Daily Archives: November 23, 2021

Robert Bly obituary – The Guardian

Posted: November 23, 2021 at 5:14 pm

In 1986 the New York Times review of Robert Blys Selected Poems was headlined Minnesota Transcendentalist. It was perceptive to note his link with the New England poets of the 19th century, which was strong, but within a few years it would look absolutely prescient. For although he was one of the outstanding poets of his generation, Bly, who has died aged 94, may be remembered, like the two most enduring of the original Transcendentalists, for facets of his work other than poetry.

Just as Ralph Waldo Emersons legacy is as an essayist, the influence of Blys essays on poetic theory and his many translations have resonated with readers and his fellow poets. But Bly is more likely to be seen as a 20th-century parallel to Henry David Thoreau. Like Thoreau, he made his mark with civil disobedience, and later with a hugely popular prose work concerned with the denaturing effects of civilisation.

Blys early poetry in the 60s was his best, although its quality was often subsumed by controversy surrounding his anti-war positions. In 1966, he co-founded American Writers Against the Vietnam War. The following year, when he won the National Book award for The Light Around the Body, he donated the prize money to draft resistance. But his entire poetic career was thrown into the shadows by the remarkable success of Iron John: A Book About Men (1990).

A meditation on his vision of American manhood being torn from its natural roots because fathers fail to initiate their sons properly into masculinity, Iron John spawned a movement combining encounter-group sensitivity with primal tree-hugging survivalism. Yet with his imagistic, often spiritual, poetry, his deep interests in mysticism, his rustic dress and his nasal, high-pitched voice, Bly often seemed an unlikely prophet of masculinity.

Bly called his poetic technique deep image, and his highly visual, quietly surreal poems, often in rural settings, reflected his upbringing in Scandinavian-settled Minnesota. He was born in Lac qui Parle county, where his parents, Alice (nee Aws) and Jacob Bly, Norwegian immigrants, were farmers. At 18, after graduating from high school in Madison, he enlisted in the US navy.

Discharged in 1946, he enrolled at St Olafs College in Northfield, Minnesota, but after a year transferred to Harvard, where he joined a precocious group of undergraduate writers, including John Ashbery, Richard Wilbur, John Hawkes, George Plimpton and, at Radcliffe, Adrienne Rich. It was at Harvard that he read a poem by WB Yeats, and resolved to be a poet for the rest of my life.

After graduation in 1950, he moved to New York, writing and struggling to support himself with a succession of menial jobs and meagre disability payments for the rheumatic fever he contracted while in the navy.

In 1954, he returned to the midwest, as a graduate student in the University of Iowas writers programme, teaching to pay his way. Again he found himself in a writers hothouse; his fellow students included Philip Levine, Donald Justice and WD Snodgrass, with Robert Lowell and John Berryman on the faculty. The proliferation of creative writing programmes on American campuses today owes much to the collective success of this group, the level of which, it could be argued, has never been repeated.

He married the writer Carol McLean in 1955, and returned to Minnesota. The next year, he received a Fulbright grant to travel to Norway to translate poetry. There he discovered not only such Swedish poets as Tomas Transtrmer, Gunnar Ekelf and Harry Martinson, but also, in translation, other writers relatively unknown in English: Georg Trakl, Pablo Neruda and Csar Vallejo. His translations of Transtrmer continued throughout both their careers, and the affinity between their poetry makes these some of the most effective ever done.

On his return to America, Bly started a magazine to publish such writers. The Fifties, co-edited with William Duffy, would change its name decade by decade, and had an immense effect on American poetry, defining the deep image style. Through the magazine, Bly became close to a similarly inclined poet, James Wright, and with him translated Twenty Poems of Georg Trakl (1961). He also translated Knut Hamsuns novel Hunger from the Norwegian in 1967.

Deep image arose from the way the poets Bly admired drew on almost subconscious imagery, yet used it in a very deliberate way. He called it leaping poetry, once describing it as surrealism with a centre holding it all together. Out of these influences, in 1962, came Blys first book of poems, Silence in the Snowy Fields, whose bonding with the countryside would be echoed by later generations of creative writing professors in poems about chopping wood in denim shirts. But in Blys hands, the quiet of the northern landscape provided a deep, personal beauty. It was an immediate success, and led to a Guggenheim fellowship.

Those poems gave no hint of the despair that became evident in The Light Around the Body, which not only reflected his feelings about the Vietnam war, but also his years of struggle in New York. They drew on the same imagery as his first book, but used it in a far more ferocious way. Studying Jungs theories of mythic archetypes led to Blys mixing them into his politics in Sleepers Joining Hands (1973), whose long poem, The Teeth Mother Naked at Last is a powerful condemnation of war as an affront to the Great Mother Culture. He placed a long essay, I Came Out of the Mother Naked at the centre of this book, and prose poems would soon become an integral part of his poetics, culminating in This Body Is Made of Camphor and Gopher Wood (1977).

After a divorce from Carol in 1979, in 1980 he married Ruth Ray, a Jungian psychologist, and moved to Moose Lake, Minnesota. He began working with mens and womens groups, producing books of poetry that reflected the transactional experience, most notably the love poems in Loving a Woman in Two Worlds (1985).

After PBS Televisions Bill Moyers produced a documentary, A Gathering of Men, about those mens groups, Iron John became an immediate bestseller. It was followed by The Sibling Society (1996), which lamented the perpetual adolescence of modern American men, and The Maiden King: The Reunion of Masculine and Feminine (with Marion Woodman, 1998). At the same time his translations expanded to include the 15th-century Sufi mystic Kabir and the Urdu poet Ghalib. Bly encapsulated his poetic career in the moving Meditations on the Insatiable Soul (1994) and Morning Poems (1997), and published his second selected poems collection, Eating the Honey of Words, in 1999. The US invasion of Iraq inspired the collection The Insanity of Empire (2004).

In 2013 Airmail, selections from Blys decades of correspondence with Transtrmer, was published in English. It revealed both a deep friendship and a contrast in the way the poetry of this homespun American mystic and the Swedish psychologist made its leaps. Stealing Sugar From the Castle: Selected and New Poems was published in the same year, and a last Collected Poems appeared in 2018.

