Latest news with #WestboroBaptistChurch
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Who Counts as Christian?
During his campaign, Donald Trump told Christian supporters that if he became president, they would never have to vote again, because 'we'll have it fixed so good.' Now he's trying to follow through on his promise by establishing a task force charged with 'eradicating anti-Christian bias.' But Christians shouldn't conclude that this new commission will necessarily defend their interests, let alone fix it 'so good.' Eliminating anti-Christian bias will require the task force (and thereby the government) to rule on what exactly constitutes authentic Christian belief and practice—not a straightforward determination to make, nor one that should be entrusted to the Trump administration. The executive order creating the task force cites a multitude of examples of what the Trump administration considers to be unacceptable discrimination against Christians, including Biden-era prosecutions of Christian anti-abortion protesters under the Freedom to Access Clinic Entrances Act, the promulgation of a (later retracted) FBI memo referring to radical traditionalist Christians as a potential domestic-terrorism threat, and the designation of Easter Sunday of 2024 as the year's Transgender Day of Visibility. Conservative Christians may generally agree with Trump's characterization of those episodes. But determining the authentically Christian perspective on an issue is not always a simple task. Was the Westboro Baptist Church, a Christian group that spent decades picketing the funerals of LGBTQ people and members of the armed forces, justified in stomping on American flags and heckling crowds of mourners in the name of Christ? The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the group at one point and declined to even entertain its argument at another. Or consider the case of an Episcopalian church in Sacramento whose rainbow Pride flag was stolen and burned: Would this task force agree that the attack was an act of aggression against the congregation qua Christians? The church's priest certainly thought so. To what authority would this task force appeal in order to prove otherwise? Tradition, scripture, the majority opinion of the faithful? Even the most learned Christians disagree on how to derive religious authority, and I doubt this task force will finally settle the debate. [From the February 2025 issue: The army of God comes out of the shadows] This is not a strictly academic point. As part of carrying out the task force's mandate, Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Douglas Collins sent a memo to staff asking them to report instances of anti-Christian discrimination—which included, among other things, 'adverse responses to requests for religious exemption under the previous vaccine mandates.' In this case, the state seems to have decided that Christians have legitimate reason to request exemptions from vaccine mandates. But I would contend that vaccines aren't excluded by genuine Christian ethics, and that these Christian objectors are mistaken in their understanding of the faith. By permitting Christians to obtain vaccine-mandate exemptions, the state is not only misconstruing Christianity, but also causing a great deal of harm—a multistate measles outbreak, for instance, has caused three deaths this year and is still spreading. Vaccine mandates are crucial in preventing such occurrences, and Christians should be particularly willing to offer some small sacrifice for the good of others. That principle is at the heart of the faith. Nor has this administration been friendly to legitimate Christian belief and practice that runs afoul of its politics. Earlier this year, Vice President J. D. Vance bickered with American bishops over major funding cuts to organizations that aid migrants and refugees, contending that their interest was in making money, not in practicing Christianity faithfully. Pope Francis indirectly chastised Vance in a letter written a few weeks before the pope's death, but it doesn't seem that Vance was moved to change his mind. One wonders what the vice president has to say about the recent arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan, who allegedly helped an undocumented man evade arrest by government agents and who also served as the executive director of a branch of Catholic Charities. Was this possibly an example of anti-Christian bias directed at a person practicing the kind of mercy counseled by the late pope? [Luis Parrales: What the border-hawk Catholics get wrong] But the task force is just one element of a broader project to recapture political and cultural ground that Christianity has lost over the past several decades. The litany of examples supplied as justification for the task force's creation generally fit under the rubric of frustrating compromises with liberalism—in the classical sense, as related to the country's founding: liberty, equality, and freedom of conscience—something Trump alluded to during a celebration of National Prayer Day in the Rose Garden. 'They say separation between Church and state,' he remarked. 