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This is the book cover of Religion and Politics Beyond the Culture Wars: New Directions in a Divided America, edited by Darren Dochuk. The book is reviewed by Agostino Bono. (CNS photo/courtesy University of Notre Dame Press)

By Agostino Bono Catholic News Service Posted January 14, 2022

Religion and Politics Beyond the Culture Wars: New Directions in a Divided America, edited by Darren Dochuk. University of Notre Dame Press. (Notre Dame, Indiana, 2021). 359 pp. $55.

Mixing religion, politics, the culture wars and division in America can make for an explosive cocktail in a country where many people see issues and often the people espousing them in black and white.

This worsened during the presidency of Donald Trump, who demonized opponents and used ridicule more than arguments to shoot down ideas.

The result is todays society in which such hot-button topics as abortion, immigration, race, climate change and who can use which public bathroom are treated as a tug-of-war producing only winners and losers.

Little room exists for gray areas, thoughtful compromise and negotiations to resolve problems. Its universal truths versus moral relativism.

This book a collection of 14 essays mostly by academics doesnt solve any problems, but it shows that divisions and culture wars are nothing new in a society where religion and politics often combust. The difference today is a more polarized citizenry.

The essays avoid dealing directly with current incendiary issues or in some cases how they are framed today. Instead, many essays delve into the previous century and the beginnings of this one to show how various religious communities and individuals intertwined with politics on key issues such as the Cold War and the environment.

Sometimes the issues divided different religions or produced splits within some, such as opposition to the Vietnam War. The essays are based on presentations at a 2014 Beyond the Culture War conference at Washington University in St. Louis.

As these are essays, there is no common thread running through the book nor is there a clear formula as to how religion and politics can go beyond culture wars and heal divisions. But individual essays present some interesting facts.

Early in the previous century there was a struggle as to who should lead Christian workers in their labor struggles: the workers themselves or clergy arbiters.

Catholics, Jews and some Protestants were favorable to immigration. Other Protestants were opposed, however, because it would open the door to more southern European Catholics in a country considered white Anglo-Saxon Protestant now and forever.

One tantalizing essay shows how the CIA recruited Catholic and Protestant missionaries on overseas assignments as spies.

But it commits an enormous historical error. It says a CIA-aided Catholic movement helped replace Chilean Marxist President Salvador Allende with a Christian Democrat president. Allende was overthrown in 1973 by a military coup that inaugurated a brutal military regime headed by Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

Perhaps the most interesting fact to emerge in the book is the difficulty in tagging people with preconceived political labels even in divisive times. Many Catholics, especially priests and nuns, were actively engaged in Vietnam War protests, an activity considered politically liberal at the time.

Yet, they strongly opposed abortion, considered a conservative view, but didnt align themselves with the anti-abortion Republican Party. Their reason for both positions was the same: opposition to the destruction of human life.

The book, while not offering solutions to todays dilemmas, indicates that we may learn some lessons about polarization and culture wars by studying the past.

***

Also of interest: Faith and Reckoning After Trump, edited by Miguel A. De La Torre. Orbis Books (Maryknoll, New York, 2021). 304 pp., $26.

***

Bono is a retired CNS staff writer.

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Can religion and politics get us beyond the culture wars? - CatholicPhilly.com

There's an inherent contradiction at the heart of liberal thinking that perpetually raises its head. It's one which has become ever-more pronounced in our age of ultra-progressive politics: the tension between equality and liberty. Many progressives think you can have both. Alas not. You can only have either, or a greater emphasis upon one at the expense of the other.

This contradiction has once more been made evident today amidst reports of a lecturer who says he is the latest victim of 'cancel culture'. James Treadwell, a professor of criminology at Staffordshire University, says that he is 'being investigated for transphobia' after his employer received 'formal and official' complaints about his gender-critical views on Twitter.

Staffordshire University has confirmed that his case is indeed being reviewed. It has said:

'As a university we are committed to equality, diversity, and inclusion to ensure we promote a positive culture where everyone is able to be themselves. We are equally committed to academic freedom and lawful freedom of speech.'

Here in two adjoining sentences are embodied this contradiction between equality and liberty, or to put it another way, between tolerance and freedom. Either we can have a world in which transgender people or any other minority section of society have a right for their identities to be equally tolerated, respected and protected by the state. Or we can have a society in which individuals have their right to speak their minds, in which their opinions are also tolerated, respected and protected. You can live in a society in which no-one is allowed to be offended, or one in which everyone has the right to be offensive. You can't have both.

