Staff writer
@newyorker
. Writing on cultural conflicts in academia, keeping an eye on religion and politics.
Ideas, tips: Emma_Green at new yorker dot com
I'll be on leave for the next while. Send all your best gossip and tips my way in the meantime: emma_green
@newyorker
.com.
And read my latest piece, on the rise of classical education—and, really, about what it means to educate our kids.
"We know exactly where Christ is, because he told us. He’s with the sick and the jailed and the hungry. He’s in those camps with those suffering children. And we need to be there, too."
What a piece,
@CaitlinPacific
.
A while ago, I started noticing something strange: Very progressive people, who love to talk about "believing in science," were adopting COVID restrictions *over and above* CDC guidelines. I thought, is there a story here? And, well, wow, there is.
Today, The Atlantic published a piece I have been working on for a long time, about one of the most powerful stories of our time: The decimation of Christianity in the Middle East. This is tragic, on its face. But it's also devastating for democracy. 1/x
Have the evangelical leaders who went all-in for Trump "hurt the church’s ability to reach people outside the church? Absolutely," Andy Stanley, the hugely influential pastor of arguably the second-biggest megachurch in the U.S., told me.
I want to talk for a moment about shomrim, the guards who stay with Jewish bodies until they are buried. I spent three hours on Sunday night in the Pittsburgh morgue, and to me, this spoke powerfully about what's happening here.
It is remarkable how many Black evangelical pastors in this story told me that their white evangelical colleagues regularly send them Candace Owens videos as a "counterpoint" to their views on racism in the church and in America.
"These late-term abortion bills do more than reveal Democratic radicalism. They draw back the veil of euphemism to expose abortion for what it is: At every stage of pregnancy, it is the taking of a human life."
@xan_desanctis
in her first at The Atlantic:
A while ago, someone I know started sending around links to the People's CDC—a coalition that styles itself as a model of what the CDC would look like if it actually **followed the science** on pandemic restrictions. I was fascinated. (1/x)
I called up some moms in Somerville, MA, who have been trying to get their schools to reopen for months. They're scientists who think in-person school is safe.
A local leader called them "fucking white parents" on a hot mic during a public meeting.
Inbox: Rashida Tlaib will be spending tonight at a Shabbat gathering w/ Jewish Voices for Peace. It's a notable choice of Jewish ally for this moment: an org that supports BDS, is fairly marginal in the Jewish institutional world, + is widely seen as anti-Israel in that world.
The last year has been harrowing. Making sacrifices--staying home, wearing masks, cancelling weddings and funerals and graduations--has become this sign of civic virtue. And I think some progressives are having a really hard time giving that up.
A family member of
@RepKinzinger
recently sent him a letter saying he is possessed by demons for voting for Trump's impeachment. Kinzinger is not just worried about his party. He's worried that the past 4 years have damaged the reputation of Christianity.
A dispatch from the universe that is *not* being covered on Kavanaugh... I talked to roughly a dozen conservative women activists who are spitting mad about what's happening to Brett Kavanaugh:
Joel Hunter, an influential Florida megachurch pastor who voted for Trump in 2016, is part of a new group of pro-life evangelicals for Biden: “We’re becoming divided and angry, and it’s the opposite of pro-life.”
@spulliam
has the story.
I've been working on this piece about one of the most popular female Bible teachers in America, Beth Moore, for a long time.
Her story reveals a lot about evangelical struggles over Trump, sexism, and the relationship between religion + politics. [1/x]
'
@DanielLombroso
, a Jewish reporter, spent four years embedded with the alt right. He found hucksterism, dilettantes, and above all, people grappling for a way to make meaning in their lives through white supremacy.
It is incredible, and chilling, work.
“I spent four years fighting Trump because he was so anti-science,” said one, a sanitation engineer. “I spent the last year fighting people who I normally would agree with desperately trying to inject science into school reopening, and completely failed.”
I got to spend a few days at the end of October in Sioux County, Iowa, where 81 percent of voters chose Trump over Clinton in 2016, and yet many people in the area would breathe a sigh of relief if the president were impeached.
I spent my day talking to Jews in Rockland Co., who are watching the escalation of anti-Semitism in New York and New Jersey, who feel very scared after the Hanukkah stabbing.
"We are not safe as Jewish in New York," one woman told me.
Tonight,
@CTmagazine
called for Trump to be removed from office. This is huge: the magazine of Billy Graham, the most prominent forum for evangelical thought. And my conversation with
@markgalli
about why he made this choice was stunning.
Read it here.
It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to write about Rachel Held Evans. Her work is important, I think, because she helped create a whole world for Christians pushed out of other church spaces.
#BecauseOfRHE
When I profiled
@ReverendWarnock
, he was game to talk policy, but he lit up when I asked about the Bible, Jesus's vision of justice, and what it means to lead prophetically.
Georgia just elected a progressive, Black, vocal Christian to the U.S. Senate.
