Today's Shorts: Christian Nationalism, VanLife Gone Wrong & Halloween Costumes
MAGA Mike keeps making news ... homeless on BLM land ... and what's up with all of the sexy nuns?
Is Speaker Mike Johnson a White Christian Nationalist?
For someone who was unknown outside of the Bible Belt a month ago, newly elected Speaker of the US House of Representatives Mike Johnson has been all over the news since he accepted the speaker’s gavel on October 25, 2023.
Some of the more shocking stories about Johnson focus on his flagrant disregard for separation of church and state.
Johnson describes himself as a “Bible-believing Christian.” If people want to learn his opinion on any topic, Johnson said, “Go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it — that’s my worldview.”
I served in the Arizona Legislature with many “Bible-believing Christians” who routinely voted against the teachings of Jesus and his message of universal love and compassion for everyone. Their version of the Bible had an exceptions list, as does Johnson’s. New York Times opinion columnist Charles M. Blow, who grew up in Johnson’s Congressional district, warns us not to be fooled by his Southern charm. Johnson is Trump in a “far more congenial and urbane package”, and he’s a pastor in the American Baptist Church.
“He [Johnson] is from a part of the country where your nemesis will smile at you and promise to pray for you, where people will quickly submit that they ‘love the sinner but hate the sin,’ where one hand can hold a Bible while the other holds a shackle. He is from a place where people use religion to brand their hatred as love so that they act on it cheerfully and without guilt.” [Emphasis added.]
— Charles M. Blow, I Grew Up in Mike Johnson’ District, Where Kindness Can Mask Cruelty, New York Times, Nov. 1, 2023
Another NYT opinion columnist goes a step further.
“Mike Johnson is the first person to become speaker of the House who can be fairly described as a Christian nationalist, a major development in American history in and of itself. Equally important, however, his ascension reflects the strength of white evangelical voters’ influence in the House Republican caucus, voters who are determined to use the power of the government to roll back civil rights, women’s rights and sexual revolutions.”
— Thomas B. Edsall, ‘The Embodiment of White Christian Nationalism in a Tailored Suit’, New York Times, Nov. 1, 2023
Edsall’s article has a lot of data on religious affiliation by party over time. Between the 1970s and the 2010s, the percentage of “mainline Protestants,” who were Republicans (like my parents), fell from 46 percent to 17 percent. Evangelical Protestant enrollment in the Republican Party grew from 24 percent to 38 percent, and Catholic enrollment grew from 19 percent to 25 percent.
According to Edsall, Robert Jones, of the Public Religion Research Institute, described Johnson in an email as “the embodiment of white Christian nationalism in a tailored suit” and a “near textbook example of white Christian nationalism — the belief that God intended America to be a new promised land for European Christians.”
What is Christian nationalism?
Christian nationalism is a “belief that the American nation is defined by Christianity, and that the government should take active steps to keep it that way. Popularly, Christian nationalists assert that America is and must remain a ‘Christian nation’ — not merely as an observation about American history, but as a prescriptive program for what America must continue to be in the future.”
— Christianity Today, What Is Christian Nationalism?
According to Jones, the Republican Party is now “68 percent white and Christian in a country that is 42 percent white and Christian.” Edsall’s numbers above show a 63 percent anti-abortion block if you add the Evangelical Protestants and the Catholics in the Republican Party. Nationwide most Americans — including most Republicans — believe abortion should be legal. Johnson and his followers want a nationwide ban on abortion.
How did this happen? Right-wing candidates beat more moderate Republicans in the primaries. We saw it in Arizona. Moderate Republicans like Reps. Heather Carter, Drew John, Joanne Osborne, and Jay Lawrence lost to candidates who were further to the right. Other moderates like Senator Kate Brophy-McGee, former Senate President and stand-in Rep. Steve Pierce and Reps. Doug Coleman and Noel Campbell chose not to run again, while others like Reps. Ethan Orr, Chris Ackerley and Todd Clodfelter were beat by Democrats.
