Seeing beyond the fundie baby voice to the fear-mongering Christian nationalism
Reflections and prayers inspired by the Republican SOTU rebuttal
Last Thursday evening, I watched part of President Biden’s State of the Union Address. I did not watch Alabama Senator Katie Britt’s Republican rebuttal.
But then. Over the weekend, both my parents and the Internet were talking about Senator Britt’s rebuttal, and they were all making it sound awfully morbidly fascinating. (The words “deeply weird" were used multiple times.)
So of course I had to watch it.
I watched the whole thing a few days ago—and if you have a spare seventeen minutes, I would recommend doing the same. It feels like a good thing to be aware of. (Here’s a link.)
I haven’t done anything close to a deep dive into media or social media responses to Senator Britt’s speech, but the memes and news articles (and SNL cold open, of course) that I’ve happened to come across seem to focus on a few things: The bad acting. The weird anti-feminist vibe of the whole kitchen deal. The false claims.
And, of course, the “fundie baby voice.” (I appreciate this article, which goes into the insidiousness of the fundie baby voice phenomenon while also recognizing that women’s voices are criticized no matter what, and perhaps we ought to “[direct] ire toward those in power” rather than “tearing down everyday women for the way they were trained to speak.”)
I think all these things are worth talking about.
At the same time, I find myself wanting to talk about the content, the actual words Senator Britt said.
In particular, the xenophobia of it. The Christian nationalism of it. The refusal to entertain the idea that we might be all better off thinking of ourselves as an interconnected global community rather than America First.
Dr. King said it so beautifully in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail:
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
In the context of this particular letter, Dr. King was referring to different states and communities in the US. But as time went on, he became more globally-minded.
This is often part of the journey, for those who care about justice and want all humans to flourish. Our vision becomes broader over time. More inclusive. More global.
When we weaponize white US women’s expressions of fear and anxiety for ourselves and our families against immigrants and people of color, as we saw in Senator Britt’s speech, we reenact one of the key forms racist oppression has always taken.
Ruby Hamad reflects in this way:
“The crimes of white supremacy have not gone unrecorded. They are etched into the bodies of brown and black people the world over. Our scars, past and present, physical and emotional, bear witness to the violence white men and women insisted they were not inflicting. White society marked the bodies of women of color as a receptacle for its sins so that it may claim innocence for itself, and, as the chosen symbol of the innocent perfection of whiteness, the white damsel with her tears of distress functions as both denial of and absolution for this violence” (White Tears / Brown Scars, 101).
The “chosen symbol of the innocent perfection of whiteness,” indeed. Senator Britt’s speech was all about the deployment of white womanhood as an excuse to promote violent border control and anti-immigrant policies.
Which should sound bonkers to anyone who believes in a God whose love knows no human-made borders, and who says about a million times throughout the Bible that welcoming the foreigner and recognizing the immigrant as our neighbor, worthy of justice and flourishing, is one of the most important things people of faith can do. But this is where we’re at.
Y’all may or may know this, but I’m over on Instagram sharing prayers pretty often, via @postevangelicalprayers. I’d like to share two recent prayers with you—ones I wrote as I was reflecting on all these things.
This is the first:
And this is the second:
In a world where I’m guessing most of us (that is, people who’ve found their way here for reasons other than trolling) already have a visceral negative reaction to fear-mongering xenophobic speech—recognizing the deep harm it currently does and the further harm it could do—I don’t imagine any of this is new to you.
But I hope it feels encouraging or healing in some way, to read it here. I hope it feels like a blessing, like a balm.
Thoughts, things to add, or other reflections on Senator Britt’s speech? I’d love to hear.
If you need more…
There’s a fun Nice Churchy Patriarchy Q&A and book excerpt up this week at Christians for Social Action. This is for you if the words “soft complementarianism” make your blood boil…or if they mean nothing at all to you…or anything in-between.
My most recent piece for Feminism & Religion reflects on bell hooks as a theologian. Because why do theologians have to be old white dudes with PhDs from Christian schools?