As a pragmatic compromise, liberal societies forever choose a middle path, between individual-based liberty and state-enforced equality, oscillating in various degrees between one to the other. Our culture today places emphasis on the latter, of collective safety before individual liberty. This is at the root of 'cancel culture', in which individuals are censured or censored for saying the wrong thing because it might be hurtful to groups of people. Yet our sensitive so-called 'snowflake' world elevates the right not to be offended over the right to be offensive.

For many years it seemed that the libertarians were on the ascendency. In the arts especially there has been a growing consensus since the 1960s that the right to expression trumps societal taboos, sentiment or reactionary outrage. This is why Mary Whitehouse was such a figure of fun in her time: she seemed a dinosaur out of kilter in an age of untrammelled liberation. Theatre censorship ended in Britain in 1968 and even as late as 1995 it was legally impossible to obtain a home video of Reservoir Dogs. Even the idea of banning Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979), which some councils did on account of its perceived blasphemy, would be unthinkable now.

Yet the trend has since swung the other way, mostly in conjunction with the rise of identity politics, which seeks to protect all swathes of society, first from discrimination and acts of violence, but increasingly now from hurt feelings or disagreeable opinions. This shift has been enshrined in equality legislation and in 'hate speech', which protects groups and abstract nouns against individuals.

This has thrown up many problems and objections, not only from those who believe free speech is sacrosanct. It has exposed the related tensions between the rights of groups themselves to be offensive against each other. The 'gay-cake' controversy in Northern Ireland was a case in point: should Christians be allowed the right to act in accordance with their identity and beliefs, even if it might be offensive to gay customers?

Another recent eruption in the culture wars has been between Trans campaigners and gender-critical feminists, with the latter objecting as women that biological men be allowed into female prisons, rape shelters or participate in female sports. Then there is the old matter of some opinions held by somereligious fundamentalistsin regards to women and homosexuals. Which group should be protected? The offended or the offensive?

We see this conflict between safety and freedom in wider society. Lockdowns and the matter of mandatory vaccinations have pitted two camps against each other, between those who believe the safety of society is utterly paramount, and those who believe foremost in bodily autonomy. It's a debate that was previously played out over banning smoking in pubs, and, before that, the compulsory wearing of seat-belts.

In the political sphere, at least, there is implicit recognition that there has to be a compromise between the two aspirations. In the cultural sphere, alas not. Ever since the French revolutionaries issued their contradictory and self-refuting call to arms, 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity', progressives have been living in the shadow of this fraudulent banality.

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James Treadwell and the true meaning of 'cancel culture' - Spectator.co.uk

A decade ago, in March 2012, a group of writers, artists, educators, and activists banded together to combat the deplorable actions of Arizonas state legislature. The states lawmakers had recently passed a bill making the teaching of Ethnic Studies illegal, along with banning courses that promote resentment toward a race or class of people and are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group. The bill also created a list of banned books. Of the more than 80 books that were eventually added to the list, many of the authors were Black and Latinx.

The Arizona law was so restrictive that it made news here in Texas, where we created the Librotraficante Movement in order to highlight the attack on books, educators, and education by conservative politicians. Librotraficante means book smuggler, and thats what we did: collect books in Texas and smuggle them to Arizona, where those same titles had been abruptly banned. We used all of our book nerd talents to create an old-school freedom ride, collecting 35 bus riders and caravanning to six cities: Houston, San Antonio, El Paso, Mesilla, Albuquerque, and Tucson. We collected more than 1,000 copies of Arizonas banned books and disseminated them to community libraries through book bundles to Arizona high school students. The Librotraficante Movement has been crucial in giving a voice to students of color across the nation.

A decade later, that work stays with you. Now the attacks are happening right here in the Lone Star State.

In the last legislative session, lawmakers passed Senate Bill 3, which banned the teaching of critical race theory in Texas classrooms. Governor Greg Abbott and other Texas Republicans have also called for bans of school library books that might make students uncomfortable. State Representative Matt Krause, a Fort Worth Republican, has named 850 books hed like to see removed from libraries. Like in Arizona, the lists seem to target non-white and LGBTQ authors. This much is clear: The Republican Party intends to deny children access to books, authors and an education that would spur their intellectual growth. And in an effort to satisfy their base, Republicans in Texas are pushing away the one population that needs their attention the most: youthand more pointedlyyouth of color.

