nomic understanding among religious leadership broadly understood. i am not convinced -- i think that the same thing applies to the social conservative group as it does to the economic conservative movement, in terms of the need for win someness and respect for other people. so that we need to speak with great love, especially on questions like abortion, because women find themselves in arduous situations very often. not the majority of women are having abortions because they are having abortions their third and fourth abortion but i think we need to speak with -- it is really different as a priest when i get up and preach on abortion in my parish which i do, and contraception, which i do, and i've heard confessions or on homosexuality, which i do,

and i've heard confessions and i know people struggling with these issues and i always have that in front of my mind when i'm speaking about it. and i think what we need to do is exactly what jesus did when he -- and now i'm speaking from a theological point of view and i'll let you political thinks put it into your own belly lick. but jesus when he engages the woman who objectively has committed adultery and under the mosaic law, the penalty was stoning, doesn't say don't stone her. first he engages the woman. not directly at first. but she has this sense that he loves her and he deals with her accusers and establishes himself on her side and then he finally says to her in the end, go and sib sin no more, which makes the whole story. that is the hard thing. it is to hold up justice and

still permeate it with love. because justice without love becomes cruelty. and i think that is what we need to do. now how would you translate that into political wonkery, that is your job to do that. i don't think, though, as a point of fact that abortion is a losing proposition because all of the polls indicate that more and more people are becoming at least to some extent, more pro-life than they were before. i think we're on a different curve with regard to homosexual, quote, unquote, marriage. i think we're on a different curve there but i would apply the same thing to that to engage people and love people first and foremost and then try and lower the passions and discuss these things reasonably. so that is how i would -- i promised this person. >> we are out of time. >> i just promised this person.

and wouldn't answer too long no matter what he says. okay. don't provoke me. >> very quickly, let's see if we can be a good team. how are we going to deal today with the olinski progressives that are teaching at our universities? >> we are going to uncover what they are doing, because a lot of people don't know what that means, they don't know who olin ski was and we need to discover it and respond flightily because that is the -- politely because that is the ant this is. and it is vulgar and this is where we have people around the world that are civil respond with civility. father will question in the hall signing books. thank you, father.

[ applause ] . here are a view of the comments we've received on 114th congress. >> my comment is nothing will change in washington, d.c. as the previous caller said, it is too much corruption. some of these senators been there too long it is time for them to go. give the younger ones a chance. new ideas. this country is on the wrong path. we're not going to get anywhere as long as these senators stay in that same position. john mccain and them, they've been down there, the lindsey graham. it is the same old thing. it is time for changes. people with rourkeworking too hard in this country, having to work two and three jobs to take care of their family and still not getting anywhere. something has to give. >> i'm looking at the over all

conversations that you have been having for the last three or four months and the congress the government is so huge, what can they do when they go in there today? i'll tell you. they could be like the leaders that they should have been, the leaders that i was raised around, the men that looked over at the communities that they lived in and said these are our children. these are our young men. and these are our daughters. what can we do in a realistic way to make this a better place to live. i would adjure anyone that will carry power and yield the idea of wisdom in the faces of us, having to work and pay for it. we're living a pretty good life here. let's take what you got and the opportunity to do, and do something right and quit playing games with what you think you're going to value in life that you will have to give away one day. >> my question to the 114th

congress that it is going to do nothing for the american people. i can't understand how is it that a congressman becomes good people until they get elected. when they go to washington the lies, the propaganda and it just seems disturbing to me that if things like everything president obama does is wrong, and it is sadening to me because i'm a pastor and i heard the people come on, your colleague just came on and said he was a christian. what jesus said, if you do this to the least of them, you have also done it to me. >> and continue to let us know what you think about the programs you are watching. call us at 202-626-34 hundred and send us comments at cspan.org and join the cspan conversation, like us on facebook and follow us on twitter. now a discussion about

religious faith and politics. the danforth center of washington university partnered with southern methodist center on presidential history to explore topics including the teaching of religion in the public schools and how the president's faith affects his foreign policy agenda. this is an hour and a half. >> i'm delighted to see so many of you here. it is a nice day and you've come in after lunch. and delighted to have you. i will chair this session on religion and policy. and i've just stepped down as chair of the history department so i can still be authoritarian and i'm going to try to keep the speakers on time so there are a lot of time for the questions i'm sure you have about the fascinating issues they are going to raise today. this session is on religion and policy and we move from the

theoretical to the practical as we look at the way the role of religion influences and has been influenced by policy decisions that range from teachering about religion in public schools to implementing american foreign policy. it is a great pleasure to introduce the first speaker who is my friend and colleague, professor mark chancey professor of religious studies at smu. and even though i've known mark for a long time, the chance to serve as moderator gave me a welcome opportunity to figure out what he's been doing all of these years. professor chancey is a biblical study scholar and his contributions to the field have changed the way we've understood galilee at the time of jesus christ and shortly there after. his first book, the myth of gentile galilee, in 2002 asserting that the overwhelming majority of galilee's