Bly is survived by Ruth, by four children, Mary, Bridget, Micah and Noah, from his first marriage, and by nine grandchildren.

Robert Elwood Bly, poet and writer, born 23 December 1926; died 21 November 2021

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Wishful thinking and reality – Observer Online

Posted: at 5:12 pm

The idea that Christianity is simply wish-fulfillment is a common line of attack among skeptics. It just seems too good to be true, I could imagine someone saying. Sure, we all want purpose and meaning in this life and a reason why things happen. But its just wishful thinking. Were tricking ourselves. We need to face reality. A cold reality, but reality all the same. Not things we believe just to make us feel better.

When faced with such a challenge, we must not succumb to panic but first realize a crucial fact: This, and this type of wishful thinking argument in general, attempts to suggest Christianity is false by explaining why Christianity is false. In other words, it assumes Christianity is false from the very beginning. This is no argument at all; it fails before it gets started.

One should also note that the skeptic is being inconsistent. While affirming there is no such thing as meaning or purpose, the skeptic is only telling you Christianity is wish-fulfillment because he believes truth is important, and we should follow reason and logic. But if the whole show, ourselves and everything about us included, is utterly meaningless and without true purpose, why do we have any obligation to believe what is true, let alone try to convince others to believe the truth and suggest they have an objective moral obligation to follow the evidence? In arguing against meaning, they assume and affirm meaning. And thus their argument and atheism as a whole collapses. I have written about this before, so I will not belabor the point.

We have good grounds to dismiss the charge of wishful thinking already, but lets go deeper. The skeptic assumes Christianity is immensely preferable to atheism, the latter of which provides them little reason to be biased in its favor. This is wrong-headed. When someone begins to wonder whether God exists, they often think that if they just knew God existed then all would be well and they would immediately worship Him enthusiastically. But the nearer they get, the more that idea proves totally false. The intellectual doubts are done away with. They have no reason to deny Him now. But they will still not follow His commands.

Why not? Its simple: It runs up against their desires. This leads one to quite a shocking realization: Their opposition to Christianity was not so much about intellectual qualms as it is a desire to follow practically anything thats not the Creator. It is one thing to believe in a god that gives you some vague feeling of meaning but is very much like you. It is quite another to believe in One who is not like you, who is holy and just and good and therefore must punish your transgressions, rebellion and sin. All of them.

Thats why we find Jesus words so frightening: Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. Therefore whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops (Luke 12:2-3). Its scary because we know we are not good. Even our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment (Isaiah 64:6). And so, we stand helplessly guilty before Him, having committed the most egregious crime imaginable: rebelling and spitting in the face of the Lord Almighty. Nothing we do, no great thing we could ever hope to accomplish, can pay for such an unspeakable crime. We are like Macbeth: All great Neptunes oceans [cannot] wash this blood clean from [our hands], for the punishment for sins is not x hours of community service or good works but death and condemnation. This reality seems anything but wishful thinking.

Indeed, atheism seems far more likely to be wishful thinking along this line of reasoning. Sure, we want a God that helps us when we want, but we dont want Him telling us what to do (who does He think He is?). We want to do what we want, when we want and how we want. But more than that, we know our sins. We cannot bear the thought of having our friends and family (let alone God) see our thoughts and our search history or what weve said and done behind others backs. How much, then, would we love if there was not a judgment, not a final reckoning, none to tell us what were doing is wrong and heinous and black? We want to define how we should live. We want to be our own god. So, when God says our hearts are evil and we love evil and we will face a judgment for it, we naturally desire to stifle this voice in our minds. The natural man loves sin, which God hates. Thats why he will not obey Him and desires to rid himself of any reminder of Him.

But what of salvation? Is that not wishful thinking? It would be if the Christian were merely [presuming] on the riches of [Gods] kindness (Romans 2:4), thinking God will simply sweep our sins under the rug. It would be, too, if we said our works could save us. All attempts to save ourselves crumble into dust before Gods Throne. But we see the God-Man, Jesus, who came into the world to save sinners (1 Timothy 1:15). We see His wounds, His body through which he bore our sins on the tree (1 Peter 2:24) and once for all time (Hebrews 9:12) paid in full the sins of His people. His death, His resurrection and His ascension to the right hand of the Majesty on high (Hebrews 1:3) prove to all generations that the Christians salvation is not wishful thinking but reality. As one hymn puts it:

Here we have a firm foundation,

here the refuge of the lost;

Christs the Rock of our salvation,

his the name of which we boast.

Lamb of God, for sinners wounded,

sacrifice to cancel guilt!

None shall ever be confounded

who on him their hope have built.

Andrew Sveda is a junior at Notre Dame from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, majoring in political science with a supplementary major in theology. In his free time, he enjoys writing (obviously), reading and playing the piano. He can be reached at [emailprotected] or @SvedaAndrew on Twitter.

The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.

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Migrants use tattoos of Jesus and crucifixes to aid asylum claims – Telegraph.co.uk

Posted: at 5:12 pm

Asylum seekers are getting tattoos of crucifixes and Jesus to prove they have converted to Christianity and cannot be returned to the Middle East, the Telegraph can reveal.

Analysis of immigration appeal judgments shows tattoos connected to Christianity, atheism and homosexuality have been cited more than 20 times in the last five years by those fighting to stay in the UK.

The body art has been used to argue they risk persecution if returned to Muslim countries, where relinquishing the Islamic faith or being gay can be a crime.

Last week, the Church was forced to defend its conversion processes after Emad al-Swealmeen, 32, blew himself up in Liverpool after converting to Christianity to bolster his asylum application.

After the bomb attack Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, criticised how the merry-go-round asylum process was being exploited by the legal services using legal aid.

While asylum seekers who get such tattoos repeatedly secure the right to remain, one judge sitting in Bradford in 2018 condemned a 25-year-old Iranian man who obtained religious tattoos.

The ruling found that his tattoo did not represent a genuine reflection of the appellants faith. It said he should be returned to Iran because the tattoo could be removed, covered up or that he could tell Iranian authorities the truth - namely that he had pretended converting to Christianity in order to bolster his claim for international protection.