'I said, 'All right, let's forget about that for one time,'' adding, 'We're bringing religion back to our country, and it's a big deal.' Liberalism engenders religious tolerance in part by domesticating religion, and some number of Christians long for wilder and fiercer expressions of the faith than are generally on offer within a liberal framework. There was a time when American Christianity and the liberal state were less frequently in conflict because Christianity was so overwhelmingly dominant in society. But the recent decline of Christianity has changed that. In 1980, more than 90 percent of Americans identified themselves as Christian; today, only 62 percent say they're followers of Christ. And though recent research suggests that the long-term decrease in Christian affiliation may have halted, the story of the past half century of American Christianity must be read through the lens of these gradual losses and their consequences. The faith no longer has the near-total sociocultural hegemony over American life that it once enjoyed; largely gone are the days of routine prayers and Bible readings in public schools, the suspension of commerce on Sundays, and the broad assumption that whoever you happen to meet will almost certainly be Christian. There are pains associated with Christianity's gradual transformation from a monopolizing cultural force into just one offering on an extended religious menu—though still a preeminent offering, at least for now. It's not surprising, therefore, that the Christians coalescing around Trump want to make American Christianity great again. If the task force's mandate of mere fairness is essentially a pretext for persecuting perceived enemies of the faith, then its real purpose is to restore this past vision of American Christian dominance. That's not to say that the task force won't also address instances of genuine bias toward Christians. Anti-Christian incidents are real: Attacks and vandalism on Catholic churches, for example, appear to be at an all-time high; hundreds of incidents were reported across the country in 2023, though authorities have at times been reluctant to concede that prejudice was a factor. These episodes are understandably aggravating to Christians, and many may therefore see this task force as a welcome intervention, and a matter of fairness in principle: If other groups are entitled to systematic efforts to root out prejudice toward them, the thinking goes, then why not Christians as well? Perhaps that's the irony of this new task force: Nobody appears to view Christianity as just another interest group as much as Donald Trump, who was overtly indifferent to religion until it became clear to him that Christians represented a bloc to pick up with typical political pandering—and pandering works. But Christians should as a rule be skeptical of versions of the faith that are informed overly much by partisan politics, which always have something other than Jesus at their core. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
12-05-2025
- Politics
- Atlantic
Who Counts as Christian?
During his campaign, Donald Trump told Christian supporters that if he became president, they would never have to vote again, because 'we'll have it fixed so good.' Now he's trying to follow through on his promise by establishing a task force charged with 'eradicating anti-Christian bias.' But Christians shouldn't conclude that this new commission will necessarily defend their interests, let alone fix it 'so good.' Eliminating anti-Christian bias will require the task force (and thereby the government) to rule on what exactly constitutes authentic Christian belief and practice—not a straightforward determination to make, nor one that should be entrusted to the Trump administration. The executive order creating the task force cites a multitude of examples of what the Trump administration considers to be unacceptable discrimination against Christians, including Biden-era prosecutions of Christian anti-abortion protesters under the Freedom to Access Clinic Entrances Act, the promulgation of a (later retracted) FBI memo referring to radical traditionalist Christians as a potential domestic-terrorism threat, and the designation of Easter Sunday of 2024 as the year's Transgender Day of Visibility. Conservative Christians may generally agree with Trump's characterization of those episodes. But determining the authentically Christian perspective on an issue is not always a simple task. Was the Westboro Baptist Church, a Christian group that spent decades picketing the funerals of LGBTQ people and members of the armed forces, justified in stomping on American flags and heckling crowds of mourners in the name of Christ? The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the group at one point and declined to even entertain its argument at another. Or consider the case of an Episcopalian church in Sacramento whose rainbow Pride flag was stolen and burned: Would this task force agree that the attack was an act of aggression against the congregation qua Christians? The church's priest certainly thought so. To what authority would this task force appeal in order to prove otherwise? Tradition, scripture, the majority opinion of the faithful? Even the most learned Christians disagree on how to derive religious authority, and I doubt this task force will finally settle the debate. From the February 2025 issue: The army of God comes out of the shadows This is not a strictly academic point. As part of carrying out the task force's mandate, Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Douglas Collins sent a memo to staff asking them to report instances of anti-Christian