populations were jews and to do this study he looked at the gospels and the writing of josephus and published arc archeological excavation sources. and he used the same sources in the greco roman culture and the galilee of jesus and also in 2005 which challenged the conventional understanding of the culture of galilee at the time. and he argued that the crucial change in galilee's culture became greco roman several centuries after the time we had generally understood it to be the case and only after the arrival of a large roman garr isson in the second century. his paper today grows out of the more recent and public involvement in the constitutional political and academic issues of religion and

public school teaching. he is on the front lines of critiquing the texas essential knowledge and skills of social studies. he is also focused on the biblical studies curriculum as they have been taught in the past in dallas public schools and as school systems are trying to implement them currently most notably the hobby lobby curriculum proposed for the oklahoma public schools. today his topic, teaching all about religion in red state america, is something he has a lot of first-hand knowledge of. our other three panelists are visitors to smu and i'm delighted to be able to welcome them here. i'm pleased to introduce our second spacer professor allison collis greene. she received her ph.d in history from yale university in 2010. she's an assistant professor at mississippi state university and she's also been selected as a fellow in the young scholars in

american religion cohort for 2013 to 15 for the center for religion and american culture at purdue university. professor greene has already identified several significant topics relating to religion and policy as the focus of her research on religion in the 20th century. her first book, no depression in heaven, economic crisis and religion realignments in america's empire is to be published by oxford university press. she uses the experiences of men and women in the mississippi delta and arkansas as a specific focus to examine broader questions of how religious institutions responded to the depression. her study allows her to trace the changing appraisal of social and religious institutions by both lay people and clergy, as well as the shift from church-based charity to state provided social services.

her second project takes on another historical topic with equally profound contemporary relevance. it is tentatively entitled god's green earth religion race and the environment since the guilded age, which i'm sure you can understand will be extremely controversial. today she's going to address the interaction of church and state in the establishment of welfare in both the new deal and the present. it is also a great pleasure to welcome our third speaker, professor jennifer graber who is an associate professor in the department of religious studies at the university of texas. her work focuses primarily on the intersections of religion and violence particularly in american prisons and in relation with native americans. her first book, the furnace of affliction prisons and religion in ante bella america published

by the university of north carolina press in 2011 explored the intersection of church and state during the founding of the nation's first prisons. she looked explicitly at evangelical protestants efforts to make religion center to emerging practices and philosophies about prison discipline from 1790 through the 1850s. initially the idea of these evangelicals about inmates suffering in redemption were accepted. but later over time officials became less receptive and as you might imagine prisoners opposed some of them. debates about religion in prison had much broader ramification about church-state separation and she can show how protestant reformers failed to convert

large numbers of in mates or to make prisons keep their values instead they adopted american morals of virtues and citizen so they no longer saw afflictions as a necessary prelude to grace but rather the required punishment for breaking the nation's laws. professor graber has another project underway which focuses on religious transformations in indian and secular communities who settle in the area that is now southwest oklahoma. today's paper returns to a particular application of religious and violence in drone war to indian war, protecting and liberating innocent women and children. it is a change of title or an elab oration of title from your program. it is also a great pleasure to welcome the final speaker of this panel professor andrew preston who has perhaps traveled the furthest to be with us today. he teaches american history at

cambridge university where he is a fellow of cleric college. he's an expert on american diplomatic history, he has numerous collar ships in that area including the war counsel with george bundy and the ncs, published in 2006, nixon in the world, u.s. world relations which he edited with frederick longo valley publiced by oxford university press in 2008 and america and the world, a history in documents with the war with spain to the war on terror published by princeton in 2014 which he edited with mark atwood lawrence and our very own jeffrey engal. professor preston has focused on religion and foreign affairs, the book sword of the spirit, shield of faith, religion in american war and diplomacy was

ch was published in 2012. how america's war in the world has been shaped by the believe that god had a special place for the united states. professor preston explored a wide variety of strains of religious ferver from liberal to conservative passivist to militant and internationalist and isolationist looking at american international issues from the colonial wars to the 21st century. the style and substance of this important work were recognized when professor preston received the charles taylor prize in 2013 for the best canadian work of litter -- literary nonfiction. i think all of our writers are jealous of that particular award. today he addresses america's mission in the age of obama. so wee look forward to all of that. thank you.

