Bluestem is quite late to Frederick Carlson's June 24, 2019 A Recent Local Controversy Reveals the Theocratic Heart of ‘Project Blitz,’ but since our romantic partner's great-grandfather Charles R. Crawford spent some time at a camp there one winter, we've been following that local controversy.
The reaction of Minnesota Senate Republicans to the Minnesota State Historical Society signage was baffling to both of us, since Michael's family stories (which he heard from his father in Dakota) include the Bdote name. Carlson writes:
The Christian nationalist intentions of Project Blitz have also received much attention, but a remarkable episode in Minnesota this past state legislative session may be a harbinger of a more profoundly theocratic politics on the horizon.
Much has happened since RD broke the story last year of Project Blitz—a stealth state legislative campaign of the Christian right that framed much of their agenda in terms of religious freedom. Controversies over legislation based on model bills have broken out across the country on issues ranging from LGBTQ civil rights and discrimination in adoption and foster care, to abortion access, and teaching the Bible in public schools. The Christian nationalist intentions of Project Blitz have also received much attention, but a remarkable episode in Minnesota this past state legislative session may be a harbinger of a more profoundly theocratic politics on the horizon.
Earlier this year, Minnesota state Sen. John Marty was perplexed during a committee hearing. State Sen. Mary Kiffmeyer, the Republican chair of the Senate State Government Finance Committee, had proposed a $4 million cut in the budget for the Minnesota Historical Society that might have resulted in significant layoffs around the state. Asked by a Democratic senator why she proposed such a steep cut, Kiffmeyer said it was because of “controversy,” though she refused to say what the controversy consisted of.
Marty, following up on his colleague’s questioning, wondered aloud what it even meant to have “a secret controversy,” when one of Kiffmeyer’s Republican colleagues stepped in to explain that it was about, what he called “revisionist history” at the 200-year-old Historic Fort Snelling. There had been a flap over how the historical site had expanded its educational mission beyond the fort’s military history, to include the Dakota name for the area, Bdote, “with history spanning 10,000 years,” including “Native peoples, trade, soldiers and veterans, enslaved people, immigrants, and the changing landscape.” Some Republican legislators didn’t like it.
While the cut passed the Senate, it was ultimately blocked in budget negotiations with the house. Now, it turns out that Fort Snelling was not the only controversy on Kiffmeyer’s mind. In December 2018, Kiffmeyer along with 25 members of the Minnesota Legislative Prayer Caucus—the state action arm of Project Blitz—had written to the nonprofit Minnesota Historical Society, objecting to a talk scheduled for March 2019 by a distinguished scholar and law professor, Steven K. Green, on the theme of his 2015 book, Inventing a Christian America: The Myth of the Religious Founding. They claimed that the Society was “promoting a narrative about our nation’s history and founding that is patently false,” and that it would be “prudent” for the Society “to cancel Prof. Green’s presentation or, better yet, allow us as Christian legislators in Minnesota, to debate this issue with Prof. Green.”
Green later recounted the episode in Church & State magazine, noting that “the Caucus objected to my upcoming lectures, calling my book biased and one-sided—though admitting they had not read it.”)
Minnesota Historical Society Director Kent Whitworth replied that Green was a respected scholar (detailing how that was so) and would welcome respectful questions and dialogue. But that wasn’t good enough. Although the Prayer Caucus reiterated their demand in another letter, the program proceeded as planned. Afterward, Prayer Caucus state director, Rev. Dale Witherington, along with several Caucus members wrote again, this time demanding that the Society schedule someone who represented their point of view (which they had been casting as the “truth”) to speak or debate before “we begin reviews of the budgetary requests of the MHS.”
Witherington wrote that “we are here to encourage prayer, and to defend our religious freedom. The third pillar for the existence of our Caucus is to preserve our Judeo-Christian heritage. Prof. Green’s argument is a direct attack on that pillar. We cannot let that go. We will not be silenced.”
Sen. Marty*, who is a Democratic member of the finance committee, thought it was odd and concerning that the letter came from Witherington. “The minister, who is director of their prayer caucus,” he told RD, “is not a member of the legislature, is not a state employee, and should have no control over the state budget for the Historical Society.” . . .
The secret controversy then, is actually that the Minnesota Legislative Prayer Caucus made good on their veiled threat: that they would axe the budget unless the Historical Society acceded to their demand to commandeer the program. That the effort to punish the Historical Society in this way failed, should not obscure the fact that they tried.
