Non-fiction: Law
American Crusade: How the Supreme Court Is Weaponizing Religious Freedom by Andrew L. Seidel
Andrew Seidel, a lawyer who has written amicus briefs to the Supreme Court, explains in lay terms what is happening in recent Supreme Court religious freedom cases. Seidel explains some important cases that the crusaders for Christian Nationalism have mounted.
Crusaders are a group of committed and well-funded activists. They are attempting to redefine and weaponize religious liberty, to change a hallowed legal protection into a tool to impose religion on others. The Crusaders are deliberately working to pervert this constitutional protection.
Most importantly, he explains that the law has lines. Lines between permissible and not, between legal and illegal. To understand religious freedom we must understand three basic lines:
#1 – Belief vs. Action
We distinguish between belief and action. Your right to believe is absolute; your right to act on that belief is not.
#2 The Rights of Other
We draw a line between actions that can and should be regulated, even if religiously motivated, and those that shouldn’t. If your actions harm someone else or impacts their rights, it can be regulated, regardless of religious motivation.
#3 State & Church
Here is an example of how these lines worked.
Davis v. Ermold – the case of the county clerk, Kim Davis, who refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples.
#1 – Davis is free to believe whatever she wants about marriage. There is no coercion on her right to believe. County clerks are elected to do certain jobs, including issue marriage licenses. This job does not force Davis to change her belief. She is still free to believe whatever she wants and practice those beliefs in her personal life.
#2 – Religious belief is not a license to act. Davis acted on her belief to deny the legal rights of others. She is free to practice her beliefs in her own marriage but not free to impose those beliefs on others and impact their rights. A county clerk has no power nor freedom to deny another’s rights due to her personal beliefs.
#3 – Davis crossed the line between government power and her personal religion. She confused belief with action. She attempted to use a government office to impose her religion. Davis was asked “Under whose authority are you not issuing licenses?” Her response, “Under God’s authority.” That is incorrect. County clerk is a government office, created and empowered by the people, not a god.
Ruling: Davis was prevented from imposing her religious belief, using a government office and government power to do so. She was also jailed for contempt for refusing to comply with the ruling.
Unfortunately, there are many more examples when the current Supreme Court ignored the lines, especially #3. Seidel presents the underlying the key religious freedom cases the Supreme Court has decided in the last thirty years—the gay wedding cake case, the Muslim travel ban case, the case about the *40-foot Christian cross on government land, the cases challenging Covid-19 health measures, and many more. These rulings demonstrate how a legal protection, freedom of religion, has been turned into a tool to advance privilege and impose religion on others.
* American Legion v. American Humanist Association - “Although a war memorial, erected in the form of a Latin cross, may have originally served a purpose infused with religion, the passage of time has given it historical and cultural significance so that its location on public land is not unconstitutional.” So the Christian cross no longer has religious meaning!? Now is it a symbol of American culture? (That is Christian Nationalism!)
Some of the most eye-opening cases are related to school vouchers. Millions of tax dollars are being used to fund private, Christian schools – funding that should be going to public schools. So ask yourself, should Christians be forced to contribute tax dollars so that Muslim families may send their children to private schools teaching Islam? Would it be constitutional?
One Louisiana legislator who voted for school vouchers, discovered that the word “religion” in the voucher bill actually meant “religion” not “Christianity,” commented, “I do not support using public funds for teaching Islam anywhere.” Hypocrisy abounds! Christian schools claim religious freedom to repulse government regulation but also claim religious freedom to access government money.
Instead of expanding the concept of religious freedom to encompass our rich and growing diversity, religious freedom is contracting. What is the worst that would’ve happened if the three lines in the law had been kept intact? Hobby Lobby, a corporation, would provide comprehensive health insurance to all its employees; a business would not have been able to discriminate against customers because of their sexual orientation; Christian parents would opt out of public schools and do so on their own dime; and nuns would fill out a five question form to notify the government that they’re taking a religious exemption. People claiming religious freedom would still be allowed to pray, go to church, to hate gay people, to not use contraception, to put a cross on their grave, or send their kids to a private, Christian school.
What is the worst that can happen with a weaponized religious freedom? The rule of law disappears. “When the Supreme Court asked itself that question 150 years ago, anarchy was the answer. Every citizen ‘would become a law unto himself.’ We’ll have traded the rule of law for the rule of each conservative Christian’s personal god.”