State Republicans run on libraries and classrooms comes as the states demographics continue to shift. In the 20192020 academic school year, Hispanic students accounted for the largest percentage of the states student enrollment with roughly 53 percent. White students made up only 27 percent of the student body; Black students represented 13 percent, and Asian students represented 5 percent. Each year Texas schools get more diverse, but the same cant be said for the state legislature.

Its worth noting that at the same time the Legislature was cooking up Senate Bill 3, the body quietly shot down another bill that could have created a whole new set of possibilities for youth in Texas. House Bill 1504, filed by state Representative Christina Morales (D-Houston), would have allowed school districts to create an Ethnic Studies course as an alternative to World Geography and World History courses. The bill made no mandates but would have granted the thousands of school districts across the state the ability to adapt coursework to their specific student bodies. It was a beautifully fair bill that gained both Republican and Democratic sponsors.

The bill couldnt survive the states intensifying culture wars, however. It was placed on the Senates intent calendar in May before dying.

That brings us to the present. For a playbook of how to combat the troubling new actions in Texas, I think back to the last days of the Librotraficante caravan. As we arrived in Tucson, where the school district had shut down a Mexican American Studies course, a few of us were assigned the task of sorting the more than 1,000 books amassed during the caravan. It was early morning7:30 or sowhen we noticed that a tiny group of teens had come by. They quietly approached to see the books and grabbed some, retreating without a word. Later, a young lady grabbed a book and took it away to the corner to read it.

As the day went on, the young lady returned, saying, Thank you for giving me this moment. I was just about to finish this book on the day the district personnel came to forcibly take the books away from us. Wise beyond her years, she left us with some parting advice: I want you to have this book back. Give it to somebody else. I hope somebody can learn from this book.

As an educator and a writer, those words were especially powerful. If you can get a kid to pick up a book that they havent seen in three months, then read it like its a sacred texthell, you have witnessed all that is good in education.

Now, 10 years later, Im still a Librotraficante. And Im ready to do it all over again.

Originally posted here:
Poet Laureate Lupe Mendez on Banned Books and Librotraficante - The Texas Observer

Screenshot: Microsoft 365/YouTube

In case youd missed it, Microsoft Office has a wokeness editor that will flag your writing if it contains insensitive phrases. Welcome to the dumb culture wars, Office settings.

The software suite will call out your writing for being non-inclusive or containing offensive language. In the same way a spellchecker looks for typos and grammar mistakes, this inclusivity editor, available to Microsoft 365 subscribers, scans your work for inappropriate terms.

The feature goes beyond flagging ethnic slurs and will highlight when youve used words or phrases containing age bias, cultural bias, sexual orientation bias, gender bias, racial bias, as well as gender-specific language.

Some examples include changing blacklist and whitelist to accepted or allowed list, or swapping the gender-specific postman with postal worker. Similarly, humanity or humankind is recommended over mankind, and expert is suggested when the software flags master, a term linked with slavery. (In 2020, Microsoft-owned Github removed master and slave from its website.)

Microsoft says the goal isnt to correct all of societys issues but to make people consider more inclusive ways of writing. The company hired native speakers and linguistic experts in 20 languages to determine which inclusiveness critiques would be unwelcome in certain markets.

We verified that the feature is already available to Microsoft 365 customers but is turned off by default. And rather confusingly, Microsoft gives you the ability to turn off some inclusivity features while leaving others off, so you can have it check for gender bias but ignore ethnic slurs. When enabled, inappropriate terms are underlined in purple and an inclusive alternative is presented.

Microsoft told Daily Mail that the spellchecker might not be suitable for all scenarios and emphasized that it could be turned off if needed. While there are surely scenarios where people dont want a nudge toward political correctness (say, if you were referencing a quote like One giant leap for mankind), you can also just ignore the purple underline.

Microsoft understands that not every Editor suggestion may be suitable for all users and all scenarios, the company told Daily Mail. Thats why we let users be in control of their final output. Editor is a completely optional tool that users can turn on or turn off at any point. Editor does not make any autocorrections. The user has control over which suggestions they choose to use, if any. They will be able to turn on and off each one of them individually.

It seems like Microsoft is tip-toeing, afraid to potentially anger folks who consider wokeness to be toxic, or whatever. If Microsoft wants people to know how woke it is, the company should stick to its convictions and make this a default feature that can be turned off when needed, instead of hiding the tool deep in the settings.