Read the entire, well-documented backstory at ReWire. It's particularly obnoxious that Kiffmeyer made the Dakota part of the Fort Snelling area the "revisionist" history whipping post, when documents show that the implied threat was created over another matter entirely.
Read Dave Mindeman's take on the story in the MN Political Roundtable post, Religious Legislating, which this tool:
A tracking organization, BlitzWatch.org, has been following the workings of Operation Blitz. They have been tracking 4 bills in the Minnesota 2019-20 legislature. Sen. Dan Hall has been prominent on two of them.
Note: Not everything is bad here – John Marty has a religious bill (not part of Operation Blitz) as a counter to Dan Hall’s bill. Marty’s is a sense of the Senate bill regarding Religious Freedom Day that stated the Jefferson/Madison model of religion in government.
At Salon, Paul Rosenberg reports in Under Trump, Christian nationalists are playing to win — and liberals are finally fighting back:
It happened earlier this year in Minnesota, with threatened drastic cuts to the State Historical Society budget, as reported by Frederick Clarkson at Religion Dispatches the same day as the "Do No Harm" hearing. And it’s happening again with the VA’s decision.
Clarkson’s reporting was his latest on Project Blitz — a Christian right stealth state legislative campaign first exposed by him early last year, and reported here at Salon. As I wrote then, its guiding vision is heavily influenced by pseudo-historian David Barton, who “has been discredited by every American historian I know,” according to evangelical historian John Fea. (See Fea’s latest on Barton here.) The myth of America’s founding as a Christian nation, and our supposed need to restore what’s been lost, are its guiding lights, with three proposed tiers of legislation. . . .
One figure who features prominently in Minnesota's Project Blitz is Dale Witherington. Clarkson writes in the ReWire story:
At times, Witherington’s mission sounds more like the leader of an expedition for colonial conquest than a lobbyist seeking to influence legislation. Citing Biblical passages, for example, he declares that God says “we are citizens of Heaven… sent to be Ambassadors to Earth.” He says this “means we have been specifically sent by God to this place to this location to whatever our jobs are… To plant the flag as Ambassadors, carrying the message of the Gospel in the sphere of influence God has placed us in.”
Since 2017, he has, according to his LinkedIn profile, simultaneously waged his RestoreMN project while also serving as the state director of the Minnesota Legislative Prayer Caucus, and as director of community engagement for the Minnesota Family Council, the state political affiliate of the Family Policy Alliance and the Family Research Council.
Since the Minnesota Legislative Prayer Caucus is but one of 32 state prayer caucuses organized by the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation to carry out Project Blitz, it could be that the drama of the Minnesota Historical Society will be the exception. But given the unambiguous intentions of the organizers of Project Blitz, the efforts to replace the facts of history with the ethos of Christian nationalism en route to conservative Christian dominion is much more likely. . . .
Readers may remember our 2018 post, Wed. morning MN Prayer Caucus bible study in State Office Building might not be for everyone. At that time, Senator Dan Hall and former representative Abigail Whelan were co-chairs of the caucus; according to Mindeman, the group's leadership is now:
And there, as the chairman of this caucus is Senate District 56’s Senator Dan Hall. The three co-chairs are Senator Andrew Mathews (District 15), Rep. Matt Grossel (District 2A), and Rep. Jeff Backer (District 12A) – but Senator Hall has been the most prominent supporter.
Some of the December 2018 prayer caucus members--Jim Knoblach (who suspended his campaign after his daughter alleged that he had sexually abused her); Kathy Lohmer and Cindy Pugh (defeated in the November 2018 elections); Jim Newberger (lost a US Senate challenge to Amy Klobuchar); Matt Dean (retired in House, ran for and lost the GOP gubernatorial endorsement); and Whelan, who retired with the intention to move to her fiance's country--no longer serve in the Minnesota legislature.
*Roseville DFLer John Marty is the son of Martin Marty, the prominent American Lutheran scholar who is, Wikipedia tells us, "religious scholar who has written extensively on religion in the United States."
Photo: The Minnesota State Historical Society signage that supposedly prompted a proposed budget cut; a June ReWire article suggests another MSHS action prompted the proposed budget cut. Via the Pioneer Press.
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Kiffmeyer is our very own MN version of Mitch!
Posted by: Susanne Carol Engstrom | Jul 28, 2019 at 08:54 PM