Unholy

Produktdetails

Verlag

Random House USA Inc

Erschienen

2021

Sprache

English

Seiten

368

Infos

368 Seiten
200 mm x 131 mm

ISBN

978-1-984820-44-0

Besprechung

Few reporters are more astute about the intersection of the evangelical movement and American politics than Posner, and in Unholy she reveals a backstory that anyone trying to understand how we got to this disturbing state of affairs should read. Jane Mayer, chief Washington correspondent, The New Yorker, and author of Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right

A meticulous deconstruction of the Christian right's long, slow infiltration of Republican politics. Sarah Posner has been writing on this subject for years, and it shows. Before Donald Trump, it was easy to claim the Christian right lacked the power it had during the 1980s; Posner shows that this analysis was dead wrong. Janet Reitman, contributing writer, The New York Times Magazine, and author of Inside Scientology: The Story of America s Most Secretive Religion

Reading Unholy unsettles you and shows that what ails this country goes way beyond the current occupant in the White House. This book is a must-read for anyone who claims to be Christian and for anyone who is concerned about our democracy. Eddie S. Glaude Jr., author of Begin Again: James Baldwin s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own
 
Unholy explains how moralizing evangelicals fell in love with one of the most outwardly immoral presidents in modern American history. Religion reporter Sarah Posner makes bold claims, but she brings receipts. As a Christian, I found this book far more disturbing and damning than I expected. We ignore it at our collective peril. Jonathan Merritt, author of Learning to Speak God from Scratch and contributing writer for The Atlantic

Posner shows how conservative politics have shifted since the 1970s, with the line between church and state blurring as conservative Christians gained steady influence in government. Her extensive research offers a dizzying array of right-wing think tanks and coalitions, driven by both high- and low-profile names. . . . Posner reckons that Trump is merely a catalyst, not a cause, capitalizing on racial fear, economic uncertainty, and social unrest. Booklist

Posner (God s Profits), longtime analyst of the religious right, . . . begins with the sense of displacement and racial grievance white Christian conservatives experienced following Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and traces the development of the religious right s political infrastructure up until the Obama presidency, demonstrating how decades of patient strategizing created an environment in which Trump, the perfect televangelist candidate, could take center stage. . . . Highly recommended for those seeking to understand how white evangelicals developed political power. Library Journal

Posner [is a] reporting fellow at Type Investigations. [Her] authoritative investigation will be a must-read for those interested in the connections between the Trump presidency and evangelicalism. Publishers Weekly

Textauszug

1

The Blueprint for an Assault on Civil Rights

Less than two weeks into Trump s presidency, I was leaked an explosive document: a draft executive order establishing a government-­wide initiative to respect religious freedom that was under White House consideration and that was being circulated inside federal agencies. As I digested the four-­page draft, I saw in it an audacious attempt to end-­run the democratic process to create, with the stroke of Trump s pen, rights for conservative Christians that exceeded what the courts, Congress, and nearly every state legislature had ever granted them. The draft envisioned giving any person or organization ­including government employees, contractors, grantees, and not-­for-­profit and for-­profit corporations ­permission to refuse to transact virtually any type of business with someone based on their sexual orientation, gender identity, or marital status, or because they had had premarital sex or an abortion. It would have permitted such exemptions in nearly every facet of life, when providing social services, education, or health care; earning a living, seeking a job, or employing others; receiving government grants or contracts; or otherwise participating in the marketplace, the public square, or interfacing with Federal, State or local governments. The document derided the government as the enemy, an arrogant tyrant to religious people. Americans and their religious organizations, the draft read, will not be coerced by the Federal Government into participating in activities that violate their conscience.

Taken out of context, the draft executive order might have seemed chock-full of legalese, perhaps paranoid and excessive, and completely out of touch with mainstream twenty-­first-­century American social mores. It was not a fresh brainchild of the new Trump administration; it represented the culmination of decades of Christian right legal and political advocacy for religious freedom. The draft s framing ­that an imperious, secular government was bent on stripping Christians of their rights ­had been years in the making, dating back to the 1970s. Then, in the religious right s formative years, activists first formulated arguments that government policies promoting school desegregation were an infringement on Christians freedom to educate their children. But this time the government social engineering that was provoking the backlash was not school desegregation and associated policies but reproductive rights and the more recent, rapid advance of LGBTQ rights, including marriage equality.

The draft executive order that I had in hand seemed to capture every possible permutation of the ever-­expanding list of wrongs that religious right ideologues claimed, over several decades, had befallen Christian America. Even though it bore no indication of its author or authors, I knew it wasn t the work of a lone zealot taking the pulse of a brand-­new administration, spitballing in the hope of getting Trump s attention. Having monitored the methods of Christian right advocacy over the course of the preceding decade, I was well acquainted with the warnings of pastors, pundits, and politicians ­in legislative hearings, Supreme Court arguments, political rallies, and sermons ­to their foot soldiers that the government was poised to crush their religious liberty by making pharmacists fill prescriptions for emergency contraception, by forcing Christian adoption agencies to place children with same-­sex couples, or by compelling Catholic social service providers to refer clients who had been sexually assaulted for reproductive health care.

The draft executive order would allow a Christian adoption agency to refuse to place ch

Langtext

In terrifying detail, Unholy illustrates how a vast network of white Christian nationalists plotted the authoritarian takeover of the American democratic system. There is no more timely book than this one. Janet Reitman, author of Inside Scientology

Why did so many evangelicals turn out to vote for Donald Trump, a serial philanderer with questionable conservative credentials who seems to defy Christian values with his every utterance? To a reporter like Sarah Posner, who has been covering the religious right for decades, the answer turns out to be far more intuitive than one might think.

In this taut inquiry, Posner digs deep into the radical history of the religious right to reveal how issues of race and xenophobia have always been at the movement s core, and how religion often cloaked anxieties about perceived threats to a white, Christian America. Fueled by an antidemocratic impulse, and united by this narrative of reverse victimization, the religious right and the alt-right support a common agenda and are actively using the erosion of democratic norms to roll back civil rights advances, stock the judiciary with hard-right judges, defang and deregulate federal agencies, and undermine the credibility of the free press. Increasingly, this formidable bloc is also forging ties with European far right groups, giving momentum to a truly global movement.

Revelatory and engrossing, Unholy offers a deeper understanding of the ideological underpinnings and forces influencing the course of Republican politics. This is a book that must be read by anyone who cares about the future of American democracy.

Über den AutorIn

Sarah Posner is a reporting fellow with Type Investigations. Her investigative reporting has appeared in Rolling Stone, VICE, The Nation, Mother Jones, The New Republic, HuffPost, and Talking Points Memo. Her coverage and analysis of politics and religion has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The American Prospect, Politico, and many other outlets. She graduated from Wesleyan University and has a law degree from the University of Virginia. Her story "How Trump Took Hate Groups Mainstream," published before the 2016 election, won a Sidney Hillman Foundation Award.