For now, to enable the feature, you have to go to the Editor tab in the top ribbon and select Settings near the button. From there, choose Proofing and Settings... then Grammar and Refinement from the drop-down. Here, you can select which categories of inclusivity youd like the editor to include.

The spellcheck tool is available in the latest version of Microsoft Word in Microsoft 365, the companys productivity cloud subscription service. Unfortunately, those who use the free browser-based version or the standalone one-payment Office 2019 will not be able to access the editor.

Update on Jan 14 at 2:20pm E.T.: Microsoft told Gizmodo that Editor was first made available in March 2020. A previous version of this article suggested the feature was new. Weve updated the piece accordingly.

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Microsoft Offices Woke Spellchecker Is Perfectly Fine and Will Cause Nobody to Freak Out - Gizmodo

Late Wednesday evening, Jan. 5, dozens of art world insiders received a fund-raising message from Nancy Pelosi. Im in disbelief, the text began. Tomorrow is the anniversary of the violent, deadly insurrection on our nations capitol, and several reports show Republicans surging in the run-up to the midterms. We need to send a strong message that our democracy is sacred.

The message was typical enough of the calls to arms blasted by progressive campaigns and organizers like ActBlue and MoveOn. But then, the kicker: Thats why I need you to show up at the opening of artist Paul Chans new exhibition at Greene Naftali Gallery, tomorrow

Pelosi then recited the news release for Chans new show.

It turns out the text was a joke. But the subtext was not. The storming of the Capitol Building was too dire to ignore, with half a dozen lives lost, traumatized police and hundreds of rioters facing criminal charges. Chan, an artist, activist and satirist, and a winner of the prestigious Hugo Boss Prize (as the Pelosi text emphasized), is not alone among those compelled to face Jan. 6 through their artwork: The anniversary had a handful of other memorial openings.

Was Chans toonish but grave exhibition, which runs through Jan. 22, a worthwhile response? Where Trumps followers chose violence, the artist offered A drawing as a recording of an insurrection. The show features a single double-sided drawing done in brushed black ink, suspended diagonally across the gallery in a plexiglass frame. One side depicts tumbling, churning masses of protesters urged on by a blustering, Trump-like cloud. The so-called QAnon Shaman is there, centered in the banner-size composition, unmistakable with his buffalo headdress and bare nipples (Jacob Chansley his real name was sentenced to 41 months for his role). Flanking the Capitol dome, which swarms with rampaging stick-figures, the sun and crescent moon shed tears.

Beneath the zany, energetic portrayal of the MAGA throng, Chan includes the cartoon faces of stricken Capitol Police Officers, given Xs for eyes. The other side takes us inside the House chamber, where more stick figures run amok around the compositions border, hanging upside down and sideways. They stare into laptops and film one another with their blocky, brushy phones.

The exhibition seems founded in the heartfelt belief asserted by many artists in the last year that some response to the events of Jan. 6 was necessary. And how else can an artist respond, if not with art?

But the exhibition also concedes that maybe art isnt enough: the news release states that Greene Naftali will hold a voter-registration drive for the duration of Chans exhibition; those who sign up will receive an original drawing Chan made as a gesture of appreciation for affirming the basic and inalienable right to vote in America.

Lets set aside the likelihood that visitors to Chans show in Chelsea will already be seasoned voters. Its not clear that voting is enough, either, given that the exact event at issue was a rejection of due process, an attempt to void inalienable votes cast in Georgia, Arizona, and elsewhere.

Indeed, crying moon and all, the shows very earnestness can seem like a joke. According to the news release, Chan painted the Capitol picture with his left, non-dominant hand in an attempt to reduce the authority of the artists voice, and as an exercise in letting go. This deliberate de-skilling, a faux-naf embrace of pure, even childish expression, puts the work squarely in conversation with so-called outsider art, the bloody revolt of Henry Dargers Vivian Girls in particular.

Chan, of course, is very much an insider: He has exhibited in the Whitney Biennial, and is the subject of a retrospective at the Walker Art Center later this year. His response to Jan. 6 figures in a dense web of meditations on individual liberty, violence, and society, such as his major video animation, Sade for Sades Sake (exhibited at both the Venice Biennale and Greene Naftali in 2009), a jittering orgy of silhouetted figures, or his staging of Waiting for Godot in the flood-ruined Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans. And stylistically, the Capitol drawing follows a series of illustrations Chan made to accompany a new English translation of a childrens book by the terse philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. In this context, at least, the overt silliness of the work has an intellectual basis.