Edsall point us to an October 29, 2023 Substack piece: Hiding in Plain Sight: The Sources of MAGA Madness and Congressional Kakistocracy, by Michael Podhorzer, former political director for the AFL-CIO. He writes about the “decimation of moderate and centrist members of the House” since 2010. In my recent Substack, I was less elegant when I wrote, “Congress has been a hot mess since the Tea Party Revolution election of 2010.”
Podhorzer crunched a lot of electoral data and found that “from 2010 through 2022, a historically high number of House Republicans were defeated in primaries, with the vast majority of successful challenges happening in the most evangelical districts.”
When he looked at House districts by the percentage of voters who are white evangelicals, he found that “the top quintile is represented by 81 Republicans and 6 Democrats and the second quintile by 68 Republicans and 19 Democrats. The bottom three quintiles are represented by 188 Democrats and 73 Republicans.”
Thanks to gerrymandering, these are safe seats. Ugh. I don’t want to live in a theocracy. How about you?
There’s a lot more information in both Edsall’s article and Podhorzer’s article. I highly recommend reading them.
It’s scary stuff for someone like me who believes in the separation of church and state. I voted values in the Legislature and that often meant voted against “Bible-believing Christians,” who supported tax breaks for the rich, public funds for private religious schools and mandatory prison sentences.
Many times, I asked the other Legislators, “What would Jesus do?” Jesus would END POVERTY, guarantee the right to housing, food and healthcare, and fully fund social safety net programs and public education. Is Johnson reading and acting on that part of the Bible? I think not, if he’s like his compatriots in the Arizona Legislature.
We must stay vigilant. We could be entering dark times for anyone who’s not a cis gender white man.
#VanLife Gone Wrong
In the course of shopping for a camper van and daydreaming about traveling in my retirement, I tumbled down the “nomad lifestyle” rabbit hole on YouTube last spring.
YouTube’s algorithm took me to Bob Wells’ CheapRVliving channel. From there, I was introduced to dozens of other YouTubers, who were “living off the grid” in their vehicles and hawking online purchases from Amazon, Target or Walmart to make money.
Many of Wells’ videos are shot in Quartzite, Arizona, a wintertime Mecca for VanLifers, which was featured in the 2020 movie Nomadland. Quartzite is surrounded by federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land.
Since I was already fascinated by the van life stories, this AZ Central article: A Camping Area in Pinal County Will Face New Rules. What about the People Living There? about changes in BLM usage caught my eye.
First of all, the AZ Central article focuses on BLM land outside of Apache Junction, east of Phoenix in Pinal County, and Quartzite is way west of Phoenix in LaPaz County, but the stories are the same. On YouTube, the vanlifers are portrayed as rugged individualists, who because of financial hardship due to divorce, job loss or mounting medical bills, have chosen to stop paying rent or a mortgage and live in their vehicles. Wells boasts of living in a vehicle and “pooping in a bucket” for 22 years. In just nine days, almost 300,000 people have watched his new video on the five things you need for the nomad lifestyle.
In my van life Substack articles back in June: Are Road-Tripping Women VanLifers the Second Wave of #MeToo?, I wondered if Wells and others were putting a rosy self-reliance veneer on living in a vehicle, with no “sticks and bricks” location to return to when long-term camping loses its appeal. These people are technically homeless and trying to live on as little as $500 a month, according to their videos.
AZ Central reporters interviewed a few people who thought that living in their vehicles or campers would be a temporary situation until they got back on their feet financially and could afford a home again. Unfortunately for the people living on vacant BLM land outside of Apache Junction, the BLM has plans to improve that land and make it into a 1100 acre recreation area, which means they all have to move ...
But where do they go now?
