Listening to the Daily. Stacey Abrams was the child of 2 #UMC pastors. She grew the movement by following old church growth books.
She identified what people cared about and clearly stated three core beliefs that people could organize behind.
She built the movement in the same way that you would build a small community church. She learned from her mom, who combined three churches and was growing her church in Mississippi. “Meet people where they are, not where you want them to be.”
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Reading NYT opinions bemoaning the fact that Dems are moving left. They say that the Dems are de-centering the majority--white voters who have health insurance & can pay for college education. Writers haven't looked at the demographics in a while. They're no longer the majority.
I suppose when you're surrounded by a select group, it's easy to imagine that everyone is like you... but candidates, like Warren and Castro, have studied the landscape. They understand the shift that the US has been going through.
Younger generations know what it's like to graduate with college debt in order to work full-time at their gig-economy, patch work jobs, with no insurance, no health care, and no retirement benefits.
The overwhelming and persistent loyalty that evangelicals give to Trump reveals so much about who they are.
Authoritarianism is more important than democracy. They are wired to expect or to demand submission. They have a very strict gender hierarchy that they practice at home and wish to practice in the rest of society.
Nationalism is much more important than welcoming the stranger and providing sanctuary. They imagine that the US is the promised land for europeans and they experience POCs entering the country as invaders.
I spoke at a UMC conference once, years ago. Participants had read my book and asked me to speak about LGBTQ inclusion. I did. I got verbally attacked, for (it felt like) an hour. It was the worst experience I've ever had leading a conference, and I've led hundreds....
While on stage, I looked at the organizers & table of people who had asked me to speak about LGBTQ rights and asked, "Are you going to do anything about this? Are you going to just let them attack like this? Is anyone my side here?" They looked at me like they had never seen me.
Like they hadn't asked me to speak about it. The anger against me was so intense, I thought there was going to be physical violence.
Why isn’t the religious left as powerful as the religious right in US Christian traditions? Looking at straight-up demographics, we should be a strong force… pewforum.org/religious-land…
(I hate the term "mainline," but I’m going to use it here, because of the demographic data…)
Evangelicals make up 25% of our population. Mainline Protestants and Black Protestants make up 21%. Catholics are 21% and identify more with Democrats.
Painting with a (very) broad brush, while Evangelicals are 25% of our population, religious movements that lean left are 42%. So why do we hear so much about evangelicalism & so little about progressive religious movements?
Reading Bouwen Theory. With our news cycle, it seems important to look at our anxiety & emotional systems. There are 2 kinds of anxiety: acute & chronic. Acute is in response to (an) event(s). Chronic is when anxiety continues & becomes a part of our emotional background.
So when people say they don't want to normalize the Trump administration's behavior, part of what they're saying is that they don't want the AA to become CA. AA has the reactions many of us are aware of... fight, flight, freeze, and caretake.
When our body carries around CA, it causes cellular damage. We have all sorts of hormonal secretions that affect our interactions, and our body is constantly working to heal. The side effects can be susceptibility to infection, ulcers, and (maybe) aging effects on brain.