Jim Graff, the senior shaman at Faith Family Church in Victoria, penned a column that The Victoria Advocate published Sept. 29 in which he asserts the following: “Read history, and you’ll find all thirteen of our original colonies required political candidates to pass a religious test before holding public office. Visit our nation’s capitol, and you’ll see scriptures engraved on federal buildings. Read our Constitution, and you’ll notice God mentioned four times.”
And while that may have been true before the United States adopted its Constitution, the Joel Osteen-related “leader” did what many, if not most, of the right-wing evangelical fake-Christian churches do: Graff left out the rest of the story to lie to people. Because when New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the Constitution on June 21, 1788, the founders disavowed religious requirements to hold public office in this nation. In fact, a religious test is expressly forbidden in the United States Constitution. Article VI - Clause 3 states, “The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”
These kinds of lies are the exact propaganda Christian nationalists spew. Katherine Stewart laid this bare in her book, “The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism.” And it’s what Kristin Kobes Du Mez writes about in “Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.”
Why is this important?
Well, I’ve been in an email “discussion” with the Victoria Advocate’s new Managing Editor Shawn Akers, who has rejected this blog post as an op-ed column. He rejected the submission, first, because he wrote he would never call anyone a Nazi. Then he rejected my suggestion of changing “Nazi” to “fascist.” Finally, he rejected the content because he didn’t think it was factual.
That, I thought, was an interesting irony because his introductory column to The Victoria Advocate’s readers, states, “My faith in Jesus Christ is a huge part of my life, and again, I am grateful for the opportunities He has presented me. But don’t get (me) [sic] wrong. I am uncompromising in my dedication to journalistic integrity, something that is very rarely seen these days in the media. When it comes to the news, and for the good of the community, I refuse to compromise the impartiality to everyone that I was taught in my younger years to uphold.”
In his emails to me, Akers also touted his longer stint in journalism than my 22 years. He started as a sports writer, which is real journalism. I respect those folks but also note they have a little more flexibility with their opinions and style than straight news journalists. But then he moved into working for NASCAR and then a charismatic Christian media outlet. Still, his rejection — nay, his denial — of facts, given his introductory column, mystified me.
What further mystified me was when I reached out to him as a gesture of journalistic collegiality on the Advocate’s coverage of the controversy in Bloomington over the water utilities. I suggested that the Advocate could find a Texas Attorney General’s Office ruling that nonprofits carrying out a government function on behalf of a government were subject to Texas sunshine laws. As a result, the newspaper could file a public records request because the approach by the people in Bloomington would go nowhere. The newspaper would be doing its job to report what the Bloomington utilities folks trying to hide.
Then it dawned on me. I remembered this swipe at journalism in general in that introductory column, “I am uncompromising in my dedication to journalistic integrity, something that is very rarely seen these days in the media.” That reeks of Trumpism. His response echoed that of other Trumpers with whom I have jousted.
Which brings me back to Faith Family Church, where he worships. As does Michael Cloud, the right-wing “Sedition Caucus,” a.k.a. Freedom Caucus, member of Congress from Victoria. Akers asserted to me that he knew what an editor’s job is, so I’m confused why he failed to fact-check and catch Graff's lie.
I am aware this reeks of a personal attack on Akers. It isn’t. It’s a deconstruction of the influencers’ and leadership’s approach to the local news. This is an attack on the Advocate’s betrayal of the Crossroads. Staffing its newsroom with Trumper leadership and greenhorn writers who will be guided under that leadership. It leads me to predict that the editorials, opinion columns and letters to the editor will not only lean radical-right but will also lie or be allowed to lie to make their cases. Opposing opinions need not apply, thank you very much. Second, while one would think local coverage would be immune from this type of journalism, those with favored positions and views will receive favorable coverage. Others will be ignored. Accountability will apply only to the Advocate’s enemies. (Richard Nixon, anyone?) All this despite possible assertions to the contrary. I’ve seen this elsewhere.
It looks like the Trumpers have taken over to make the second oldest newspaper in Texas a right-wing rag. Victoria and the Crossroads will be the poorer for this. Worse is that institutional and governmental behaviors will fester in the dark instead of cleansed by First Amendment sunlight. And as we know from 1930s Germany, being silent is being complicit. Finally, lest I be pilloried for this blog, remember what the UN Secretary General, Dag Hammarskjöld, wrote in 1957 in the book “Markings,” published in 1963, “The madman shouted in the marketplace and no-one stopped to answer him. Thus it was confirmed that his thesis was incontrovertible.”