discrimination—which included, among other things, 'adverse responses to requests for religious exemption under the previous vaccine mandates.' In this case, the state seems to have decided that Christians have legitimate reason to request exemptions from vaccine mandates. But I would contend that vaccines aren't excluded by genuine Christian ethics, and that these Christian objectors are mistaken in their understanding of the faith. By permitting Christians to obtain vaccine-mandate exemptions, the state is not only misconstruing Christianity, but also causing a great deal of harm—a multistate measles outbreak, for instance, has caused three deaths this year and is still spreading. Vaccine mandates are crucial in preventing such occurrences, and Christians should be particularly willing to offer some small sacrifice for the good of others. That principle is at the heart of the faith. Nor has this administration been friendly to legitimate Christian belief and practice that runs afoul of its politics. Earlier this year, Vice President J. D. Vance bickered with American bishops over major funding cuts to organizations that aid migrants and refugees, contending that their interest was in making money, not in practicing Christianity faithfully. Pope Francis indirectly chastised Vance in a letter written a few weeks before the pope's death, but it doesn't seem that Vance was moved to change his mind. One wonders what the vice president has to say about the recent arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan, who allegedly helped an undocumented man evade arrest by government agents and who also served as the executive director of a branch of Catholic Charities. Was this possibly an example of anti-Christian bias directed at a person practicing the kind of mercy counseled by the late pope? Luis Parrales: What the border-hawk Catholics get wrong But the task force is just one element of a broader project to recapture political and cultural ground that Christianity has lost over the past several decades. The litany of examples supplied as justification for the task force's creation generally fit under the rubric of frustrating compromises with liberalism—in the classical sense, as related to the country's founding: liberty, equality, and freedom of conscience—something Trump alluded to during a celebration of National Prayer Day in the Rose Garden. 'They say separation between Church and state,' he remarked. 'I said, 'All right, let's forget about that for one time,'' adding, 'We're bringing religion back to our country, and it's a big deal.' Liberalism engenders religious tolerance in part by domesticating religion, and some number of Christians long for wilder and fiercer expressions of the faith than are generally on offer within a liberal framework. There was a time when American Christianity and the liberal state were less frequently in conflict because Christianity was so overwhelmingly dominant in society. But the recent decline of Christianity has changed that. In 1980, more than 90 percent of Americans identified themselves as Christian; today, only 62 percent say they're followers of Christ. And though recent research suggests that the long-term decrease in Christian affiliation may have halted, the story of the past half century of American Christianity must be read through the lens of these gradual losses and their consequences. The faith no longer has the near-total sociocultural hegemony over American life that it once enjoyed; largely gone are the days of routine prayers and Bible readings in public schools, the suspension of commerce on Sundays, and the broad assumption that whoever you happen to meet will almost certainly be Christian. There are pains associated with Christianity's gradual transformation from a monopolizing cultural force into just one offering on an extended religious menu—though still a preeminent offering, at least for now. It's not surprising, therefore, that the Christians coalescing around Trump want to make American Christianity great again. If the task force's mandate of mere fairness is essentially a pretext for persecuting perceived enemies of the faith, then its real purpose is to restore this past vision of American Christian dominance. That's not to say that the task force won't also address instances of genuine bias toward Christians. Anti-Christian incidents are real: Attacks and vandalism on Catholic churches, for example, appear to be at an all-time high; hundreds of incidents were reported across the country in 2023, though authorities have at times been reluctant to concede that prejudice was a factor. These episodes are understandably aggravating to Christians, and many may therefore see this task force as a welcome intervention, and a matter of fairness in principle: If other groups are entitled to systematic efforts to root out prejudice toward them, the thinking goes, then why not Christians as well? Perhaps that's the irony of this new task force: Nobody appears to view Christianity as just another interest group as much as Donald Trump, who was overtly indifferent to religion until it became clear to him that Christians represented a bloc to pick up with typical political pandering—and pandering works. But Christians should as a rule be skeptical of versions of the faith that are informed overly much by partisan politics, which always have something other than Jesus at their core.