If it's on Twitter, then I guess it's official. I'm thrilled to be joining the New Yorker next month as a staff writer. And I have so much gratitude for The Atlantic, an institution I will always love dearly.
C-Span is airing caller reactions to Ford's testimony. A woman who says she was abused in elementary school calls, in tears.
"I'm 76 years old," she says. "I thought I was over it, until I heard it had happened to someone else."
"It's breaking my heart," she said.
A while ago, someone mentioned to me, offhandedly, that a friend of theirs had become akin to "the mother hen of the cancelled." Naturally, I was like, "I need to know everything about this."
That's how I met the Thought Criminals. (1/x)
I am heartbroken. Today, The Atlantic laid off dozens of colleagues who are kind friends, generous colleagues, and superior journalists.
Hire them. (Thread.)
“When you’re seeing a baby sucking its thumb at 18 weeks, smiling, clapping,” it becomes “harder to square the idea that that 20-week-old, that unborn baby or fetus, is discardable.”
Today is my first day
@NewYorker
! Hit me up with ideas and tips about the world of academia and its discontents. New email: emma_green [at] the new yorker dot com.
What fascinates me is how these groups use science to make moral arguments. In their view, science proves their worldview. This is a form of scientism—a belief that scientific evidence can definitively resolve conflicts over values. (5/x)
Something I'm hoping for in 2018: Even more journalism about the diversity--racially, politically, ritually--in the Muslim community. I learned a lot in reporting this piece on young Muslims' love stories:
“For a party that associates itself with Christianity to say..God would smile on the division of families at the hands of federal agents..God would condone putting children in cages, has lost all claim to ever use religious language again”-
@PeteButtigieg
@JohnGHendy
I can't stop thinking about our punishing culture of limited tolerance for perceived weakness. We ask our politicians to show vulnerability, but not too much. We love hearing about obstacles overcome, but not challenges that will never leave us.
This is a story that everyone--Christians, Americans, foreign-policy wonks, lovers of democracy--should know about.
I hope you will read my story about the impossible future of Christians in the Middle East. 8/x
As Trump comes to town and the news cycle turns to politics, remember that the first of 11 people who were murdered in prayer will be buried today. Remember that this story is about real people. Remember this story is about a Jewish community in pain.
When Biden attends Mass, he sits in an out-of-the-way pew. He gets in line for communion like anyone else. Afterwards, he kneels before God.
Some bishops are pushing to deny Biden communion because of his support for abortion rights. More from me:
The public-health left does not hesitate to use strong language: not masking is a form of white supremacy. The Biden administration has made its decisions at the command of big business. Perhaps most shocking: The CDC is eugenicist. (4/x)
This is a really good piece about the recent YouTube suicide forest scandal, but it's an especially good piece about the disorientation of teen internet culture.
Since 9/11, American Muslims have constantly had to take a loyalty test: Condemn 9/11 in the right language, with the right intensity, at every turn.
Donald Trump has resurrected that test. Ilhan Omar, and a new generation of activists, are pushing back.
They believe America has left its most vulnerable citizens behind. They believe people should be avoiding indoor dining, moving gatherings outside, testing before events, etc.
They believe we should wear masks, basically forever. (2/x)
A couple years ago, I saw something about a group called FAIR—it wanted to be the new ACLU, but more willing to fight left-y orthodoxy, esp. on race. Bari Weiss was one of the founders.
Recently, I heard FAIR was imploding. And wow, was it ever. 1/x
P.S. The People's CDC got $150K from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, one of the giants in the health space. As it happens, the CEO, Rich Besser, is a former acting director of what the People's CDC would call the "eugenicist" CDC. (/fin)
Every so often, I read a story that makes me want to get up and run around and talk about it forever and send it to everyone I know. This piece on the fraught status of Mormons in America by
@mckaycoppins
is one of those pieces. You simply *must* read it.
Every once in a while, I read a piece that freezes my day, totally takes over my head, leaves me feeling utterly different than when I began. This story by my new colleague
@JenSeniorNY
is stunning. Perhaps it will change you, too.
I spoke w/ pastors who've been protesting, including Episcopal clergy who were in Lafeyette Square when it was teargassed. Trump stood in front of their church. But they're done accommodating themselves to power. “We do not want to be that Church anymore”
As I looked into the group more, I came to see them as representative of something much bigger: a public-health left that feels abandoned by the Biden administration and mainstream institutions, but has a large microphone, esp. on social media. (3/x)
The greeting "Merry Christmas" was originally "an act of revelry and religious rebellion, something the uncouth masses shouted as they traveled in drunken mobs."
I talked to Michael Steele, the only Black person to ever chair the RNC, about what he thinks of Trump's overt attempts at the RNC to convince voters he is not racist.
It's “just not believable," Steele said.