The Roberts’ Supreme Court is weaponizing “religious freedom” to favor Christianity at the expense of non-Christians’ rights. (NOTE: In religion cases at the Roberts court - started in 2005, Christianity won 85% of the time up from 44% before in every other Supreme Court – Christians are NOT being persecuted!!!) The constitution is supposed to work equally for all people. It isn’t supposed to bend and twist and contort to favor one group over all others. The hypocrisy of the crusade is astounding but becoming less and less surprising. The goal is to elevate Christianity and more specifically, “Christians,” above every other citizen demographic – a favored class of people – a ruling elite.
Non-fiction: Memoir/Mass Communication
The Brainwashing of My Dad: How the Rise of the Right-Wing Media Changed a Father and Divided Our Nation—And How We Can Fight Back by Jen Senko
Based on the award-winning documentary, The Brainwashing of My Dad uncovers the alarming right-wing strategy to wield the media as a weapon against our very democracy. (NOTE: See Testimony later in these booknotes for an evangelical Christian’s view of this same topic.)
Senko begins with historical information on the systematic removal of media safeguards for Americans while putting in place preferential rules for corporations and the wealthy. This part was okay but she also included subjective comments that created a tone of personal bias. If she would have just left the facts speak for themselves and trusted readers to “connect-the-dots”, the text, in my opinion, would have had more impact.
The part about her father is most interesting. Senko tells the story of her once, easy-going father and the changes in his personality and beliefs after hours of listening to talk radio commentators like Rush Limbaugh. Her father was sucked into a suspicion-laden worldview dominated by conspiracy theories, fake news, and rants about the "coastal elite" and "libtards" trying to destroy America. Over the course of a few years, Senko's dad went from a nonpolitical, open-minded man to a radical, angry, and intolerant right-wing devotee who became a stranger to those closest to him. After years of eating lunch together, her father built a wall to keep his wife out of the kitchen so she wouldn’t interrupt his “Rush lunches.” In another instance, Senko’s father picks her up from a bus station for a weekend visit. He makes a comment about Hooters, she disagrees and he becomes instantly enraged, threatening to kick her out of the car and make her walk home. What a way to begin a family visit! Finally, many friendships are ended because he suspects they has “liberal” ideas. Senko’s father basically spent his days listening to Rush and watching Fox while in a constant state of rage and fear of “socialists.”
Senko and her mother were able to deprogram her dad; essentially by engaging in a bit of subterfuge while he was temporarily hospitalized, unsubscribing cable and his worst media/email habits, and subbing in more mainstream options. The redemption story of the return of her sweet, funny dad (and his introspection about it) is inspiring to read. She carries this forward in a chapter that details specific actions people can and should take individually and collectively to change some of the media structures that give media figures brainwashing power.
My favorite section of the book was the end where she included the personal stories of other people with family members who have seemingly gone off the rails into the clutches of media brainwashing.
While not particularly well-written, this is still an important topic especially in light of the recent defamation suit that was settled against Fox “News”.
Non-fiction: History
History Smashers: The Mayflower by Kate Messner
This book was written for ages 8+ - that includes teens and, especially, adults who do not “like” history! Through illustrations, graphic panels, photographs, sidebars, and paintings, author Kate Messner smashes history by exploring the little-known details behind the legends and myths of the Mayflower and the first Thanksgiving.
Messner’s research is extensive and offers insights from multiple perspectives. She does a great job breaking down concepts and translating them into simpler terms, but still conveys a significant amount of information. In other words, the book respects the intellect of young (and old!) readers without resorting to “water-downed” facts and “fairy tales.” Including some analysis of paintings which supposedly depict the historical events helps to develop critical thinking – a skill we can all appreciate.
Here are just two examples of how the author doesn’t ignore the history nor how historians are challenged to write it:
“It’s important to remember that the English were aiming to colonize, or take over, the land. That was more difficult to justify if you had to admit you were stealing it from people who had lived there successfully for thousands of years.”
“This is an example of a primary source that shows what someone was thinking at the time — but the information it gives us is incorrect.”
Non-fiction: History
An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
“Today in the United States, there are more than five hundred federally recognized Indigenous nations comprising nearly three million people, descendants of the fifteen million Native people who once inhabited this land. The centuries-long genocidal program of the US settler-colonial regimen has largely been omitted from history.”
This book synthesizes a vast body of scholarship, much of it by Indigenous People, and provides an antidote to the work of historians who have rationalized the settling of the West and the “civilizing” of the Indians. In a departure from the usual history books which begin with the “discovery of the New World” through the current date, the author begins with and follows the Indigenous experience.
“We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its Indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or feel remorse for this shameful episode. Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it.” - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
This book provides an innovative baseline and effectively re-frames traditional American history to recount the Indigenous experience that was “subjected to colonization, dispossession, settler colonialism, and genocide.” The logical progression of modern colonialism is like that of our own Indigenous people. It begins with 1. economic penetration and 2. graduates to a sphere of influence 3. then to protectorate status or indirect control 4. military occupation or attack and finally 5. annexation or annihilation.
Book Club Selection – International Non-fiction: Memoir
The Last Nomad: Coming of Age in the Somali Desert by Shugri Said Salh
“Stories have always created understanding and connection between humans. In this era of great misunderstanding, I wish to help rein us back in to our shared humanity.”- Shugri Said Salh
Memoirs from a different culture or a lifestyle you will never experience are essential in opening your mind and heart to the wealth of human experience. In The Last Nomad: Coming of Age in the Somali Desert Shugri Said Salh writes of her early nomadic life in the desert of Somalia.
Born to a nomadic tribe, she describes the beauty and brutality of a life spent simply trying to survive on what the earth provides. The stories of her clan and the fierceness of her ayeeyo (grandmother) herding goats and camels to protect them from lions and hyenas were intense. Salh also describes the importance of ancestry in the oral history of the nomadic people.
Later she is pulled from her life in the desert by her father and attends school. She goes from learning essential skills in one world to a completely different set of skills for a different life. Eventually she survived time in an orphanage, civil war, a refugee camp, starvation, and immigration to Canada. Her memoir reveals a woman of strength and determination. For all the terrors she witnessed, she knew what she wanted, who she wanted to be. She gained an education, married, had three children and is a nurse in California.
I gained an understanding of how religion and culture were balanced with the need for daily survival in modern Somalia. Salh describes the impact of disease, injury and warfare on the average citizen. She also describes:
the attempts at bringing women into a state of equality and how religious conservatives fought deeply against that transition
how warfare brought clan against clan without regard to the actual people within those clans
the trauma of the people forced to leave under these conditions and flee their homes as refugees.
Parts of her memoir are very hard to read, especially when she is circumcised. She does not pity herself for undergoing female circumcision as a girl since it was an age-old Somali tradition, although as a nurse she recognizes its negative impact on women’s lives and its consequences on female health and sexuality. As an adult, Salh underwent reconstructive surgery.
An old African proverb says, “When an elder dies, a library is burned.”
Non-fiction: Essays
Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma by Claire Dederer
What do we do when the artists whose work we admire do things that are monstrous in their personal lives? Do we ignore their actions and focus only on their art? Or do we renounce art and artist, prioritizing morality over aesthetics? This book of essays is part memoir and part critical exploration of gender.
Dederer examines her personal experiences, and her personal admiration for the works of Woody Allen, Polanski, Hemingway, Picasso, J.K. Rowling, Richard Wagner, Michael Jackson and many other “monsters.” She calls their misdeeds “stains” which never fade.
Why do we continue to idolize monsters? “We’re ignoring a truth...our attention is trained on men like Picasso and Hemingway is exactly because they’re assholes… Wasn’t that what we saw in Trump? We kept pointing out, over and over: ‘This guy is an asshole.’ And of course that was what people love about him in the first place.” When we read or admire works of the past, we tell ourselves they didn’t know and were simply products of their times. However, the author points out they were “garden-variety assholes: wife beaters, child abusers, racists.” For example, Wagner, a virulent anti-Semite, “had an opportunity to know better – just as Trump’s voters did- and he chose otherwise.” (I was surprised that she included Wagner but didn't mention Leni Riefenstahl!)
Lest you think I am picking on Trump, I will also include a line from the first page of one of my favorite children’s books, Little House on the Prairie. “There were no people; only Indians lived there.” “Monsters” are everywhere!
The author postulates that men demonstrate their monstrosity via sexual assaults while women demonstrate their monstrosity by the abandonment of one’s own children. Many of her observations about women struggling to be both an artist and a mother were based on her personal feelings about her life struggles as a “working” mother. I thought she had a harsher assessment of women’s monstrosity. I wouldn’t call a woman dropping her children off at day care “abandonment.” She also included Joni Mitchell in this discussion since Ms. Mitchell gave a baby up for adoption in the 1960s at the beginning of her music career. I would not call her a “monster.”