Yahoo
27-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Settlers review – this vital film forces Louis Theroux to do something he's never done before
If you've even casually been tracking Louis Theroux's career, you will have detected a noticeable deceleration of late. For a while, after he shed the culty sheen of his Weird Weekends persona, Theroux emerged as a sober, probing documentarian who made films about drug addiction, sexual assault and postpartum depression. These films were, without exception, vital. Then lockdown happened, and the wheels fell off. After going viral for a self-consciously ironic rap he did 20 years earlier, Theroux settled into the low-stakes quicksand of a generic celebrity interview podcast. You were left with the feeling of an extraordinary talent being wasted. The Settlers lays all those worries to rest in an instant. By travelling to Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Theroux is revisiting the subject matter of a documentary he made in 2011. That film, The Ultra Zionists, concerned a clutch of Jewish people who – propelled by religious nationalism – were infringing on international law by building their homes in Palestinian territory. But, 14 years on, he has returned to find that the settlements have accelerated. The settler ideology has found itself gaining political traction. What was fringe has now become mainstream. As such, The Settlers requires Theroux to alter his approach. Ever since Weird Weekends, his stock in trade has been the faux-naïf, lulling his subjects into a false sense of security with his bumbling charm. With everyone from Jimmy Savile to the members of the Westboro Baptist Church, he was able to lay traps they simply didn't see coming. But the situation in the West Bank is so dire that the kid gloves have to come off. This is partly because he and his crew repeatedly find themselves subject to many of the confrontations and intimidations that blight the lives of Palestinians on a daily basis. During a visit to a Palestinian home, settlers drive up and point guns with laser sights through the windows at him. More than once, he has to politely ask people to lower their guns while talking to him. In one especially tense encounter, he has to bark 'Don't touch me' at a pair of balaclava-wearing Israeli soldiers. In the early years, Theroux would gently attempt to convince his subjects that their worldview might not be the only one around. In the later, more serious films, he would leave long silences on which the viewer could project scorn on his behalf, saving his true feelings for the voiceover afterwards. In truth, there is some of this in The Settlers. When he meets Ari Abramowitz, a Texas settler in the West Bank who refuses to even use the word 'Palestinian', he holds his tongue. When he meets a rabbi who calls Palestinians 'savages' and 'camel riders', he manages to do the same. Then comes Daniella Weiss. A key member of the Israeli settler movement for 50 years, Weiss is Theroux's prime target. She is able to hide her extreme views behind a friendly smile, no matter how aggressively he plays cat and mouse with her. But, at the end of the episode, they both get to each other like never before. Theroux corners Weiss and presses her on settler violence against Palestinians. She says none exists. He says he has witnessed it, notably in a video of a Palestinian being shot. She claims the Israeli shooter was acting in retaliation, then physically shoves Theroux in the hope that he'll push her back. Instead, he does something he's never done before. He calls her a sociopath. I've been watching Theroux's films for more than three decades, since his days on Michael Moore's TV Nation, and watching him be this forthright feels like a true watershed moment in his career. This level of stridently editorialising just hasn't been in his toolbox until now. Whether it works or not is debatable – by the end of the encounter Weiss has recovered herself enough to taunt 'I wish you'd pushed me back' at him – but this new version of Louis Theroux feels like a deliberate adaptation to the ages. It suits him. As with everything, you wish certain aspects of the situation could be explored more. Most notably, the peripheral glimpses of Israeli activists who protest against the settlements probably need more airtime, if only to demonstrate that this is a problem of individuals rather than an entire nation. But that's by the by. It looks very much like we've got Louis Theroux back, and not a moment too soon. • The Settlers aired on BBC Two and is on iPlayer now
The Guardian
27-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Settlers review – this vital film forces Louis Theroux to do something he's never done before