In contrast, a Birmingham hearing in 2018 allowed an Iranian man with amateur tattoos of a crucifix, Jesus and the Virgin Mary to remain. This was despite an earlier hearing concluding that his conversion was false and images obtained for the sole purpose of enhancing his chances of securing his asylum.

He was allowed to stay on human rights grounds, because he cannot be expected to removeor cover upthe tattoo to avoid persecution.

In February this year, an appeal against deportation was allowed after a Kurdish Iranian abandoned his Islamic faith to become an atheist rapper.

The 30-year-old man showed the tribunal his American Atheist tattoo, an atomic swirl denoting a rejection of all religious beliefs and a reliance on scientific analysis.

After he arrived in the UK, Mrs Patel rejected his claims to be an atheist or rapper whose anti-Iranian songs had been posted on social media.

But the judge, sitting in London, concluded the appellants tattoo signposts his atheist leanings and he cannot be expected to lie about what it is, or why he has it. He was allowed to remain in the UK.

Last year, a 26-year-old Iranian man who said he converted to Christianity and fled to the UK was allowed to stay because the judge sitting in Manchester found he has a mark of faith, a large tattoo.

The case, in which a clergywoman told how she was satisfied his conversion was authentic, illustrates how some churches have enjoyed a boost to congregation numbers due to the numbers of asylum seekers looking to convert.

The tribunal heard how more than 130 people from 37 countries attended special services, with at least 70 of them being Iranian.

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The Greatest (Failed) School Ban of All Time – The Atlantic

Posted: at 5:12 pm

In the recent governors race in Virginia, Glenn Youngkin scored a huge upset win days after promising to ban critical race theory from Virginia schools. Youngkin is hardly the only Republican calling for school bans. In Texas, Representative Matt Krause sent a letter to school administrators about books in their district. Did they have Ta-Nehisi Coates on their shelves? Isabel Wilkersons Caste? How about LGBT Families, by Leanne K. Currie-McGhee? Or any of about 850 other books that might, in Krauses words, make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex?

Beyond Texas, beyond Virginia, the prospect of banning books and ideas from public schools has GOP strategists smelling electoral blood. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy vowed to turn school bans into a winning issue for Republicans in 2022, sketching a parental bill of rights to protect kids from troubling ideas about race and sex.

Zachary D. Carter: The Democratic unraveling began with schools

These efforts have a history. Back in the 1920s, the vague term that galvanized conservative angst was not critical race theory but evolution. Conservative pundits at the time seized on a cartoonish misrepresentation of evolutionary science and warned their fellow Americans that evolution was nothing less than a sinister plot to rob white American children of their religion, their morals, and their sense of innate superiority.

But although the school bans might have changed some school curricula in the short term, in the long run, they backfired. Telling parents you dont want their kids to have the best possible public schools is never good politics. A full century ago, the most effective school-ban campaign in American history set the pattern: noise, fury, rancor, and fear, but not much change in what schools actually teach.

In the 1920s, the idea of evolution wasnt new. Charles Darwins bombshell book about natural selection had been published 60 years earlier. The outlines of Darwins theory had become standard fare in school textbooks and curricula, even though the real scientific controversies about the mechanism of natural selection were by no means settled. But the furious campaign to ban evolution had nothing to do with those debates among scientists.

Read: The evolution of teaching creationism in public schools

In 1923, T. T. Martin, the Blue Mountain Evangelist, preached that evolution is being drilled into our boys and girls during the most susceptible, dangerous age of their lives. Evolution, Martin warned, was not good science but only a plot by sneering high-brows to inject mandatory atheism into public schools. Martin claimed to have abundant evidence that the teaching of these text-books is unsettling the faith of thousands of students.

He never shared that evidence, but he did paint a terrifying picture of the evolutionary conspiracys results. Once the Evolutionists robbed children of their faith, Martin wrote, they laugh and jeer, as the rapist laughs and jeers at the bitter tears of the crushed father and mother over the blighted life of their child.

Martins pitch wasnt only about religion. He framed his fight against evolution as a fight against all manner of modern woes. Supporters of evolution, Martin preached, were not real men; they were sissy; they had given up their Christian manhood. They were not even real Americans; they were betraying the spirit of those who came over in the Mayflower, Martin said, adding, Where is the spirit of 1776?

What could anxious parents do if they wanted to keep their children safe from the schemes of atheists and sissies? How could they protect kids from a vision of America that wasnt focused on sturdy white Puritans and the heroic followers of George Washington? In language that could have come from 2021 and not 1923, Martin told parents to take over their local school boards, to put on the Board of Trustees only men and women who will not employ any teacher who believes in Evolution. After that, Martin predicted, seizing control of state legislatures and cramming through anti-evolution laws would be simple.

It was never quite that simple, but the movement to ban evolution from public schools seemed, for a few years, to be an unstoppable political juggernaut. School-board elections became furious affairs, pitting neighbors against one another with accusations of treason and atheism. To give just one example, in Atlanta, William Mahoney, the local leader of the Supreme Kingdom, a Ku Klux Klan offshoot, attacked school-board members and the citys teachers. He promised to force the reluctant school board to eliminate five teachers on suspicion of teaching ideas that were paganistic atheistic beastialistic and anarchistic.

State legislatures werent far behind. From 1922 to 1929, legislators proposed at least 53 bills or resolutions in 21 states, plus two bills in Congress. Five of them succeeded. Oklahomas 1923 law provided free textbooks for the states public-school students, as long as none of those textbooks taught the Darwin theory of creation. Floridas legislature passed a nonbinding resolution in 1923 declaring that teaching evolution was improper and subversive. Tennessee was the first to actually ban the teaching of evolution. It shall be unlawful, the 1925 law said, to teach any theory that denies the Story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible. Mississippi followed suit, banning in 1926 the teaching that man descended, or ascended, from a lower order of animals. Finally, in 1928, anti-evolutionists in Arkansas managed to pass a similar law by forcing a popular vote.