Celebrity interviews are almost never surprising, mostly because the interviewers often don't ask interesting or hard questions. But I was surprised, in the best way, by this back and forth between
@bariweiss
and
@KimKardashian
:
My piece on Hillsdale College and its outsize role in the conservative world is in this week's
@NewYorker
.
Come for theories on why young conservatives always end up Catholic. Stay for theories about why Hillsdale explains today's American right.
I have learned much from my colleague
@YAppelbaum
over the years. Today, you have that opportunity. He has published an essay that is principled, sophisticated, and historically informed. No matter what you think of Donald Trump or his party, read this.
Also, interesting to see which progressive leaders are stepping up to own this issue. Linda Sarsour, the Muslim leader involved in the Women's March, is one.
Several arrests in the hearing room including
@lsarsour
. The public stands firmly opposed to this sham hearing.
#kavanaugh
hearing must be suspended and stopped.
My first piece for
@NewYorker
: What the likely fall of Roe v. Wade will mean for the next generation of obstetricians.
The big question of the piece: Should there be space for pro-life medical students and residents in OBGYN?
It's an astonishing contrast: SCOTUS just delivered a major decision protecting LGBT rights in the workplace.
And this weekend in Virginia, the GOP booted an incumbent congressman because he officiated a gay wedding.
For a long time, I've been wanting to read a good piece explaining the rise of the classical education movement. Finally, I convinced my editor to let me write the piece myself. In this week's print issue:
I have a new(ish) gig! I guess my bosses noticed I'm unpleasant to hang out with at happy hours because I shamelessly grill people on their intimate views, so they asked me to do something productive with that.
Introducing The Atlantic Interview. (1/x)
Many of those who marched on the Capitol did so carrying flags for Jesus. "Evangelical Christians who supported Donald Trump now find ourselves...tremendously embarrassed by this most recent behavior,”
@albertmohler
, a major Southern Baptist leader, said.
St. Marys, KS, is one of the most fascinating places I’ve visited. 40 years ago, a Catholic breakaway group, the SSPX, arrived in this little town--and took over. I wanted to understand people who overhaul their lives in pursuit of ideological haven. 1/x
Hello, friends. I'm back on Twitter after a long hiatus and diving back into coverage. Have a story for me (coronavirus? 2020 election? the slow disintegration of our democracy?)? Hit me up at emma [at] the atlantic dot com.
This is worth calling out. The pope wants "a journalism less concentrated on breaking news than on exploring the underlying causes of conflicts, in order to promote deeper understanding and contribute to their resolution by setting in place virtuous processes."
Over the weekend, my interview with
@LilaGraceRose
was published. I wanted to hear from her, directly, how her first pregnancy has affected her strongly anti-abortion views. We talked about what it means to be a pregnant pro-life activist. Give it a read.
Matt Hawn believed students in his nearly all-white high school in northeast TN needed to discuss racism + white privilege. But his county is deep red. His state just passed an anti-CRT law. Hawn got fired.
I talked with him about the cost of teaching:
White supremacy has created one of the brightest dividing lines in American Christianity today. Churches & pastors from various traditions disagree profoundly about how to speak prophetically on the issue of race and, by extension, American politics. 1/x
After Saturday night's stabbing, Monsey families are no longer thinking of sweet celebrations. Moms told me they plan to teach their kids self-defense tactics to use walking to the bus.
This is what anti-Semitism is doing to American Jewish communities.
The former editor/publisher, Tom Marquardt, told me he sees this as part of broader hostility toward the media. "You have a president who says that everything we do is ‘fake news' ... The fact that this happened in a newspaper is no coincidence.” [8/x]
One of the striking things about the Trump-evangelical alliance was the silence. Giants like Andy Stanley, Rick Warren, etc. didn't join the Trump train or the resistance. Now, they must contend with a reputation of evangelicalism they didn't create.
Nearly $1 billion has been spent on the GA Senate runoffs. Billion with a b.
There are so many ways that money could have been spent in a pandemic year, with so much need! But this is our politics: Money is an expression of hate for the other side.
At the debate tonight,
@PeteButtigieg
took direct aim Republican support for child detentions + family separations.
“The Republican Party likes to cloak itself in the language of religion,” Buttigieg said. “We should call out hypocrisy when we see it.”
Lambda Legal just sent out their statement: "It shocks the conscience that our government would invite healthcare providers to discriminate against their patients... The Orwellian ‘Conscience and Religious Freedom’ unit simply provides guidance on how they can get away with it."
I spoke with pastors, alumni, staff, & board members at Liberty University to try to understand one really big question: How has Jerry Falwell Jr. survived in leadership until now, and why was this the moment of his downfall?
There is a lot to unpack.
In my reporting, I have not found the common progressive caricature of conservative Christians to be true--that they don't care about racism, etc. In fact, many conservative churches are multi-ethnic, and intensely debate racism in their communities. 2/x
Read my profile of Beth Moore, who gave me a lot of insight into what it's been like for her to be a dissenting woman Bible teacher in a conservative world over the last two years: