Christian Nationalism and LGBTQ Structural Violence in the United States

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 278-302
Author(s):  
Sophie Bjork-James ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Structural Violence ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
Evangelical Christianity ◽  
Evangelical Churches ◽  
White Evangelicals ◽  
Christian Nationalism

This paper uses anti-LGBTQ bias within evangelical Christianity as a case study to explore how nationalist movements justify prejudicial positions through framing privileged groups as victims. Since Anita Bryant’s late 1970s crusade against what was dubbed the “homosexual agenda,” white evangelicals have led a national movement opposing LGBTQ rights in the United States. Through a commitment to ensuring sexual minorities are excluded from civil rights protections, white evangelicals have contributed to a cultural and legal landscape conducive to anti-LGBTQ structural violence. This opposition is most often understood as rooted in love, and not in bias or hate, as demonstrated during long-term ethnographic research among white evangelical churches in Colorado Springs. Engaging with theories of morality and nationalism, this article argues that most biased political movements understand their motivation as defending a moral order and not perpetuating bias. In this way they can justify structural violence against subordinated groups.

From King Cyrus to Queen Esther: Christian Zionists’ discursive construction of Donald Trump as God’s instrument

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-137
Author(s):  
Sean Durbin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Discourse ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Evangelical Christian ◽  
White Evangelicals ◽  
Christian Nationalism ◽  
The Way

When Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential elections with the help of 81 percent of self-identified white evangelicals, liberal commentators, relying on folk-conceptions of religion that privileged concepts like morality and belief, struggled to understand how someone who seemed to lack both could garner such support. Since then scholars have provided various explanations, relating to Christian nationalism evangelical appeals to authoritarianism, and straightforward racism. This article aims to expand this discussion by analyzing the way that evangelical Christian Zionists have supported Trump by rhetorically identifying him as God’s instrument on account of his support for Israel and withdrawal of the United States from the Iran Nuclear Deal. In addition to analyzing the process by which Trump is constituted as God’s instrument, the article also demonstrates more generally how religious discourse functions as a legitimating discourse for those who seek to gain, or maintain, positions of power.

Saviors

2020 ◽  
pp. 105-129
Author(s):  
Lauren R. Kerby
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Christian Right ◽  
The United States ◽  
Call To Action ◽  
War Memorials ◽  
Public Square ◽  
The World ◽  
White Evangelicals ◽  
Christian Nationalism

This chapter examines how white evangelicals cast themselves as saviors of the United States and how Christian heritage tours offer an initiation into the battle to restore the nation’s Christian heritage. Most white evangelicals today feel that the United States has deviated from the course the founders set for it. But salvation will require sacrifice. Like the American soldiers commemorated in D.C.’s war memorials and Arlington National Cemetery, white evangelicals are called to give their own lives to save the nation from decline. Christian heritage tours ask participants to join the battle for Christian America, usually through becoming politically involved themselves and supporting efforts to promote Christianity in the American public square. They are told they may face ridicule, persecution, or even death for their troubles, but that the fate of the nation and the world hang in the balance. The jeremiad initiated by the Christian Right culminates in this call to action, and this narrative provides the foundations of Christian nationalism.

White Evangelicals as a “People”: The Church Growth Movement from India to the United States

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 108-146
Author(s):  
Jesse Curtis
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Church Growth ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
American Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
White Evangelicals ◽  
Church Growth Movement ◽  
Growth Movement ◽  
The Church

ABSTRACTThis article begins with a simple question: How did white evangelicals respond to the civil rights movement? Traditional answers are overwhelmingly political. As the story goes, white evangelicals became Republicans. In contrast, this article finds racial meaning in the places white evangelicals, themselves, insisted were most important: their churches. The task of evangelization did not stop for a racial revolution. What white evangelicals did with race as they tried to grow their churches is the subject of this article. Using the archives of the leading evangelical church growth theorists, this article traces the emergence and transformation of the Church Growth Movement (CGM). It shows how evangelistic strategies created in caste-conscious India in the 1930s came to be deployed in American metropolitan areas decades later. After first resisting efforts to bring these missionary approaches to the United States, CGM founder Donald McGavran embraced their use in the wake of the civil rights movement. During the 1970s, the CGM defined white Americans as “a people” akin to castes or tribes in the Global South. Drawing on the revival of white ethnic identities in American culture, church growth leaders imagined whiteness as pluralism rather than hierarchy. Embracing a culture of consumption, they sought to sell an appealing brand of evangelicalism to the white American middle class. The CGM story illuminates the transnational movement of people and ideas in evangelicalism, the often-creative tension between evangelical practices and American culture, and the ways in which racism inflected white evangelicals’ most basic theological commitments.

scholarly journals The Future of the World Health Organization: China and the United States Square Off

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 520-529
Author(s):  
Donald Lien ◽  
Joseph Kortsch
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World Health Organization ◽  
Initial Response ◽  
The United States ◽  
World Health ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Health Organization

Summary The purpose of this essay is to discuss the ramifications of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic on the future of the World Health Organization (WHO). In particular, the WHO has come under fire for its initial response and reporting of the pandemic, its acceptance of Chinese self-reporting and management of the crisis and dubious claims that it failed to acknowledge and respond to data from Taiwan that indicated human–to-human transmission was occurring. These alleged missteps have brought unwanted and intense international scrutiny on the organisation and have, perhaps, left its future uncertain. This essay examines the history and mandate of the WHO, its vulnerability to national and regional political movements and some likely outcomes for the near- and long-term future. Additionally, it briefly addresses how the WHO is used as a diplomatic surrogate for the UN, especially in matters relating to Taiwan.

