"After Trump" by Don Heinz

I just read the book, After Trump: Achieving a New Social Gospel, penned by my colleague and friend, Don Heinz. 

Here are few comments adapted from my endorsement on Amazon.

Packed with insight and perfectly timed, Heinz imagines a world “after Trump” in which Christians formulate—and more importantly, embody—a new social gospel for the 21st century. This book will certainly appeal to those who yearn for a movement “that would redeem American Christianity in the time after Trump.”

How can this happen? Heinz argues that, by taking seriously God’s liberating love—the love that freed the Israelite captives and took them out of Egypt, the love that is incarnate in Jesus and his ministry of transformation, a new movement can find its inspiration.

As a student of American religion—particularly where it’s headed with the increase of the not-religiously-affiliating, or the "Nones"—I appreciate how Heinz roots these reflections in American soil. A few favorite examples: his insights about Robert Bellah’s “civil religion” and Jonathan Winthrop’s “city set on a hill,” as well Charles Taylor’s Secular Age (and why we can’t take recourse in a simple slogan of “science vs. religion”).

All in all, Heinz does not argue for a new “Christian” political party, but a new movement of the social gospel, learning from, but not restricted to, Walter Rauschenbusch et al.’s famous early 20th century formulation.

In sum, as Heinz puts it, this book is “an invitation and a manifesto.”

Will this movement happen? 

It’s now time to see, but one can pray for a more just, socially engaged, and faithful nation. And I suppose Heinz might add that it depends on those of us who call ourselves followers of Christ to decide what we will do. After Trump. 

What Does Our President-Elect Think About Science?

As a member of the faculty, I wrote this piece for our comparative religion and humanities department at Cal State Chico, and it seemed worth posting here too.

September 2017 post-script to this article, which I'll post here and is thus more of a "prescript" than a "postscript." It appears that the positive words toward science that Trump presented are not panning out. Read this article for a few examples.

This fall, ScientificAmerican posed Twenty Questions to the four presidential candidates on their scientific knowledge. And now that the election is decided, these answers either represent opportunities missed or promises to be fulfilled.

Naturally, the answers fell into some predictable patterns: Jill Stein leaned toward enthusiasm about science, but concerns about environmental issues. Gary Johnson celebrated science and believed the free market has the best means for directing the future of science. This was mirrored in many ways by Donald Trump, although he sometimes offered much shorter answers that stuck to key emphases of his campaign. Hillary Clinton presented the most lengthy responses and sought to counterpoise government regulation and investment alongside private entrepreneurship. (Since I’m also interested in religion and science, it’s worth noting that, of the four, Clinton is the most articulate about, and committed to, her faith—in this case, Methodist.)

      

With twenty issues and fifty pages of text, it’s only possible to highlight a couple of issues and focus on Trump as President-elect with the other three, and particularly Clinton, as foils. (Incidentally, there were some unusual topics included in “questions about science” such as opioids and immigration. This was a wide-ranging set of issues!) Concerned that government investment into scientific research is only about 1% of the national budget, Trump talked about the need for scientific innovation without mentioning investment of public funds, while Clinton asserted that funding science would be a high priority for her administration. Johnson leaned toward removing restrictions for private enterprise, while Stein believed that global climate change is our country’s biggest scientific concern. Notably—though climate change has support by the vast majority of scientists—only U. S. Republicans, out of every major party in the developed world, believe it is contested scientifically. Trump could only speak of “climate change” in quotation marks and moved quickly, when asked about it, to discuss clean water. Finally, I found all candidates’ comments on “Scientific Integrity” supportive of science and scientists. Trump made a clear declaration, 

“Science is science and facts are facts.  My administration will ensure that there will be total transparency and accountability without political bias.” 

(I heard scientists nodding in agreement in the background with a hope those words come true in his administration.) Clinton comments were surprisingly similar here: “I am deeply concerned by the recent increase in partisan political efforts to interfere in science.”

      

It seems to me that, in order to move forward, we need a robust commitment to scientific advancement while respecting our deeply religious country. Naturally, I can only offer this provisional report, but I will close with the hope that a commitment to the best of religion and science will be in our country’s future.