Liberals quaked. In the words of one science educator in 1927, the U.S. had entered its first modern culture war, a pitched battle between two opposing cultures. On one side was science, progress, and liberalism. On the other were the forces of reaction and armies of ignorance with their sights set on dominat[ing] our public institutions.

In the furor of these political battles, few paused to examine the actual goals of the anti-evolution movement too closely. Oklahomas law, for instance, was at least as much about providing free textbooks as it was about evolution. And Floridas resolution was purposefully vague, purposefully symbolic. In 1923 Florida, what politician would vote in favor of subversive teaching?

Read: I was never taught where humans came from

The bills that did not pass, meanwhile, veered ever further from the actual science of evolution. One early bill in Kentucky in 1922 proposed to ban not only evolution but Darwinism, Atheism, Agnosticism, or evolution. As the bill wended its way through the process, lawmakers added provisos: The law would empower citizens to sniff out and report such teaching. School boards would be forced to interrogate any educator charged with teaching evolution within five days. And the ban became broader and more impractical with every new iteration. One Senate amendment, for instance, would have banned the teaching of anything that will weaken or undermine the religious faith of the pupils in any public school or college.

Kentuckys lawmakers werent the only ones hoping to ban anything they didnt like. Across the country, in state legislatures from Delaware to California, conservative lawmakers tried to score political points by banning modern ideas from their public schools. Congress considered a bill in 1926 that was supposedly anti-evolution but in fact imposed sweeping restrictions on the content of public schools. At the time, Congress controlled the budget for schools in Washington, D.C. The 1926 bill would have cut the salary of any D.C. instructor caught teaching disrespect of the Holy Bible, or that ours is an inferior form of government.

These bills were more about political theater than pedagogical policy. Their claims were so broad and so vague that they would have led only to chaos and confusion in public schools. In West Virginia, for instance, one 1927 bill simply banned any nefarious matter from the states public schools.

These bills never answered the obvious questions: Who would decide what counted as nefarious? What would a teacher have to say to be considered disrespectful of the Holy Bible? What did it mean to teach that other governments might have better ideas than ours? To be sure, many of these state bills never had much chance of ever becoming law. But Kentuckys wide-ranging bill failed by only one vote. If it had passed, it would have radically challenged the very idea of a liberal-arts education. What could getting rid of any ideas that could weaken a students religious faith have possibly meant?

Back then, just like today, no one knew. The anti-evolution movement wasnt really about banning one specific scientific idea; it was instead a confused and confusing effort to make America great again by purging its schools of science, history, and critical thinking. Movements to ban ideas from public schools were always less about realistic educational policy and more about planting a political flag for a vaguely defined vision of America.

How did the fight over evolution end? Every town and city was different, but Atlanta can offer one example of how frightening the anti-evolution surge could be and how fast it could fall apart. In March 1926, William Mahoney, the anti-evolution leader of the Supreme Kingdom, seemed to have brought the city school board to its political knees.

As the school board prepared to discuss a citywide ban on teaching evolution, Mahoney gathered 2,000 citizens in an open-air rally. A visiting preacher warned the crowd that if the school board failed to ban evolution, 20 years from now there will be no respect for law in Atlanta and Georgia will be a sea of debauchery. Yet the school board voted down a proposed ban, 93. As one member announced, good science was what every intelligent, educated, and open-minded citizen really wanted in Atlantas public schools. After its humiliating defeat, the Supreme Kingdom fell apart. Its national leader, Edward Young Clarke, became embroiled in a series of sexual and financial scandals, and Mahoney became a local laughingstock.

Nationwide, the anti-evolution movement suffered a less dramatic denouement. Instead of headline-grabbing showdowns and momentous defeats, the movement simply petered out. It became just another distraction that teachers had to deal with. About a decade after the last anti-evolution law was passed in 1928, one survey of thousands of high-school teachers showed that most had simply gone on with their teaching without fuss or bother. Several of them reported that they did not in fact teach evolution, but not because they were concerned about Christian manhood or upholding the Spirit of 1776. Instead, they were more worried about much more prosaic problemsmany reported that they could not teach evolution simply because they did not have enough time in the day.

Certainly, some teachers had been cowed by the fury of the anti-evolution movement. In a 1942 survey of high-school science teachers, one California teacher reported avoiding teaching evolution because controversial subjects are dynamite to teachers. Others, however, said they could never be scared away from teaching good science. One respondent from upstate New York, for example, insisted he would carry on teaching evolution. Ive had fights, he said, but havent lost yet.

Textbook publishers were less willing to fight. The vague outburst of hostility against evolution stymied the publication of textbooks that boldly and freely taught the best modern science. But wary publishers didnt cower before the anti-evolution mob as much as they pretended they did. They couldnt afford to.

As the careful work of the historian Adam Shapiro has shown, prominent publishers claimed to have edited out evolutionary content, but many times, they simply didnt. The best example might be the case of George Hunters Civic Biology. This textbook was at the center of the famous Scopes Trial in 1925. After the furious wave of anti-evolution bans had passed, the publisher offered a new edition, supposedly free of objectionable evolutionary content. In fact, however, the evolution-free edition was almost exactly the same as the old edition. The publisher merely removed the word evolution and replaced it with similar words such as development.

And no one objected. As Shapiro found, most of the conservative watchdogs appointed by anti-evolution lawmakers gave new textbooks the most cursory of glances. If publishers edited their indexes and tables of contents, if they removed the word evolutionthe word itself, not the ideathey could avoid expensive revisions to the text. As a result, many textbooks kept their scientific treatment of evolution the same.

Over time, even successful legal bans revealed their own inherent weaknesses. In Arkansas, for example, by 1965, science teachers were required to use state-approved textbooks that taught evolution, even though the states 1928 ban was still officially in effect. It was an absurd situation, and one brave teacher finally took the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court ruled in 1968 that the states ban on evolution violated the Constitution.

Years before that, however, even in states like Arkansas that had legally banned evolution in the 1920s, people had quietly agreed that the ban violated a more fundamental requirement of public schools. Bans on modern ideas only hurt schools and students, they concluded. In the long runand, as in Atlanta, even in the short runthe call to ban evolution could not overcome parents insistence on the very best modern public schools for their children, schools free from the dictates of what one Atlanta school-board member called error enshrined in popular belief.

Back in the 1920s, the effort to ban evolution was not really about the science of evolution. It was instead an attempt to bolster political careers with sweeping but ultimately meaningless gestures. The confusion and vagaries of the 1920s bills were not accidental. Voters might not have known what scientists meant by terms like natural selection, but they knew what politicians meant when they took a stance against nefarious matter and against radical teachers who supposedly taught children that ours is an inferior government.

But the bans failed to change many textbooks, failed to change many classrooms, and failed even to change the course of many political careers. Politicians willing to stand in the schoolhouse door to keep out troubling ideas will not be willing to stand there forever. Sooner or later, the cameras will leave, and parents will demand that schools give their children the best available education.

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New political map approved by Georgia House, preserving …

Posted: at 5:11 pm

Democrats objected to the redistricting plan, saying it had been quickly pushed through the legislative process with district lines that reduce their representation. Georgia is closely split between Democrats and Republicans in statewide elections, but the state House map continues to give the GOP an advantage.

The people of Georgia deserve more than a magic show of smoke and mirrors, said state Rep. Carolyn Hugley, a Democrat from Columbus. Republicans have ignored the will of Georgia voters in drawing their Statehouse map proposal. It minimizes the political power of the people of Georgia and ignores the fact that Georgia is equally divided politically.

The Georgia House of Representatives voted to pass a new political map, redistricting the state's 180 districts, on Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2021.

Credit: Gina.Wright

Credit: Gina.Wright

The mapmaking process picks winners and losers, with some representatives drawn into districts that favor their opponents and others forced to face members of their own party.

For example, Republican state Rep. Philip Singletons new district would favor Democrats in next years elections because it will extend north of Coweta County into Fulton County. Singleton has been a staunch critic of Republican House Speaker David Ralston, and hell now face a difficult path to reelection.

A few representatives were drawn into the same districts as incumbents, meaning only one will remain after next years elections. Only one of those pairings forces a contest between a Republican and a Democrat, when Republican Rep. Gerald Greene of Cuthbert would face Democratic Rep. Winfred Dukes of Albany.

If you allow your voice to be silenced, or you willingly submit your voice to a select few, you are complicit in the destruction of our republic, said Singleton, a Republican who voted against the map. I want everyone in this room to have an equal voice.

Democrats said Georgias districts should have been crafted in a way that kept more communities unified under one representative and empowered people of color to represent them. Members of the House are about 67% white in a state where white people make up about half of the population.

State House Democratic Leader James Beverly of Macon raised issue with the map House members approved Wednesday. The people of Georgia demanded a fair and transparent redistricting process, Beverly said. What they got instead was a rushed and secretive process. (Hyosub Shin / Hyosub.Shin@ajc.com)

Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC

Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC

The people of Georgia deserve better. The people of Georgia demanded a fair and transparent redistricting process, said Minority Leader James Beverly, a Democrat from Macon. What they got instead was a rushed and secretive process.

The House map introduces several opportunities for Democrats to make gains, primarily in newly formed districts in metro Atlanta, seats where there are no incumbents. There are two new districts in Cobb County, two in Gwinnett County, one in Fulton County and one in Rockdale County.

Each House district in the state will represent about 59,500 residents. The House map now advances to the state Senate for further consideration, a day after the Senate approved a map for its 56 districts.

Not everybodys going to be happy, said Ralston, a Republican from Blue Ridge. Not all the Republicans are going to be happy. And thats the case with every piece of legislation that we pass, but we have done the best we can.

After the General Assembly finishes redistricting itself, maps for Georgias 14 congressional districts will be introduced.

Republicans currently hold an 8-6 majority in Georgias U.S. House delegation, and the GOP is trying to regain a seat currently held by Democrat Lucy McBath, who represents parts of Cobb, DeKalb and Fulton counties. A proposal by state Senate leaders would move more conservative Forsyth County into her district, but the House hasnt yet released its congressional plan.

Staff writer Maya T. Prabhu contributed to this article.

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Chris Christie and the Death of the Never Trump Republican – New York Magazine

Posted: at 5:11 pm

Never Trump was a label embraced by a handful of Republicans who deemed Donald Trump disqualified for office by some combination of his ignorance, his mendacity, his bigotry, and/or his authoritarianism. Almost no one still affiliated with the party or the conservative movement willingly uses the label any more. The label has largely been repurposed by Trump himself as an epithet against any Republican who dares utter criticism of him, however mild. Never Trump now serves essentially the same role in right-wing discourse as Trotskyite did in Stalins Russia an all-purpose accusation of secret disloyalties, which must be fervently disavowed.

In place of Never Trumpism, the Biden-era Republican party offers up figures like Chris Christie. Christie has put himself forward as the face of Republican resistance to Trump. But it is a form of resistance so tepid as to become almost indistinguishable from support.

Christie grabbed headlines by declaring he might run for president, and unlike other contenders, who have implicitly or explicitly conditioned their candidacies on Mr. Trump not running he announced he wouldnt wait for Trumps permission. Christie has lambasted Trump for continuing to claim he legitimately won the 2020 election. But he has restricted his criticism to the exceedingly narrow ground that voters are simply tired of hearing about the past: We can no longer talk about the past and the past elections no matter where you stand on that issue, no matter where you stand, it is over.

This is the perfect distillation of Establishment Republican thinking on this issue. They dont want to dispute Trumps election lies; they just want to drop the question. Trump, of course, has no intention of dropping the argument, which is why hes winning it: He is making a case that Biden stole the election, and hardly anybody in his party is willing to contradict him. (Indeed, Republicans are actively muzzling Liz Cheney precisely because she insists on refuting Trumps election lie.)

In an interview last night with Laura Ingraham, who spoke at Trumps 2020 nominating convention, Christie assured the Fox News audience that he had no disagreement in principle with the partys leader. He agreed that Democrats cheated in 2020 We know what happened in 2020, in instances where the voting laws were changed improperly and heartily endorsed state-level voting restrictions as an appropriate, forward-looking response.

Prodded further by Ingraham, he conceded that his disagreements with Trump were limited to matters of style and personality and that he fully supported Trumps substantive positions. Laura, he announced grandly, the line of supporting Donald Trump starts behind me!

Trump appealed to the Republican base, despite his many apostasies, because he promised to crush their enemies. His attack on the Republican leadership was, and is, ideologically incoherent they are too conservative or too moderate, too hawkish or too dovish, unable to pass a trillion-dollar infrastructure bill or shamefully willing to do just that but characterologically consistent. The other Republicans are timid and weak. He is ruthless and strong.

Trumps supporters see the party as riven along the same lines: not left versus right, but weak versus strong. When conservative pundits Jonah Golderg and Stephen Hayes quit Fox News over Tucker Carlsons weeklong orgy of paranoid January 6 revisionism, an American Spectator columnist assailed them for lacking the guts to get their hands dirty in the fight: Theres a certain brand of weak-sauce conservative pundit, many of whom have populated the airwaves of cable news channels and other corporate media venues, which depends for its sustenance on remaining acceptable to those who are not conservatives Lets hope that somebody is less acceptable and more willing to accurately assess the state of America brought on by two decades of weak-sauce conservatisms constant retreating.

The weak-sauce conservatism of Goldberg and Hayes is extremely conservative. What makes it weak is its unwillingness to undermine the voting process through chaos and violence.

Supporting Trump is fundamentally a choice between being willing to abide the rules of the democratic game and doing whatever it takes to gain power. Christie is trying to elide the choice. But in so doing, he is revealing the same weakness of character that Trump used to discredit the Republican alternatives. When the choice comes again between democracy and power, they will choose power.

Analysis and commentary on the latest political news from New York columnist Jonathan Chait.

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The Republican Party is looking at a truly historic opportunity in 2022 – Fox News

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With less than a year to go before the 2022 midterm elections, the Republican Party is staring at an opportunity of truly historic proportions. Even before the shocking results of the gubernatorial races last month things looked good, all signs were pointing to "yes" on taking back Congress. But the win in Virginia and narrow defeat in deep blue New Jersey have changed the map. What had looked like solid gains, could now turn out to be completely transformational.

In the wake of the 2020 election the conventional wisdom was that a kind of trade had taken place. Democrats had solidified their gains among suburban White voters but Republicans had made deep inroads into a more diverse working-class demographic.

VOTER TSUNAMI BEGINS TO DROWN DEMOCRATS

It was a deal that most, though not all, conservatives were happy with, a coalition with greater growth potential. But after this years elections, Republicans must be asking themselves, "Can we have both?" And it sure seems like the answer is yes.

The current facts on the ground are daunting for Democrats. Joe Biden is about as unpopular as a Democrat president can be, the generic congressional polling has the GOP up an almost unprecedented 10 points, and aside from James Carville and a smattering of others, the left doesnt appear to understand it even has a problem.

This is an opportunity for Republicans to achieve something that they have not for at least a century: lasting institutional political power. The GOP has long been the "opposition party" in American life. Even sweeping victories by Richard Nixon in 1972 and Ronald Reagan in 1980 left Democrats in charge of the House of Representatives.

KEVIN MCCARTHY DROPS THE GLOVES ON BUILD BACK BETTER AND KICKS OFF 2022 MIDTERM FIGHT

Under President George W. Bush, Republicans controlled both houses of Congress for most of his first six years, but it was tight. Like Biden, the 43rd president entered the Oval Office with an evenly split Senate. In 2006 the Democrats would sweep back into control on Capitol Hill.

The chance at power that Republicans have today is of a completely different order of magnitude. Voters are rejecting Democrats ideas on education, the economy, the border, crime, you name it. Even on COVID, Biden has crashed in the polls, and while some Democrats seem keen on reducing COVID restrictions, their base, whom they have terrified for two years, doesnt really seem ready for that.

The trick for Republicans will be to isolate Democrats politically as a niche far-left party. Amazingly, this is a project a whole lot of Democrats, including Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, seem on board with. But, of course, none of this is a fait accompli.

For the GOP to pull off an historic victory they must do two things. First, be a big tent party that eschews purity tests, and second, keep a laser-like focus on the fumbling failures of the Democrat majority.

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In regard to casting a wide electoral net Republicans must draw a line between figures like Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., who have completely disqualified themselves, and those like former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, currently on a media blitz, who still have a role to play.

Cheney has made it her mission to harm Republican efforts at regaining power unless it totally rejects Donald Trump. Christie, the first major Republican to endorse Trump in 2016, is focused on winning, even if some of the former presidents allies see him as disloyal.

As regards attacking the record of the current Democrats, the GOP should be on offense everywhere. Fight them in the suburbs, fight them in the factories, fight them in the school boards, and the gas stations and the grocery stores.

And one last thing. To truly emerge from the shadow of permanent opposition into the sunshine of national political dominance Republicans have to act like they belong there.

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It is not enough to paint America as the victim of progressive Democrat excesses, there must be a positive vision of something better.

If that happens, American politics could shift next year in ways that last a generation.

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Republicans vilification of Trump critics is ruining the US, says governor – The Guardian

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The Republican partys vilification of members of Congress who have criticized Donald Trump or supported bipartisan legislation is ruining America, New Hampshires governor, Chris Sununu, said on Sunday, adding another tacit voice to the small but growing internal opposition to the former president.

Sununu, seen as a rising star of the post-Trump right, attacked his colleagues in an interview on CNN, insisting that House Republicans have their priorities screwed up for seeking retaliation against 13 members who voted for Joe Bidens $1.2tn infrastructure bill.

Sununu was scathing when asked about the call for those members to be stripped of their committee assignments in the same week that only two Republicans vocal Trump critics Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger voted to censure their colleague Paul Gosar for tweeting a video showing him murdering the Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Thats kind of that social media mob mentality thats built up in this country where we dont agree with one issue so were going to attack them, were going to vilify one person or one individual. Weve got to get beyond that, because culturally, its really, really ruining America, he said.

Politics in its entirety on both sides of the aisle in Washington is screwed up. They got their priorities all wrong, they focus on the wrong things. They dont talk about balancing budgets, fixing healthcare, immigration reform, social security and Medicare instead we spend all of our time focusing on these nitpicky things.