If you've even casually been tracking Louis Theroux's career, you will have detected a noticeable deceleration of late. For a while, after he shed the culty sheen of his Weird Weekends persona, Theroux emerged as a sober, probing documentarian who made films about drug addiction, sexual assault and postpartum depression. These films were, without exception, vital. Then lockdown happened, and the wheels fell off. After going viral for a self-consciously ironic rap he did 20 years earlier, Theroux settled into the low-stakes quicksand of a generic celebrity interview podcast. You were left with the feeling of an extraordinary talent being wasted. The Settlers lays all those worries to rest in an instant. By travelling to Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Theroux is revisiting the subject matter of a documentary he made in 2011. That film, The Ultra Zionists, concerned a clutch of Jewish people who – propelled by religious nationalism – were infringing on international law by building their homes in Palestinian territory. But, 14 years on, he has returned to find that the settlements have accelerated. The settler ideology has found itself gaining political traction. What was fringe has now become mainstream. As such, The Settlers requires Theroux to alter his approach. Ever since Weird Weekends, his stock in trade has been the faux-naïf, lulling his subjects into a false sense of security with his bumbling charm. With everyone from Jimmy Savile to the members of the Westboro Baptist Church, he was able to lay traps they simply didn't see coming. But the situation in the West Bank is so dire that the kid gloves have to come off. This is partly because he and his crew repeatedly find themselves subject to many of the confrontations and intimidations that blight the lives of Palestinians on a daily basis. During a visit to a Palestinian home, settlers drive up and point guns with laser sights through the windows at him. More than once, he has to politely ask people to lower their guns while talking to him. In one especially tense encounter, he has to bark 'Don't touch me' at a pair of balaclava-wearing Israeli soldiers. In the early years, Theroux would gently attempt to convince his subjects that their worldview might not be the only one around. In the later, more serious films, he would leave long silences on which the viewer could project scorn on his behalf, saving his true feelings for the voiceover afterwards. In truth, there is some of this in The Settlers. When he meets Ari Abramowitz, a Texas settler in the West Bank who refuses to even use the word 'Palestinian', he holds his tongue. When he meets a rabbi who calls Palestinians 'savages' and 'camel riders', he manages to do the same. Then comes Daniella Weiss. A key member of the Israeli settler movement for 50 years, Weiss is Theroux's prime target. She is able to hide her extreme views behind a friendly smile, no matter how aggressively he plays cat and mouse with her. But, at the end of the episode, they both get to each other like never before. Theroux corners Weiss and presses her on settler violence against Palestinians. She says none exists. He says he has witnessed it, notably in a video of a Palestinian being shot. She claims the Israeli shooter was acting in retaliation, then physically shoves Theroux in the hope that he'll push her back. Instead, he does something he's never done before. He calls her a sociopath. I've been watching Theroux's films for more than three decades, since his days on Michael Moore's TV Nation, and watching him be this forthright feels like a true watershed moment in his career. This level of stridently editorialising just hasn't been in his toolbox until now. Whether it works or not is debatable – by the end of the encounter Weiss has recovered herself enough to taunt 'I wish you'd pushed me back' at him – but this new version of Louis Theroux feels like a deliberate adaptation to the ages. It suits him. As with everything, you wish certain aspects of the situation could be explored more. Most notably, the peripheral glimpses of Israeli activists who protest against the settlements probably need more airtime, if only to demonstrate that this is a problem of individuals rather than an entire nation. But that's by the by. It looks very much like we've got Louis Theroux back, and not a moment too soon. The Settlers aired on BBC Two and is on iPlayer now
The Independent
11-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Podcasts were ruining Louis Theroux – then along came Armie Hammer
Early on in the latest episode of his uncharacteristically tepid interview podcast for Spotify, Louis Theroux makes his celebrity guest squirm. This was perhaps unavoidable, for Theroux's guest is the Call Me by Your Name actor, and now rampant denier of cannibalism allegations, Armie Hammer. Theroux pushes him not only on the leaked text messages that suggested an erotic interest in consuming human flesh (a provocative joke, Hammer insists), but also the allegations of rape and sexual assault (consensual acts of non-consent, says Hammer) that engulfed the actor in 2021, effectively shuttering his movie career in the process. 'I'm not crazy about dredging up all of this stuff,' Hammer says at the end of the episode, released today. 