and defamation.

In October, a student in the class who also serves as president of the university’s Muslim Student Association complained to administrators that she was offended when the adjunct professor showed the prized painting because the student believed figural representation of the prophet is forbidden for Muslims to view.

The adjunct, Erika López Prater, gave students advanced warnings both in class and on her syllabus that she would show the image and allowed students who believe images of the prophet are forbidden not to participate.

A university administrator, however, described the showing of the painting as “undeniably inconsiderate, disrespectful and Islamophobic.”

The new statement pulls back on that characterization.

“Based on all that we have learned, we have determined that our usage of the term ‘Islamophobic’ was therefore flawed,” the chairwoman of the Hamline University board of trustees, Ellen Watters, wrote in a joint statement with its president.

López Prater’s lawsuit claims she has not only lost income from her adjunct position, but has also suffered significant emotional distress from her treatment as well as damage to her professional reputation and her future employment prospects.

“Hamline engaged in conduct toward López Prater that was extreme and outrageous,” the suit says.

The university also walked back Hamline President Fayneese Miller’s statement that “respect, decency, and appreciation of religious and other differences should supersede academic freedom.”

The new statement says: “It was never our intent to suggest that academic freedom is of lower concern or value than our students — care does not ‘supersede’ academic freedom, the two co-exist.”

Last week, the national office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil rights organization, also walked back statements by its local chapter that the adjunct professor acted with bigoted intent by showing the painting.

“Based on what we know up to this point, we do not see evidence that the former Hamline University president Adjunct Professor Erika López Prater acted with Islamophobic intent or engaged in conduct that meets the definition of Islamophobia,” the CAIR statement said.

Although CAIR discourages teachers from showing paintings of the Prophet Muhammad because many Muslims consider it sacrilegious, it acknowledged that Muslim views on artistic representations of the prophet are not monolithic and that in fact, some Muslims have used images of the prophet as part of their devotional practices.

In its statement, the university also for the first time publicly noted Muslims are not all of one mind about artistic representation.

“We have come to more fully understand the differing opinions that exist on this matter within the Muslim community,” the statement from the university said. “And, we welcome the opportunity, along with our students and the broader community, to listen and learn more.”

Who says you can’t show students a portrait of Muhammad?

A multiple-choice quiz to help college administrators navigate religious freedom on campus.

January 11, 2023

Mark Silk

(RNS) — By now most of you will have heard about the adjunct lecturer in art history at Hamline University in Minnesota who was let go last month after she showed her class a famous medieval Persian painting of the Prophet Muhammad receiving the words of Allah from the Angel Gabriel.

Yes, many Muslims consider pictorial representations of Muhammad to be blasphemous. And others don’t. And some of the finest examples of devotional Islamic art, and notably the painting in question, do indeed represent him.

But in deference to complaints from Muslim students, and notwithstanding the fact that the lecturer, Erika López Prater, gave her students due notice and permission not to attend class if they chose, the Hamline administration jumped on the alleged offense with both feet.

Not only was López Prater let go, but David Everett, the school’s vice president for inclusive excellence, called her action “undeniably inconsiderate, disrespectful and Islamophobic.” Hamline President Fayneese S. Miller co-signed an email stating that in this case respect for Muslim students “should have superseded academic freedom.”

Media coverage of the university’s action has created a firestorm of opposition, not only from the familiar forces of anti-wokeness on the right but from the liberal professoriate, up to and including the American Association of University Professors, which has called on Hamline to reinstate López Prater.

Thus far, more than 13,000 scholars and students in the humanities — including many Muslims — have signed an open letter of protest addressed to Hamline’s board of trustees. PEN America’s Jeremy Young denounced López Prater’s dismissal as “one of the most egregious violations of academic freedom in recent memory,”

In short, the case has become just the kind of self-inflicted public relations disaster that institutions of higher education dread.

How to avoid it?

Well, these days teachers and students at colleges and universities are often given multiple-choice tests to educate them on how to navigate the treacherous waters of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Sadly, these tests rarely include questions on religion.

Herewith then, as a public service, I offer administrators and DEI personnel at private colleges and universities such as Hamline the following multiple choice test, designed to help them balance the sometimes competing demands of religion, academic freedom and student sensibility. Answers at the end.