He defended Cheney, who was ousted from her leadership role earlier this year by House Republicans after she challenged Trumps lie that his election defeat by Joe Biden was fraudulent.

Regarding Republicans failure to speak out against Gosar, a Trump loyalist, Sununu added: When a congressman says those things, of course they have to be censured Were talking about kicking people off committees because they dont like one vote or the other? Again, I just think they have their priorities screwed up.

Sununu is among a small number of senior, elected Republicans with the confidence to begin pushing back (although not directly) against Trumps domination of the party.

Glenn Youngkin won a surprise victory earlier this month in Virginias governors race after a campaign during which he deliberately kept Trump at arms length, yet did tacitly echo the former presidents talking points. Some saw his win as a new Republican playbook for navigating future elections minus the specter of Trump.

Meanwhile, Chris Christie, a former governor of New Jersey and one-time Trump adviser, has told party members they needed to renounce the conspiracy theories and truth deniers, the ones who know better and the ones who are just plain nuts. Trump, who is considering another presidential run in 2024, attacked Christie while attempting to seek credit for Youngkins victory.

Friction has also been reported in Trumps relationship with his protege Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor touted in Republican circles as the former presidents heir apparent and tipped for a likely 2024 White House run of his own. Trump is increasingly irritated by DeSantis soaring popularity, according to CNN, and has become obsessed with receiving credit for his rise.

A report in the Atlantic published on Sunday suggested that Trumps once iron-clad grip on the Republican party might finally be slipping, arguing that the recent series of developments point to the early stirrings of a Republican party in which Trump is sidelined.

However, Trump continues to raise millions of dollars for an as yet undeclared presidential candidacy, and sends out regular endorsements of state and national candidates he believes embody the principles of Trumpism.

Until recently, Sununu was believed to be among them, but he reportedly upset Republican colleagues earlier this month with his announcement that he was not interested in pursuing a seat in the US Senate.

According to Politico, both the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, and Rick Scott, chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, considered him the perfect candidate to help wrest chamber control from Democratic hands in the 2022 midterm elections, but were blindsided by his decision.

You just get so much more done as governor, Sununu told CNN on Sunday. Governors are the ones that have to implement and design programs, create opportunities, and we as governors have the best opportunity to offset some of the negative things coming out of Washington. The Senate and House really dont have any power to do that.

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The testing ground: how Republican state parties grow Trumpism 2.0 – The Guardian

Posted: at 5:11 pm

The website of the Oklahoma Republican party has a running countdown to the 2024 presidential election measured in Maga days, Maga hours, Maga minutes and Maga seconds Maga being shorthand for Donald Trumps timeworn slogan, Make America great again.

The state party chairman, John Bennett, a veteran of three combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, has described Islam as a cancer in our nation that needs to be cut out and posted a yellow Star of David on Facebook to liken coronavirus vaccine mandates to the persecution of Jewish people in Nazi Germany.

This is just one illustration of how Republican parties at the state level are going to new extremes in their embrace of Trump, an ominous sign ahead of midterm elections next year and a potential glimpse of the national partys future. Yet the radicalisation often takes place under the radar of the national media.

We are not a swing state and were nowhere near a swing state so no ones looking, said Alicia Andrews, chair of the Oklahoma Democratic party. And because no one is looking at Oklahoma, we are allowed to be way more extreme than a lot of states.

Andrews pointed to the example of a state law passed by the Republican majority in April that grants immunity to drivers who unintentionally injure or kill protesters and stiffens penalties for demonstrators who block public roadways.

Only three states passed it, with Oklahoma being the first, she said. And you know why? Because there wasnt national attention. We were talking about Florida passing it and Texas passing it. No one was even considering what was going on in Oklahoma and it quietly passed in Oklahoma.

Similarly, Andrew argues, while other states were debating critical race theory in schools, in Oklahoma a ban was rammed through with little coverage. Another concern is gerrymandering, the process whereby a party redraws district boundaries for electoral advantage.

Andrews, the first African American to lead the Oklahoma Democratic party, said: Our legislators are in a special session right now to review our maps and they are really eroding an urban core, taking at least 6,000 Hispanic Americans out of an urban district and moving them to a rural district, thus denuding their votes. I didnt think that they could make it worse but they are.

Oklahoma is a deep red state. As of August, its house and senate had 121 Republicans and 28 Democrats. It continues to hold Stop the Steal rallies pushing Trumps big lie that Joe Biden robbed him of victory in the presidential election.

Andrews warns that Republicans in her state are indicative of a national trend.

Their stated strategy is start at the municipal level, take over the state, take over the nation. So while everybodys talking about the infrastructure plan and the Build Back Better plan, theyre rubbing their hands together and making differences in states.

She added: Were like the testing ground for their most radical right exercises, and once they perfect it here, they can take it to other states.

Republican state parties rightward spiral has included promotion of Trumps big lie about electoral fraud, white nationalism and QAnon, an antisemitic conspiracy theory involving Satan-worshipping cannibals and a child sex-trafficking ring. It can find bizarre and disturbing expression.

Arizona staged a sham audit of the 2020 presidential election that only confirmed Bidens victory in the state. Last month in Idaho, when Governor Brad Little was out of the state, his lieutenant, Janice McGeachin, issued an executive order to prevent employers requiring employees be vaccinated against Covid-19. Little rescinded it on his return.

The Wyoming state party central committee this week voted to no longer recognise the congresswoman Liz Cheney daughter of the former vice-president Dick Cheney and a hardline conservative as a Republican, its second formal rebuke for her criticism of Trump and vote to impeach him for his role in the US Capitol attack.

Nina Hebert, communications director of the state Democratic party, said: Wyoming is not exempt from the extremism that Trump has intentionally cultivated and fuelled and continues to court today.

He was a popular figure in Wyoming in the 2016 election and he retains that popularity amongst voters in the state, which I think is the most red in the nation.

Gerrymandering is a longstanding problem, Hebert said, but Trumps gleeful celebration of the 6 January riot has opened floodgates.

