“There is a force of authoritarianism rising,” Tennessee state Rep. Justin Jones told participants in a conference on democracy in Washington, D.C., Feb. 27. Jones spoke to the “Together for Democracy” conference Tuesday evening in the nation’s capital after flying…
Why it’s so hard to roll back the most severe abortion bans
Some Republican legislators who have pushed hardline bans on abortion now believe they went too far, but unraveling laws already passed is harder than passing them in the first place. One such legislator is Tennessee state Sen. Richard Briggs. In…
Dear Tennessee and Montana: Stifling dissent is un-American, unpatriotic and anti-democracy
There’s a growing trend among American conservatives to “cancel” dissent. In Tennessee, three lawmakers were censured and two were expelled from the Legislature for participating in a rally about gun control. Now in Montana, Rep. Zooey Zephyr has been expelled…
Tennessee Legislature passes another bill promoting atheism
I graduated high school in East Tennessee in 1984. My senior thesis was about George Orwell’s haunting apocalyptic novel 1984. In the 1940s, Orwell projected a future where an oppressive empire exercised authoritarian control presided over by an entity known…
Dear Tennessee legislators: You are driving people away from faith
Dear Tennessee representatives who voted to expel two of the Tennessee Three: I know most of you profess Christianity. I hope you and yours had a joyous Easter. I wish our state could have. Alas, the venomous viper of power…
Expelling dissent: America from Roger Williams to the ‘Tennessee Three’
On March 29 in the year of our Lord(?) 2023, hundreds of young people, many of junior and senior high school age, descended on the Tennessee state house in Nashville to demand government action to reduce the threat of school…
Tennessee legislators turn back the clock to Jim Crow time
The recent actions of the Tennessee Legislature to expel two Black Democratic representatives scream for answers. Why would members of the Republican Party, who have spent the past seven years swearing on a stack of Bibles, sometimes held upside down,…
Hypocrisy
When we boil down all the assorted examples of how evangelicals have sold themselves to Donald Trump for 30 pieces of silver, one word summarizes it all: Hypocrisy. Call it irony. Call it opportunism. Call it greed. Call it a…
Is ‘In God We Trust’ an assertion of Christian nationalism or of American history in public schools?
As schoolchildren head back to class in Texas this week, many of them will be greeted by the sight of the American and Texas flags displayed along with the text of the National Motto: “In God We Trust.” That’s because…