But the activist tone of A drawing as a recording of an insurrection should be seen in the company of other artists efforts to grapple with Jan. 6 and the prevailing political winds. At Doomscrolling, an exhibition uptown at Petzel Gallery, Zorawar Sidhu and Rob Swainston presented a suite of large woodblock prints made since the start of the pandemic, comprising anxious images from their newsfeeds carved into the very sheets of plywood that protected Manhattan businesses during that summers uprisings. The wild ocher- and icy-hued January 6 joins their scenes depicting protests after George Floyds murder; the Kyle Rittenhouse killings; and the time a fly rested on Mike Pences head, among other vignettes from a divided, livestreamed nation.

The artist Andre Serrano marked the day by debuting Insurrection, a full-length documentary about Jan. 6, in Washington, D.C. The film continues Serranos treatment of Americas darkest political id which includes a series about torture, and portraits of Ku Klux Klansmen by presenting a video of the riot in the style of D.W. Griffiths Birth of a Nation. (He is also no stranger to the culture wars: Serranos photograph Piss Christ has the distinction of having been denounced on the Senate floor in 1989.)

In the past year, Robert Longo, a member of the Pictures Generation, has added an image of Jan. 6 to his catalog of iconic photos of American unrest since 2016, rendered as exactingly detailed, mural-scale charcoal drawings. And the current Prospect.5 triennial in New Orleans includes a fiery history painting of the Capitol attack by Celeste Dupuy-Spencer, titled Dont You See That I Am Burning, based on a line from Freuds dream book.

Mark Meadows. Mr. Trumps chief of staff, who initially provided the panel with a trove of documents that showed the extent of his rolein the efforts to overturn the election, is now refusing to cooperate. The House voted to recommend holding Mr. Meadows in criminal contempt of Congress.

Scott Perry and Jim Jordan. The Republican representatives of Pennsylvaniaand Ohioare among a group of G.O.P. congressmenwho were deeply involved in efforts to overturn the election. Both Mr. Perryand Mr. Jordanhaverefused to cooperatewith the panel.

Michael Flynn. Mr. Trumps former national security adviser attended an Oval Office meeting on Dec. 18 in which participants discussed seizing voting machines and invoking certain national security emergency powers. Mr. Flynn has filed a lawsuitto block the panels subpoenas.

Phil Waldron. The retired Army colonelhas been under scrutiny since a 38-page PowerPoint documenthe circulated on Capitol Hill was turned over to the panel by Mr. Meadows. The document contained extreme plans to overturn the election.

John Eastman. The lawyer has been the subject of intense scrutinysince writing a memothat laid out how Mr. Trump could stay in power. Mr. Eastman was present at a meeting of Trump allies at the Willard Hotelthat has becomea prime focus of the panel.

Each of these artists has chosen an essentially realistic, more or less heightened rendition of the chaos and rage as it unfurled on our many screens, as if, through scale or repetition or insistence, a review of the awful facts could emphasize the seriousness of that clash, if not change the world.

But Chans approach seems confused. Politically, the work is intensely earnest. Yet the drawings waves of sketchy minions are laughable, executed like a throwaway gag. Making and exhibiting the work may have satisfied Chans sense of virtue, but the result does little for his audiences understanding of the attack. And the show as a whole, with its news release and voter drive, is an ambivalent gesture, as if the artist himself isnt sure how serious hes being.

For a counterpoint to liberal arts, from a messenger who is nothing if not certain of his mission, see Jon McNaughtons recent painting, Solitary Confinement, posted on the artists website in October.

A painter of blunt conservative allegories and a Republican darling (the Fox host and Trump confidant Sean Hannity is a collector), McNaughton first gained notoriety for a portrait of President Obama burning the Constitution. McNaughtons contribution to the Jan. 6 canon is unexpectedly subtle, and unmistakable: Solitary Confinement shows a man huddled and shackled in a cold stone cell, the heavenly light from the barred windows gracing his red MAGA cap and khaki jumpsuit.

Above his shoulder, etched into the prison wall, are several dates: 1/06/2021, of course, but also 11/08/2022 and 11/05/2024the next two federal elections.

Travis Diehl, a critic, is the online editor at X-TRA, the Los Angeles-based arts journal.

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Artists Respond to Jan. 6 With Brushes and Ballots - The New York Times