'For me, a lot of these issues have been resolved, whether it be legally or within myself. A lot of those waters have settled. [Talking about them] stirs up the water again unnecessarily.' Theroux, to his credit, stands his ground. This lightly confrontational quality isn't typical of Theroux right now. After rising to prominence with the sly, gawping docuseries Weird Weekends, Theroux made his bread and butter the discreetly probing documentary – nerdily umming and ahhing his way into often quite ghoulish truths, whether it involved living with the hate group known as the Westboro Baptist Church, or breaking bread with Jimmy Savile. (That encounter, notoriously, didn't go as far as it probably should have – he's since expressed regret.) But since 2022, Theroux has largely focused on celebrity interviews, as if to refashion himself as a kind of British Marc Maron – a US podcaster who welcomes stars into his home for often innocuous, sometimes revealing, chats about their lives and careers. The problem, though, is that Theroux isn't very good at this. The Louis Theroux Podcast, launched on Spotify and additional platforms in 2023, takes after his anodyne 2022 BBC series Louis Theroux Interviews, in which he chatted to stars including Stormzy, Bear Grylls, Rita Ora and Raye – individuals who are all fine at what they do, and occasionally interesting, but devoid of the anarchic mystery of, say, Max Clifford or Chris Eubank, oddball cultural figures whom Theroux famously interviewed in the early Noughties. It would be easy to say that Theroux handles these new celebrities with kid gloves, but that would suggest a purposeful steering away from troublesome topics. Instead, he just seems slightly adrift in these conversations, regurgitating tired lines of questioning and feigning interest in whatever his guests tell him. His anxious unease, historically interpreted as a deliberate veil of cluelessness to disarm his interviewee, has been supplanted by a doddering actual cluelessness, which makes each conversation vaguely torturous. The podcast only accentuates these problems. Theroux excavates the biographies of younger stars such as Paul Mescal, Barry Keoghan, or the pop star PinkPantheress, but unearths little that hasn't already been explored in one of their pre-existing interviews with a magazine. Older stars don't get off much better. His recent chat with Willem Dafoe felt unprepared and uncomfortable, Theroux sifting through an increasingly testy Dafoe's greatest hits. 'She dripped hot wax on your nipples?' he asked an already grumpy Dafoe at one point, in reference to his 1993 erotic thriller with Madonna, Body of Evidence. 'Yeah, but that's no big deal,' Dafoe replied, before pondering why Theroux was talking about a movie from more than 30 years ago that no one really remembers. Similarly, Theroux has a conversational preoccupation with 'the culture wars' and 'cancellation', but rarely appears to find them interesting as topics – if anything, he seems almost embarrassed to bring them up, as if forced to by committee. 'It's been brought to my attention that in a lot of these shows, I ask about Woody Allen ... or Harvey Weinstein, or [a guest's] experience of either blacking up or browning up, or working with people who have browned up or blacked up, or their opinions on that,' he said during an interview with Sanjeev Bhaskar. 'It's become a kind of ... 'Culture Wars Talking Point Bingo'.' At least he knows it, I suppose. The podcast landscape as it stands only accentuates Theroux's failings here. Shows in which celebrities interview celebrities are a dime a dozen right now, and Theroux's hasn't even got a central hook along the lines of Kathy Burke's Where There's a Will, There's a Wake (in which stars talk about their fantasy funerals), or Ed Gamble and James Acaster's Off Menu (in which stars discuss their favourite meals). The Louis Theroux Podcast is contrastingly rudderless, with focus-grouped guests and a host who is happy to acknowledge how mostly anodyne he's become. On a rare occasion when he was prodded on his current approach to interviews, in an episode last year with Tracey Emin, Theroux's answers were illuminating. 'I thought that being involved in TV and broadcasting meant being adversarial,' he told Emin. 'And I had the attitude that a lot of TV was corrupt because it was overly safe and onside, and therefore not quite honest. But nowadays I don't think that ... I think perhaps I have maybe mellowed a bit.' It's an ethos that, for the most part, has produced pleasing if plodding audio noise far beneath the standard of everything we know and love about Louis Theroux. Thank God, then, for the Armie Hammer episode, with Theroux quick to ask him difficult questions and eager to cut through Hammer's penchant for therapy speak (the actor namedrops Carl Jung and the writer Joseph Campbell, and at one point compares himself, metaphorically, to a beach ball). There's still a sense that Theroux isn't yet at ease with the podcast format, only at the very end of the Hammer episode attempting to pull together loose threads about sexual assault, the 'manosphere', masturbation and cancel culture that all really needed more time to properly ferment. But Theroux is generally focused and erudite, refusing to bow to Hammer's obvious discomfort. Perhaps, though, the success of the Hammer episode is because the actor is just a lot more interesting than the bulk of Theroux's guests so far – Hammer's rise and fall is objectively fascinating, the line between consensual non-consent (as Hammer claims) and actual non-consent (as his accuser claims) undeniably rich with complication. A nice chat with Ben Elton just isn't going to produce the same material. Theroux, then, hasn't lost his magic. For some reason, he's just not been using it.