I. A group of fundamentalist Christian students objects to a Bible professor teaching that the books of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament were produced and assembled by human authors with differing agendas. You should:

Suggest the students consider dropping the class.
Reprimand the professor.
Tell the students that academic freedom permits the professor to teach what she’s teaching.
Urge the professor to tone it down.
(1) and (3)
(2) and (4)

II. LGBTQ students object to an adjunct professor of religion teaching that religious conservatives understand Leviticus 18:21 (“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.”) to be a condemnation of homosexuality. You should:

Not renew the professor’s contract.
Tell the students that there is nothing wrong with explaining how different communities interpret their scriptures.
Tell the professor to avoid such teaching.

III. A group of conservative Christian, Jewish and Muslim students complains about receiving bad grades from a sociology professor for voicing their opposition to LGBTQ rights based on their religious beliefs. You should:

Tell the students that the professor’s academic freedom permits him to do this.
Tell the professor to cease and desist.
Tell the students that the professor’s behavior is unacceptable.
Tell the students to either change their views or enroll in a different college.
(1) and (4)
(2) and (3)

IV. The same students object to what they consider to be a persistent bias on the part of their professors in favor of LGBTQ rights. You should:

Tell the students they should abandon their faith-based views.
Tell the students that they are entitled to their faith-based views but are not free to express them on campus.
Tell students that they are free to express their faith-based views on campus but that the college as an institution does support LGBTQ rights and will not do anything to prevent faculty from conveying such support.
Encourage faculty members to tone down their pro-LGBTQ statements.

V. An Orthodox Jewish student says he was made to feel uncomfortable by a Judaic studies professor who teaches that the oral law was created by rabbis after the destruction of the Second Temple rather than being handed down to Moses on Mount Sinai. You should:

Tell the professor to cease and desist.
Tell the student that making a student feel uncomfortable is not in itself sufficient grounds for the DEI office to speak with the professor in question, much less for the administration to reprimand or sanction him/her/them.
Suggest that the student transfer to an institution of higher learning where his belief is widely held.
Explain to the student that your institution teaches religion according to secular academic criteria.
(2) and (4)

VI. The Hindu Students Association contends that Hindu students have been made to feel unwelcome on campus by an international studies professor who teaches that the caste system violates democratic principles. You should:

1. Inform the students that academic freedom gives the professor the right to teach that.
2. Tell the students that the mere assertion that something makes them feel unwelcome on campus is not in itself sufficient grounds for the DEI office to take action.
3. Encourage the professor to avoid such editorial comments.
4. (1) and (2)

VII. Many students complain that a professor continually makes disparaging remarks about religious believers. You should:

Tell the students that academic freedom gives the professor the right to do so.
Suggest to the professor that he tone down his remarks.
Threaten to get the professor fired if the behavior persists.
Ignore the complaint.
(1) and (2)

VIII. An adjunct professor of religious studies repeatedly tells students that his religion is the right one and adherents of all others will not be saved.

Tell the professor to cease and desist.
Do not renew the professor’s contract.
Make clear to students that such statements are unacceptable at your institution.
All of the above.

IX. Muslim students complain that your school’s class schedule doesn’t provide them sufficient time for Friday prayers. You should:

Tell the students that there’s a limit to your school’s religious accommodations.
Suggest that faculty members permit those students who need time for Friday prayers be excused from class during that time.
Work with the faculty to change the class schedule to permit students to attend Friday prayers without sacrificing class time.

X. Muslim students protest an adjunct art history professor’s showing a classic representation of the Angel Gabriel revealing the words of Allah to the Prophet Muhammad. You should:

Consult with the professor in question and the members of your religious studies department.
Make clear to students that showing such a portrait is not in itself Islamophobic.
Tell students that in this case academic freedom supersedes their sense of injury.
Do not prevent renewal of the professor’s contract.
All of the above.

Answers: I.5; II;2; III.6; IV.3; V.5; VI.4; VII.5; VIII.4; IX.3. X.5.

Opinion

White Christian nationalism isn’t pro-life. It’s pro-order.

In the Christian nationalist vision, abortion is not a choice but a violation of a collective moral fabric.

Photo by Maria Oswalt/Unsplash/Creative Commons

January 19, 2023

Andrew Whitehead, Samuel L. Perry

(RNS) — When the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade in June 2022, United States abortion policy reverted to a time 50 years ago when a woman’s access to abortion and certain forms of contraception depended on where she lived, as individual states quickly moved to either enshrine the right to abortion or further restrict it.

But the court’s decision also returned abortion politics back to the 1970s and early 1980s, when the then-emerging religious right leveraged the debate over abortion to spread not only its biblical view of when human life begins, but its Christian nationalist view of the United States.