>> now that kathleen has offered such a gracious open to our presentation. i'll address kathleenwellman. weeks ago, professor warned of laws in the social studies text book that the state board was reviewing. these books make moses the original founding father and credit him for virtually every distinctive feature of american government, she observed. some texts were so skewed, she lamented that students might even end up, quote believing that moses was the first american. an erroneous conclusion in wellman's estimation. if moses is startlingly prominent in the text books, it is because the text books were

written to cover social studies standards created by the texas board of education in 2009 and 2010. these standards depict moses as someone, quote, whose principles informed the american founding documents and they portray the ten commandments as a direct precursor to the declaration of in dependence and the constitution. they identify biblical law and the judeo-christian legal tradition as the starting points for american law and government. this is what texas wants its students to know about moses and the ten commandments. social studies traditionally has a civic function. the purpose is to cult nate the knowledge, skills and virtues necessary for responsible citizenship.

thus, what social studies standards say about religion functionally represents the minimal knowledge about religion that the state want its citizens to have. and what the standards say about religion is determined through a political process. now texas is one of the few states to have a board of education elected through partisan elections. so what the standards say is determined by a partisan process. democrats and republicans vie against each other to shape the content and factions within each party vie against each other, such as tea party republicans and moderate republicans. the board is dominated by republicans, the standards were formed by a republican-dominated on the board and they attempt to

teach students to look at religion with particular red colored sensitivities. i'll show how the current standards treat religion especially religion in america, and the so-called world religions. i'll put the current standards into historical per spect spiff by -- perspective by investigating what previous guidelines have been said about religion in social studies. because of the sheer size of texas's text book market, politicians are eager to appeal to state's specifications from texas text books have made its way into elsewhere. so the state board of education effects what students learn across the country. the texas curriculum standards are known as teks.

for texas essential knowledge and skills. teks. the current are a revision of the 1998 teks but most of the 1998 references to religion were general in nature, whereas many of those in the current teks have very specific agendas behind them. the most obvious example of this for the current teks is the portrayal of the bible as the well spring of american political thought. this is a signature believe of an ideology that i call christian americanism. an ideology that believes that the american's founders ip tended to to -- intended it to be a christian nation and america has drifted from the christian heritage and it is a patriotic and religious duty to return the country to its true christian identity.

and here i refer you back to kate engals paper this morning on the founders. when the 15-member board created the current teks in 2009 and 2010. seven of the ten republican members, including the board chair, worked very very, very hard to work this ideology into the social studies standards. and they were usually able to pick up the extra vote they needed to get an eight-person majority. they could get it from the other three republicans or occasionally from one of the democrats. this seven-member block devoted to this ideology regularly presented christian american arguments assin disputable historical facts. they did it in the board meetings and in public speeches and in the writings and in the comments to journalists, they appointed amateur historians famous for the views as the board's experts to tell the

board what the students should learn about american history and here i refer to the discussions of david barton and peter marshall amateur historians who were the board's appointed experts. the transparency of this christian-americanist agenda is illustrated by board member cynthia dunbar's prayer at the may 21st 2010 board meeting. i believe, she prayed no one can read the history of our country without realizing that the good book and the spirit of the savior have from the beginning been our guiding geniuses. whether we look to the first charter of virginia or the charter of new england or the charter of massachusetts bay, or the fundamental orders of connecticut, the same objective is present. a christian land governed by christian principals. i believe the entire bill of

rights came into being because of the knowledge our forefathers had of the bible and their belief in it. i like to believe we are living today in the spirit of the christian religion. now in the context of board politics this was a very provocative prayer. what is ironic about it, is that it was not her own composition. in fact she was quoting a prayer by none other than chief justice earl warren, the supreme court justice who presided over the warren court and issued the decisions prohibiting school sponsored bible reading and prayer in public schools. even this hero, a church-state separationism, really believed deep down that the united states

was a christian nation. now, i would note that justice warren offered the prayer not a governmental function but at a private prayer breakfast in contrast to dunbar who offered it at a state board of education meeting. i tell this anecdote because i think it illustrates how transparent and obvious this political and religious agenda was even at the time. and the block with this agenda was very successful in raising the christian profile in government teks. they added religious revivals, to phil is laughly billy graham. they put in a new standard on the quote, meaning and historical significance of the motto, in god we trust. we inserts into a standard formerly devoted toten lightenment, references to thomas equineas and john calvin. one of the most contested

editions was the creation of a new high school standard requiring students to quote, examine the reasons the founding fathers protected religious freedom in america and guaranteed its free exercise saying that congress shall make no law in establishment of religion and prohibiting the free exercise of and compare and contrast this to the phrase of separation of church and state. the standard sponsors very very clearly intended their standard to suggest that the founders never envisioned separation of church and state. conservative members highlighted the religious motives of the earliest english colonists and the purityians and inserted names of the founding era who were lauded as paragons of piety. there are a ton of names who

might be worthy of study for any number of reasons, but the reason they are there is because they once said something nice about jesus. traditions other than christianity received more in the 2010 tekses than in the 1998 teks but not as much as christianity christianity. in the current standard, it is the only religion that the teks acknowledge as internally diverse. so students learn about protestants, catholics and eastern orthodox christians but they do not necessarily learn about differences within any other tradition. in general, in the teks, religious originating in asia receive very little explicit consideration, there were two earlier standards on so-called world religions. they are still there that require the study of buddhism