They have created situations where Republican-controlled state legislatures have no reason to pretend even that theyre not just trying to hold on to power. This has become something that is acceptable within the Republican party.

The shift has also been evident in policy in Florida, Texas and other states where Republicans have taken aim at abortion access, gun safety, trans and voting rights. Often, zealous officials seem to be trying to outdo one another in outraging liberals, known as owning the libs.

The drift is not confined to red states. When Republicans in California, a Democratic bastion, sought to recall Governor Gavin Newsom, they rallied around a Trumpian populist in the conservative talk radio host Larry Elder rather than a more mainstream figure such as Kevin Faulconer, a former mayor of San Diego.

Kurt Bardella, an adviser to the Democratic National Committee who was once an aide to a leading California Republican, said: To me that was a bellwether. If even a state like California cant get a more moderate, pragmatic Republican party at the state level, theres really no hope for any of the parties in any state at this point.

Theyre leaning so hard into this anti-democratic, authoritarian, non-policy-based iteration and identity. The old adage, As goes California, so goes the country, well, look at what the California Republican party did and were seeing that play out across the board.

Like junior sports teams, state parties are incubators and pipelines for generations of politicians heading to Washington. The primary election system tends to favour the loudest and most extreme voices, who can whip up enthusiasm in the base.

Trump has been promiscuous in his endorsements of Maga-loyal candidates for the November 2022 midterms, among them Herschel Walker, a former football star running for the Senate in Georgia despite a troubled past including allegations that he threatened his ex-wifes life.

Other examples include Sarah Sanders, a former White House press secretary running for governor in Arkansas, and Karoline Leavitt, a 23-year-old former assistant press secretary targeting a congressional seat in New Hampshire.

This week, Amanda Chase, a state senator in Virginia and self-described Trump in heels, announced a bid for Congress against the Democrat Abigail Spanberger. Chase gave a speech in Washington on 6 January, hours before the insurrection, and was censured by her state senate for praising the rioters as patriots.

The former congressman Joe Walsh, who was part of the Tea Party, a previous conservative movement against the Republican establishment, and now hosts a podcast, said: I talked to these folks every day, and for people who think [members of Congress] Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert are nuts, they aint seen nothing yet.

The Republicans at the state and local level are way, way more gone than the Republicans in Washington. Were talking about grassroots voters and activists on the ground and eventually, to win a Republican primary at whatever level, every candidate has to listen to them.

So youre going to get a far larger number of wackadoodle Republicans elected to Congress in 2022 because they will reflect the craziness thats going on state and locally right now.

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Republicans more likely than Democrats to believe in heaven, say only their faith leads there – Pew Research Center

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Republicans and Democrats disagree about a lot of worldly things. One thing that unites majorities across parties, however, is the belief that this earthly life is not all there is. A large majority of Republicans along with a smaller but still substantial majority of Democrats believe in heaven, hell or some other form of life after death, according to a new Pew Research Center survey conducted Sept. 20-26, 2021.

Still, as on so many terrestrial matters, there are big differences between Republicans and Democrats in the specific beliefs they hold about life after death and who can obtain it.

Overall, nearly three-quarters (73%) of all U.S. adults believe in heaven, and a solid majority (62%) also believe in hell. More than eight-in-ten Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (85%) say they believe in heaven, compared with 64% of Democrats and Democratic leaners. Additionally, three-quarters of Republicans express belief in hell, compared with about half of Democrats (52%).

Pew Research Center conducted this survey partly to explore Americans views of the afterlife, including whether it exists and what it is like. For this report, we surveyed 6,485 U.S. adults from Sept. 20 to 26, 2021. All respondents to the survey are part of the Centers American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education, religious affiliation and other categories. For more, see the ATPs methodology. Here are the questions used for this report, along with responses, and its methodology.

A majority of Americans believe in both heaven and hell, including 74% of Republicans and 50% of Democrats. But about a third (35%) of Democrats say that they do not believe in either heaven or hell, compared with just 14% of Republicans who say this.

In fact, when given the option to express belief in some sort of afterlife aside from either heaven or hell, a quarter of all Democrats say that they do not believe in any afterlife at all, which is much higher than the share of Republicans who express the same view (9%).

The religious composition of the two parties helps to explain these findings. A large majority of Republicans identify as Christians, substantially higher than the share of Democrats who are Christians. Conversely, Democrats are much more likely than Republicans to be religiously unaffiliated describing themselves as atheists, agnostics or nothing in particular when asked about their religion. Large majorities of Christians in both parties believe in heaven, hell or both, including 95% of Republican and GOP-leaning Christians and 90% of Democratic Christians. And in addition to being more numerous in the Democratic Party, religious nones who are Democrats are far more inclined than religiously unaffiliated Republicans to say they believe in neither heaven nor hell (68% vs. 47%).

But even among those who believe in heaven, Democrats and Republicans also differ on who deserves to get in. In general, Republicans who believe in heaven are more likely to offer an exclusive vision of it as a place limited to those who are Christian or at least believe in God while Democrats tend to say they believe that heaven is open to many people regardless of their sectarian identities or beliefs about God.

Roughly two-thirds of Democrats who believe in heaven say people who do not believe in God can gain entry, while a third say nonbelievers are excluded. Among Republicans who believe in heaven, a greater share say nonbelievers cannot go there (52%) than say they can (45%).

Similarly, Christian Republicans are about twice as likely as Christian Democrats to say their religion is the one true faith leading to eternal life in heaven (40% vs. 21%), while Democrats are more likely to say that many religions can lead to eternal life in heaven (65% vs. 53%). And about half of Christian Democrats (53%) say some non-Christian faiths can lead to heaven, compared with just a third of Christian Republicans (35%) who agree.

One subject on which Republicans and Democrats often agree is what heaven and hell are like. Among people in both parties who believe in heaven, overwhelming shares say they think that in heaven, people are free from suffering, are reunited with loved ones who died previously, can meet God, and have perfectly healthy bodies. In the case of those who believe in hell, strong majorities of both Democrats and Republicans say that hell is a place where people experience physical and psychological suffering and become aware of the suffering they created in the world.

Note: Here are the questions used for this report, along with responses, and its methodology.

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