Halloween Costume Observations
One characteristic that gives Tucson its endearing quirkiness is our festal culture — community altars, processions, performance art, shrines, big puppets, fire-spinning, stilt-walking, face-painting, murals, costumes, rituals …
#YoThisIsTucson.
Having grown up in a culture that valued simplicity and being plain, not “fancy”, I wholeheartedly embrace festal culture of Tucson. Who doesn’t like playing dress-up, pretending to be someone or something else for a while, and being in community with friends at the same time?
If you follow my non-political social media, you know that I’m a crafty person with a continuous stream of sewing, handicraft, home décor and van life projects. This time of year, my house is usually costume central. Making costumes is a creative challenge and a labor of love when I make or fix something for others. My giant Halloween bin — AKA Nana’s dress-up bin for grown-ups — is brimming with previous costumes and costume pieces (capes, veils, hats, wigs, masks, spiders, skulls, skirts, graduation gowns, feather boas, lace, a toga, a bride dress, a red petticoat, a hoop skirt … and more).
Over the years, I have enjoyed scouting for fabric and costume components at local stores, making costumes for and participating in many community events that embrace festal culture. The Mermaid Walk1, the Pride Parade on 4th Ave., the Halloween promenades, the Palo Verde Neighborhood July 4 Parade, and the All Souls Procession are a few local events that encourage sartorial creativity and a bit of fantasy and help make Tucson unique.
Are homemade costumes being replaced by pricy fast fashions
from Spirit Halloween? Keep it quirky, Tucson.
There are lots of opportunities to wear costumes. With the closing of SAS Fabrics and some vintage stores in recent years and with no home economics training in schools, are Tucsonans still making costumes?
In its heyday, on a trip to the Midtown SAS before any holiday — but particularly before Halloween or Christmas — you would find a store packed with people buying an amazing array of fabric, from fake fur to fine drapery fabric to sequined netting, suitable for belly dancer or a bride. SAS had everything — ribbon, elastic, buttons, lace, all sorts of embellishments — in an incredible assortment. The clerks always asked what you were making. The closing of that store put a big dent in festal culture in Tucson.2
Spirit Halloween: Fast Fashion + Product Placement
Today is November 3, 2023 — smack dab in between Halloween and the All Souls Procession on Sunday, November 5. The only costume I made this year was my tarot reader’s costume (above). This is the third year in a row that I have accompanied grandchildren to a Spirit Halloween store. I must admit that the Spirit Halloween stores are full of eye candy for people who follow design and fashion (however kitschy) and who are into dressing up for the spooky holidays — or whenever. Unfortunately, the Spirit Halloween stores also kind of a racket.
In case you’ve never been in a Spirit Halloween store, they are like costume super-stores. In the past, a large section of the entrance was taken up with an over-the-top spooky display, and there was a large section in the back with costume parts (ie, hats, elaborate masks, gloves, steam punk gear, capes, fake weapons, etc.) that could be put together to make a costume. This year, the Midtown store was nearly all costumes — no big spooky display and about 25 percent of the costume parts they had in previous years. This year there was not a lot of choice for people who didn’t want to spend $30-80 on a full costume.
Big box stores and party stores sell costumes, but they don’t compete with the volume and variety Spirit Halloween has. Their stores are just packed with pricy costumes for all ages, much of it branded. They’re not just vampire costumes; they’re Dark Shadows vampire costumes. They’re not brightly colored stuffed creatures; they’re Teletubbies. That’s not just any panda; it’s Kung Fu Panda. She’s not just any stereotypical doll; she’s Barbie. She’s not just any princess; she’s any one of 20 or so Disney princesses. You get the idea. The costumes are product placement.
Friends of mine dressed up as Bluey and her family. They looked adorable as the blue/red heeler family from the popular children’s cartoon series. Don’t get me wrong, I love Bluey. All of the branded costumes and other merch are all free advertising and product placement. When you share the photos of branded products on social media, that’s golden. By buying a branded costume, you paid the corporations to advertise their products to your friends.