“Our great nation was founded by godly men upon godly principles to be a Christian nation,” said Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell Sr. in 1981. He also wrote, “If we expect God to honor and bless our nation, we must take a stand against abortion.”

From Falwell’s day to the present, Christian nationalism, or the desire to see a particularly conservative and ethnocentric expression of Christianity fused with American civic life, has played a vital part in the fight over Roe v. Wade. It has also permeated the Republican Party, which quickly adopted Falwell’s stance to bring millions of Americans who support the Christian right and abortion bans into its fold.

As we have written elsewhere, seeing Christianity as central to being truly American is powerfully associated with strong opposition toward abortion. This opposition tends not to consider whether the pregnancy is the result of rape, whether it has a strong chance of resulting in a serious birth defect or the mother’s health or financial ability to support a child. Americans who embrace Christian nationalism seek to ensure that all Americans abide by their anti-abortion views, regardless of circumstance.

In our work on Christian nationalist views, we have found, as Falwell’s views suggest, that Christian nationalists are motivated by a particular moral traditionalism, one that seeks to ensure that abortion is not defined as an expression of bodily autonomy. They view abortion instead as a violation of a collective moral fabric that, if frayed, will further degrade American culture and society.

Now, new data sheds further light on what motivates Christian nationalist thinking on abortion, by allowing us to measure Americans’ attitudes toward punishing women who seek abortions.

In a national, random sample of American adults surveyed by YouGov in October 2022, 56% of white respondents said the label “pro-life” describes them somewhat or very well. As we might expect, 75% of whites who identified as “pro-life” also said they supported overturning Roe v. Wade. Similarly, roughly three-quarters of whites who either identify as Christian nationalist by name or believe the government should declare the U.S. a Christian nation also support the SCOTUS decision.

That shouldn’t be surprising, since pro-lifers and Christian nationalists are often the same people. Roughly half of whites who strongly identify as pro-lifers affirm Christian nationalism as a label or policy preference, and more than 90% of those who identify as “Christian nationalist” also identify as “pro-life.”

Anti-abortion activist Doug Lane uses a ladder to peer over the covered fencing as he calls out to patients entering the Jackson Women’s Health Organization clinic in Jackson, Mississippi, moments after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade was issued, June 24, 2022. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

But these two groups are not identical in their beliefs. When asked whether they would support state governments arresting women who have abortions, fewer than 18% of whites who said “pro-life” described them “very well” would support such a move. But among white Americans who identified as Christian nationalists, more than 25% were in favor. That went up to 27% among those who strongly agree with declaring the U.S. a Christian nation.

Why the difference? Because Christian nationalism isn’t really about preserving life. It’s about order.

In a number of studies now, we and other social scientists have shown that Christian nationalist ideology, particularly among white Americans, is associated with support for political violence, the death penalty, torture, more guns, any-means-necessary policing and opposition to COVID-19 vaccines (or vaccines generally).

Christian nationalism, in other words, isn’t opposed to death. It’s opposed to disorder—specifically the disruption of established hierarchies and the traditional moral order.

We see it in Christian nationalists’ responses to other social issues. Alignment with Christian nationalism is also closely intertwined with traditional views about gender roles — specifically, “proper” roles for men and women in society. We see it in their views on democracy — they exhibit a lack of interest in collaboration or compromise and support limiting access to political participation.

It’s not surprising, then, that in the Christian nationalist vision of the United States, abortion is not available to women, or that Christian nationalists would be most in favor of prosecuting women who seek it out. Not for the sake of life, but order.

It is important to recognize that the number of white American adults who identify as Christian nationalist and support prosecuting women seeking abortions is relatively small — about 15 million people. However, many of these Americans are concentrated in a small number of states, where, as a result, we’re likely to see laws proposed, and maybe even passed, that criminalize abortion. Like in Missouri, which proposed allowing private citizens to sue anyone — in state or outside the state — who assists a Missouri resident having an abortion.

Now that the fight over abortion access has returned to the local and state levels, the influence of Christian nationalism will undoubtedly loom large.

(Andrew Whitehead is an associate professor of sociology at the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture at IUPUI and author of the forthcoming book “American Idolatry: How Christian Nationalism Betrays the Gospel and Threatens the Church.” Samuel L. Perry is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Oklahoma and co-author (with Philip Gorski) of “The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy.” Whitehead and Perry’s award-winning book “Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States” appeared in March 2020. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

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