The Bible in American Law and Politics. John R. Vile
published on March 11, 2019, shows Trump signing a Bible while one woman comments that he is using the same pen that he used to sign hush money payments to porn stars. Pat Bagley has another cartoon in which Rudolph Giuliani warns, “It’s a trap,” as Trump is asked to swear (presumably as part of the Mueller investigation) on the Bible.
There were a number of cartoons that pictured Barack Obama standing by Abraham Lincoln as Obama took the oath on Lincoln’s Bible. Another by Yaakov Kirschen, which seems equally applicable to Trump, and perhaps to presidents in general, has Obama telling the chief justice as he takes his oath that the Bible is specifically about him.
Some highlight the practice of using proof texting to justify immigration or other policies. A number cite former attorney general Jeff Sessions’s attempt to use the Bible to justify separating families at the border, with some focusing specifically on Jesus’s being taken by government officials from his manger.
A cartoon by Pat Bagley from June 4, 2015, indicates that Bible marriage often involved plural marriages or concubines. Another, also by Bagley, observes that Jesus spoke as often about the sin of homosexuality as he did about homosexuality, namely, not at all.
Some cartoons reference foreign policy. A cartoon by Dario Castillejos labeled “Israel Proportional Response” shows an Israeli Goliath swinging a huge slingshot to overwhelm a small Palestinian.
A number of cartoons observe what industrialization and pollution have done to the environment.
A study of sixty-five thousand syndicated cartoons that appeared in the Los Angeles Times from mid-1979 through mid-1987 found that 7.1 percent of religious cartoons made “humorous use of Biblical stories, characters and 90sayings” (Lindsey and Heeren 1992, 75). The authors of the study noted, “The most common and repeatedly used Biblical narratives that become objects for cartoonists’ pens are the accounts of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, Noah and the flood, and Moses in his role as recipient of the Ten Commandments. In addition to these contexts a variety of other less frequently used stories include Jonah, David and Goliath, the Last Supper and the Sermon on the Mount” (75). The authors observed that “the Bible provides a background of knowledge, a resource, against which cartoonists can communicate their humor to readers” (75). They further observed that “placing moderns in Biblical situations facilitates commentary on current events, as well as on our distinctly modern consciousness” (75).
In 2014, Robert M. Price published The Politically Correct Bible, with a cover picturing Jesus as an African American with women, a Native American Indian Chief, a Muslim woman, and others celebrating the Last Supper.
See also Obama, Barack; Sessions, Jeff; Ten Commandments; Trump, Donald
For Reference and Further Reading
Lindsey, Donald B ., and John Heeren. 1992. “Where the Sacred Meets the Profane: Religion in the Comic Pages.” Review of Religious Research 34 (September): 63–77.
PoliticalCartoons.com. https://politicalcartoons.com/?s=bible. Accessed May 24, 2019.
Price, Robert M. 2014. The Politically Correct Bible. eBookIt.com.
Chavez, Cesar
Cesar Chavez (1927–1993) is the best-known Hispanic American activist and was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Born in Yuma, Arizona, to a middle-class family that fell on hard times, Chavez spent most of his teen years as a migrant laborer where he was deeply affected by “Abulita Theology,” that is, teachings of the Catholic Church that his grandmother, Mama Tella, who had been raised in a convent where she learned theology, had passed down to him (Romero 2017, 27). After serving in the military, Chavez returned to California, where he became a community organizer and was instructed in Catholic social thought by a white Catholic clergyman, Father Donald McDonnell.
In 1962, Chavez began organizing farm workers, in time leading a successful five-year strike against grape growers and helping to organize the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee. Chavez’s faith played a major role. Chavez drew from Roman Catholic social teachings, including nonviolence and God’s concern for the poor and lowly; incorporated elements of Catholic ritual into his protests; and drew from Scriptures for inspiration.
Chavez patterned some of his protests around the “peregrinacion,” or penitential march, which was led by a Catholic priest, begun with prayer, accompanied by a banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe, and concluded with the celebration of a Catholic mass. He fasted after the movement turned violent in order to bring his followers back to their commitment to nonviolence.
Chavez’s grandmother had taught him to follow Jesus’s admonition in the Sermon on the Mount to turn the other cheek and to find alternate methods 91of resolving disputes (Romero 2017, 34). Speaking to the National Catholic Reporter, Chavez described the influence of the Beatitudes about which Jesus spoke in this sermon as follows:
The Beatitudes make natural good sense to the poor. We, of course, do not analyze the words and the meanings in the way scholars do. Jesus’ words fit his life and therefore the meaning of his words appear to be obvious to us. He spent his life with the poor, the sick, the outcasts, the powerless people. He attacked the wealthy and the powerful. He is with us. We feel he is our friend, our advocate, our leader. (Piar 1996, 117)
Like Martin Luther King Jr., Chavez stressed the importance of nonviolence. Describing important influences on his approach to nonviolence, Chavez said, “Moses is about the best example, and the first one. Christ is also a beautiful example, as is the way Christians overcame tyranny. They needed over three hundred years, but they did it” (quoted in Romero, 2017, 34).
Chavez justified his belief that God was especially interested in farm workers by citing James 5:4–6: “Listen! The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you” (35).
Beginning with the defeat of a California referendum Proposition 14, which would have strengthened the role of union organizers among farm workers, the United Farm Workers declined, and Chavez tried to build a religious order around himself and Synanon, which was associated with New Age religion (37). Chavez’s associates also accused him of becoming autocratic and unwilling to listen to others. His most successful efforts at labor organizing, however, had a distinctly Christian, and biblical, cast.
See also Civil Disobedience; Moses as Political Archetype; Roman Catholics
For Reference and Further Reading
Piar, Carlos R. 1996. “Cesar Chavez and La Causa: Toward a Hispanic Christian Social Ethic.” Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics. 16: 103–20.
Romero, Robert Chao. 2017. “The Spiritual Praxis of Cesar Chavez.” Perspectivas 14 (Spring): 24–39.
Cherokee Removal
One of the causes that motivated a number of nineteenth-century American Protestants was that of the forced removal of Native American Cherokee Indians from Georgia to modern-day Oklahoma. American missionaries to the Cherokees did their best to protest against this removal that resulted in many deaths and that remains one of the most tragic chapters in American history, but President Andrew Jackson cooperated with authorities in Georgia to effect this action, which the U.S. Supreme Court was helpless to prevent.
One of the