Fiction: Science-Fiction
Supernova Era by Liu Cixin, Joel Martinsen (Translator, from Chinese)
In this novel by a famous Chinese Sci-Fi author, a supernova explodes in space. It creates a dose of radiation that, humans soon figure out, has irreversibly damaged the chromosomes of all humans over the age of thirteen. That means all people over the age of thirteen will die in ten to twelve months. But in younger children and, apparently, all plants and animals, the damaged chromosomes will repair themselves and there will be no short- or long-term ill effects. What follows is a dystopian nightmare.
The adults desperately try to pass on their knowledge and skills to the children before they die. Once all the adults have died, the children are in charge. And, as a result of their videogame-influenced lives, the children treat war like a game, an Olympic contest. The nations’ leaders (remember they are children) display the stereotypical weaknesses of their respective cultures: Americans are violent and inclined to escalate conflict; the Vietnamese prime minister proposes that the war games include a “guerrilla war” contest (he’s voted down by the other nations’ representatives); Japanese children kill whales indiscriminately, using depth charges.
Much of Supernova Era is grim. This is really more of social science fiction than science fiction - it reminds me of Lord of the Flies. In fact, the science underlying Supernova Era is improbable and difficult to believe. A near-Earth supernova would in fact be disastrous, and the likely effects would be severe damage to our atmosphere and our oceans. I thought -What about the animals? Why aren’t there any mutations? Aren’t children’s cells actually MORE susceptible to radiation damage than adults’? (Yes, in fact they are.)
Non-fiction: Memoir/Spirituality
Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation by Jon Ward
In this memoir, Ward shares his upbringing in, and eventual break from, an influential evangelical church. He sheds light on the evangelical movement’s troubling political and cultural dimensions, tracing the ways in which the Jesus People movement was seduced by materialism and other factors to become politically captive rather than prophetic.
Ward's insight into the ways the church has changed and his experience as a journalist covering conservative politics set this book apart from others that attempt to explain how Christians went from WWJD (What would Jesus do?) to DWTS (Do whatever Trump says). He quotes and expands upon a lot of Bible verses and provides his commentary on several Christian philosophy books. Ward is serious about exploring his Christian faith and readily asks questions that put most believers on the defensive. While raised to accept unquestionably whatever church leaders say, he explores the nuances of the Christian faith. Ward contemplates and then digs deeper.
Graphic Non-fiction: Memoir
They Called Us Enemy by George Takei, Justin Eisinger, Steven Scott, Harmony Becker (Illustrator)
George Hosato Takei is an American actor best known for his role in the TV series Star Trek, in which he played the helmsman Hikaru Sulu on the USS Enterprise.
Takei was imprisoned, along with his family, in the U.S.’s World War II concentration camps for Japanese Americans. His memoir is particularly moving because it is viewed primarily through his eyes as a young child. Children, the most undeniably innocent of all victims, and are often the most oblivious to what is actually happening. Takei and his friends play contentedly through the railroad journey to the camps, unaware—until years later—of the humiliation their parents suffered and the challenges they faced. The pain of the adults becomes more poignant, and the distance it causes between Takei and his father compounds their concentration camp experience.
Takei includes the occasional non-Asian Americans who acted with compassion and courage, from an anonymous man who regularly delivered carloads of books to the internment camps to a lawyer, Wayne Collins, who led the fight against deportation during the “renunciation crisis.” It also shows how many Japanese—including Takei’s father—worked to organize the detainees into a mutually helpful community, using democratic principles in a quintessentially American way.
Fiction
Zorrie by Laird Hun
The unsung lives of ordinary people sometimes make for extraordinary stories. This novel is one of them. This short novel focuses on Zorrie's life, from beginning to end. It starts just after the Great Depression in Indiana, where orphaned Zorrie lived with a harsh, bitter aunt. Fortunately, she has a wonderful teacher, Mr. Thomas, who was one of the most memorable people in her life.
After her aunt dies, Zorrie must quickly figure out how to support herself. She works briefly in a factory in Illinois, painting clock faces with radium – a choice that will haunt her and her co-workers for years to come. She then moves back to a farming community in Indiana where she marries, becomes a widow and spends the rest of her life living and working on a farm.
Zorrie has her share of hardship and heartbreak, but also the satisfaction of working hard and having “good neighbors.” She reflects on the past, even questioning choices she made. Yet, Zorrie is still able to draw comfort from moments remembered.
As an “old” woman", I could relate to Zorrie’s reflection upon the expanse of life experience. I would often stop reading, and sit silently, remembering the variety of experiences I’ve had and the people I have known. In only six chapters, I was immersed in Zorrie’s ruminations on life which left me with a peaceful sense of joy and appreciation for a quietly lived life. I loved this book!
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