Speech-Language Pathology in the Peace Corps: Necessity and Sustainability

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-18
Author(s):  
Melissa A. Pierce
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Special Education ◽  
Peace Corps ◽  
People With Disabilities ◽  
Communication Disorders ◽  
The United States ◽  
Speech Language Pathology ◽  
Speech Language Pathologists ◽  
Language Pathology

In countries other than the United States, the study and practice of speech-language pathology is little known or nonexistent. Recognition of professionals in the field is minimal. Speech-language pathologists in countries where speech-language pathology is a widely recognized and respected profession often seek to share their expertise in places where little support is available for individuals with communication disorders. The Peace Corps offers a unique, long-term volunteer opportunity to people with a variety of backgrounds, including speech-language pathologists. Though Peace Corps programs do not specifically focus on speech-language pathology, many are easily adapted to the profession because they support populations of people with disabilities. This article describes how the needs of local children with communication disorders are readily addressed by a Special Education Peace Corps volunteer.

Emigrant Psychoanalysts in the USA and the FBI Archives

2004 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
James E. Goggin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Due Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
External Threats ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Rich ◽  
New Nation

Interest in the fate of the German psychoanalysts who had to flee Hitler's Germany and find refuge in a new nation, such as the United States, has increased. The ‘émigré research’ shows that several themes recur: (1) the theme of ‘loss’ of one's culture, homeland, language, and family; and (2) the ambiva-lent welcome these émigrés received in their new country. We describe the political-social-cultural context that existed in the United States during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. Documentary evidence found in the FBI files of three émigré psychoanalysts, Clara Happel, Martin Grotjahn, and Otto Fenichel, are then presented in combination with other source material. This provides a provisional impression of how each of these three individuals experienced their emigration. As such, it gives us elements of a history. The FBI documents suggest that the American atmosphere of political insecurity and fear-based ethnocentric nationalism may have reinforced their old fears of National Socialism, and contributed to their inclination to inhibit or seal off parts of them-selves and their personal histories in order to adapt to their new home and become Americanized. They abandoned the rich social, cultural, political tradition that was part of European psychoanalysis. Finally, we look at these elements of a history in order to ask a larger question about the appropriate balance between a liberal democratic government's right to protect itself from internal and external threats on the one hand, or crossover into the blatant invasion of civil rights and due process on the other.

Mafias on the Move

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Federico Varese
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Organized Crime ◽  
The United States ◽  
The West ◽  
Market Expansion ◽  
The North ◽  
Economic Transformations ◽  
At Will

Organized crime is spreading like a global virus as mobs take advantage of open borders to establish local franchises at will. That at least is the fear, inspired by stories of Russian mobsters in New York, Chinese triads in London, and Italian mafias throughout the West. As this book explains, the truth is more complicated. The author has spent years researching mafia groups in Italy, Russia, the United States, and China, and argues that mafiosi often find themselves abroad against their will, rather than through a strategic plan to colonize new territories. Once there, they do not always succeed in establishing themselves. The book spells out the conditions that lead to their long-term success, namely sudden market expansion that is neither exploited by local rivals nor blocked by authorities. Ultimately the inability of the state to govern economic transformations gives mafias their opportunity. In a series of matched comparisons, the book charts the attempts of the Calabrese 'Ndrangheta to move to the north of Italy, and shows how the Sicilian mafia expanded to early twentieth-century New York, but failed around the same time to find a niche in Argentina. The book explains why the Russian mafia failed to penetrate Rome but succeeded in Hungary. A pioneering chapter on China examines the challenges that triads from Taiwan and Hong Kong find in branching out to the mainland. This book is both a compelling read and a sober assessment of the risks posed by globalization and immigration for the spread of mafias.

Leaded Aviation Fuel May Present Long-Term Effects on Campus Life from the Adjacent Albert Whitted Airport

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Matthews ◽  
Madhu Pandey
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Particulate Matter ◽  
The United States ◽  
Aviation Fuel ◽  
University Campus ◽  
Long Term Effects ◽  
Aviation Gasoline ◽  
Suspended Particulate ◽  
Descent Line

Propeller planes and small engine aircraft around the United States, legally utilize leaded aviation gasoline. The purpose of this experiment was to collect suspended particulate matter from a university campus, directly below an airport’s arriving flight path’s descent line, and to analyze lead content suspended in the air. Two collection sets of three separate samples were collected on six separate days, one set in July of 2018 and the second set in January 2019.

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