May Gift Links
Offering up a selection of Sunday reads
Hello faithful readers,
I want to share a few stories and articles I’ve encountered the past few weeks that I’ve found particularly relevant to the themes we explore in this newsletter. I always feel like there’s more to read, which is different from the pressure to keep up with the pace of events, more like, “If I have to live through an authoritarian takeover of our democracy, at least there is a lot of smart journalism and analysis to read and keep me sharp.” The stories below are as important to me for their moral clarity as for the quality of their ideas and writing.
First though, I’d like to share again last week’s post from Haley Young:
Haley’s essay was, for me, a necessary reminder that reading The Atlantic and following the news will only help so much, we also need to get out into the world and experience our country. A few days ago I saw my favorite band, Punch Brothers, play in a concert hall in Annapolis, Maryland that had been converted from a high school auditorium. They weren’t slumming it, exactly, but they embarked on this relatively short tour to road-test new material, and I guess they aren’t in a choosy mood. I’m just saying, they’ve literally made it to Carnegie Hall. It was my first time seeing them since fiddler Brittany Haas replaced founding member Gabe Witcher. They were transcendent, and I am so grateful I was there. I encourage all of us to seek out opportunities to witness creativity, to share a room with artists or chefs or storytellers or whoever it is that makes the things we love, and to do our own creating.
Here is a 14-year-old video of Punch Brothers performing the song they opened with on Thursday, “This is the Song”. For me it really meets the moment. Some lyrics: “Until our heartbeats drown out the clock ticking–and the song becomes ‘I love you and always will’–good luck. These are tough times, but we’ll get by.”
Now, consider reading one or a few of the stories below if you are looking for context or insight about this moment, 4 months into what will be our 4-year-long effort to save America from our current administration. Like last month, these are all free or gift links, so you won’t encounter a paywall even if you don’t subscribe.
George Saunders: Shame on the White House
Great American writer and modern-day transcendentalist George Saunders published a blistering brushback pitch this week in the opinion section of the New York Times on the firing of librarian of Congress Dr. Carla Hayden:
The White House also stated, with an inaccuracy that would be comic if it weren’t so sickening, that Dr. Hayden put “inappropriate books in the library for children.” The librarian of Congress doesn’t put books into the library. And presumably, the American people benefit from having access to the widest possible collection of books. Even those American people who are children, who, after all, have parents to decide what is inappropriate.
In the real world, the world of cause and effect, when we tear down the best among us and provide bogus reasons for why we did it, reality will eventually come for us. To behave honorably requires that we be in contact with the truth, to be able to supply honest answers to simple questions.
…When a ship is sinking, there’s value in knowing how fast and calling it out. When a country is self-sabotaging, ditto. So let me just say it: Shame on the White House. Shame on those who should be stopping this slide into autocracy and aren’t. (I’m looking at you, John Thune, Mike Johnson and Marco Rubio.) Shame on all of us if we let these ignorant purveyors of cruelty reduce this beautiful thing we’ve built over these hundreds of years to a hollow, braying, anti-version of itself.
Who Counts as Christian?
Elizabeth Breunig writes in The Atlantic about a new commission established by Donald Trump dedicated to “eradicating anti-Christian bias”. There is a lot in here about the Christian right’s push to impose their beliefs on public life and governance. What really struck me was how Bruenig captures the ramifications of appointing a governmental body with the power to determine what does and doesn’t qualify as Christian and anti-Christian, because the administration is already doing this to American Jews even as he insists it is on our behalf:
“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…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.”
Trump Is No Longer the Most Important American
NYT columnist David French explores the consequences of the election of Pope Leo XIV for America and American Christianity, and his inhospitable reception by the Christian right. Despite French being an evangelical from the rural south who did not know any Catholics until he got to law school, he makes it clear in his column that he is a deep and well-studied admirer of Catholicism:
We belong to churches that measure their existence in months or years, not centuries or millenniums. Our oldest denominations have existed for only the tiniest fraction of time compared with the Catholic Church.
That lack of perspective ends up exaggerating the importance of politics. It narrows our frame of reference and elevates the temporal over the eternal. It leads to absurd declarations, such as Trump’s vow this Easter to make America “more religious than it has ever been before.”
And when you believe the success of your religion depends on the success of any politician, it’s only a matter of time before politics becomes your religion. That means that too many Christians will evaluate even the pope through a partisan political lens.
…In the case of Leo, the church’s witness to the world also becomes part of America’s witness to the world. Millions of Americans have been lamenting that the most prominent American in the world is a person who embodies cruelty and spite.
Many of us (and certainly many dissenting evangelicals) are also lamenting that Trump owes his victory to the evangelical church more than to any other group in American life. He won the votes of white evangelicals by a 65-point margin. He lost the rest of the electorate by 18 points. Trump’s election, in other words, isn’t just an expression of American political will; it’s also an expression of American Christian will.
But American Christianity does not speak with one voice. It contains multitudes. And so does Leo…Oh, and he’s a White Sox fan, so he has a heart for hopeless causes.
Thanks for reading, friends, and take care.
Adam Zemel is the founder and editor of this newsletter, Opposite of Nihilism. He has an MFA in fiction from UCRiverside Palm Desert and works in the marketing department of Hebrew College in Newton, MA. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Daily Beast, and elsewhere.
Actionable:
Forward this newsletter! Help grow our audience and build a community for which contributors are excited to write.
Submit to be published, or encourage a writer you know to do the same. Read our submission guidelines here.