Spirit Halloween is part of Spencer Spirit Holdings which also includes Spencer’s Gifts at malls. Spirit Halloween opened 1506 stores in 2023, according to CNBC, up 50 stores from 2022 and more than doubling the number of stores since 2009. Although the storefronts are open for just a few weeks each year, Spirit Halloween has an online presence year round and personnel spend much of the year seeking short-term leases and securing storefronts for the next season.
Halloween Costume Observations in the Wild
On Halloween, my daughter and I put on our costumes and did the Halloween promenade around downtown and on 4th Avenue. It’s always fun to see the variety of costumes and catch some live music and dancing. Along with hundreds of other costumed people, we spent most of the evening at Hotel Congress going back and forth between the outdoor patio and the indoor club. Outside, two large, bearded, long-haired men in pastel baby doll dresses, bloomers and knee-socks spun hip-hop and other dance tunes. Inside, DJ Shreck played similar music.3
We definitely saw some costume trends:
Lots of Barbies and Some Kens. There were ~15 Barbies and ~5 Kens at Congress. As in the movie, the Barbies came in all shapes, sizes and colors. At one point, at least 10 Barbies were all on the stage dancing to the music spun by bearded baby doll DJs. What fun! (I hope someone got that picture!)
Lots of Nuns. There may have been 10 nuns … mostly sexy nuns. They were hanging around with the crowd below, but the nuns obviously outnumbered the other religious characters.
Jesus, a Bishop, a Monk, the Devil and Several Good and Bad Angels. These days, there’s a lot of talk in the media and in Congress about religion and morality. Is the over-representation of religiously themed costumes a reaction to this religiosity?
Sophisticates. There was a cadre of young women dressed like Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. There was also a very stylish Cruella Deville (101 Dalmatians) with awesome black and white hair. Oppenheimer was also wandering around looking well-dressed, aloof and extremely sophisticated.
Super Heroes. There was an entire groups of friends who came as super heroes or villains: Batman, Robin, Spiderman, Cat Woman, Joker, and Riddler plus other nonaffiliated Jokers and heroes.
Couples Dressed as Military, Police, Pirates, Storybook Characters and Statues. Couples costumes can be fun. The best military couple was Top Gun and the flight attendant. He really looked like a young Tom Cruise. The bronzed 19th century statue couple looked as if they belonged in New Orleans.
Capes Were Popular. In part, the popularity of capes was related to the popularity of low-cut sexy maiden costumes. Although we weren’t dressed as sexy maidens, my daughter and I both wore capes on Halloween. They were perfect for the chilly night air and fun to dance in. Let’s bring back capes!
Not Many Animals, Ghouls or Homemade Costumes. There were a couple of black and white cows and a donkey but not many animals or really grotesque costumes.
Lots of Branded Costumes! Not Many Homemade Costumes. I’d estimate less than 40 percent of the costumes downtown on Halloween were homemade. There were definitely a lot of costumes that were related to movies or video games, as evidenced by my list. This is sad, in a way. Instead of scouting out fabrics and costume parts at SAS, people are ordering tailored costumes online or going to the Spirit Halloween store. (Are there places to rent costumes in town since Lown’s closed?)
Check out this SNL video about product placement in Halloween costumes. As consumers, we should think about branding and our participation in advertising everything from Halloween costumes to movies and countless other consumer products.
The Mermaid Walk was a promenade of mermaids down the sidewalks of 4th Ave. to celebrate the coming of the monsoons. One year, it poured during the Mermaid Walk. It hasn’t happened since COVID, but I think it should be revived.
The SAS Fabrics stores in Phoenix are amazing, but who wants to go to Phoenix?
Hotel Congress, two hip-hop stages and no live band?
Here’s one of the best resources for info on Christian nationalism ... ChristiansAgainstChristianNationalism.org
Started in 2019 by BJC which has been advocating for church/state separation since the 1940’s.