confucious hinduism and islam and judaism and they christian-americanist seekism, a reflection of the successful lobbying effort out of the sheikh community and muslims and another standard on jewish christian and muslim contact in europe asia and north africa. it is related with the holocaust, the origins of monolithyism and two references to america's per pourted biblical roots. islam is the study of several critiques and some refer to history and some are contemporary in focus. in general, the contemporary teks about islam associate it with terrorism. the most explicit link quote

radical islamic fundamentalism to quote, palestinian era and the growth of al qaeda and 9/11. one standard's tribute responsibility for quote on going conflict with israel, solely to arab rejection of israel. that standard does not technically refer to islam but has obvious conceptional kinship to those that do. the overal objection the teks give is that islam is the association with terrorism conflict and hostility to israel. as an aside, i would note that the board rejected a motion by two democrats to add a standard to the teks on, quote other acts of terrorism prior to 9/11 including the u.s. calvary against american indians, the texas rangers against mexican

mesh americans -- meshes and the ku klux klan here. for some reason that did not end up in the official state standards. how does the place of religion in these present teks compare to religion in previous social study guidelines. to find out i worked through 99 years worth of state educational documents. went back as early as i could go. they were of different genres and there were suggestions and sometimes mandatory and they came from different offices and agencies but they contained general comparison and it baz very interesting. what did i discover? you sometimes hear the idea that religion was once prevalent in the social studies curriculum and somehow it has been taken out. and i would suggest this is really not the case. historically in texas, what has

happened is that religion has been addressed almost exclusively in world history classes which are generally western religion classes. it has been very much focused on christian encounters with other religions, judaism as a predecessor to christyianeity and from the medieval period on wards and that is it. asian religions typically have barely appeared except in exceptions of british colonialism. the only real exception to this is a 1957 cold war era guide for social studies that very much emphasizes that religion is at the heart of american identity and i think those noeftal jick at the time for curricula promoted social studies are remembering the years of the cold war. that is the only time it showed up in texas standards. in 1998, reform lated standards included general references to

religion, discover the contributions of ethic and national groups for american identity and general references. but none of the specific references we find today, to america's christian roots and particularly nondemonizing islam as the other. in the 21st century in a time of changing religious and ethnic demographics in america, at a time of uncertainty regarding conflict around the world when islam seems to be interpreted as the other the stakes are high for those determining what public schools will teach about religion and what sense of american identity social studies classes will convey. thank you. [ applause ] . hi. i'm aliceon greene. i teach at mississippi state

university. my paper is titled the welfare of faith but i think i could call it some things texas does not want its students to know about religious and u.s. history. so when barack obama took office in 2009 supporters celebrated his inaugural addresses, oak hes of -- echoes of jefferson, lincoln and roosevelt. they hoped he would emulate roosevelt. and roosevelt ousted in a crisis and in the face of worldwidein stability stability. in 1933 they clamored the government to intervene in the suffering they faced. from the left to the right the religious leaders sell braceleted the handoff of the -- they celebrated.handoff of the reform efforts. 76 years later when obama took office, religious entities were private administrators of public welfare funds.

they would roll out support for international relief and anti-poverty since the 1950s. after clinton signed off on the 1996 welfare reforms, religious organizations claimed a more direct role in welfare. by the time of the inauguration the christian organizations simultaneously controlled and denounced federal support for those in need. now contemporary arguments about the relative effectiveness of volunteer aid agencies have two narratives both of which take the new deal as a turning point. advocates on the one hand of a privatized state stressed the new deal power of charitable institutions to care for the needy. in 2012 franklin gram, head of samaritan's purse, itself an evangelical agency held on international funds for aid work voiced this in an interview with

abc's christianamen pour everything was provided by the church and the government took that away from the church. so by graham's narrative, this is thisn't -- the churches didn't just lose a public role in charity, they lost the moral authority to cultivate good citizens by tieing aid to prescribed behaviors. on the other hand, scholars and activists who defend the welfare state tell a very different story. >> which the churches play very little part. scholars of poverty and welfare stress the much longer history of public aid from the mid 19th century forward. yet the public agencies built on private charities work and racialized engendered notions that some poor deserved help and some poor did not. the new deal we have those inequity news a safety net that disproportionally benefited white men and it forced women

and minority to means test when it covered them at all. and so for the new deal disjustices is not to privatize welfare but to restructure it. the divide is clear. activisms of private advocates of a safety net show the state and public agencies in individual welfare. but both camps focus almost entirely historically on the urban north and west where both private and public agencies proved most powerful. so basically, both parties focus on the very best historical version of their preferred models. so what i want to ask today is what about the places where people relied almost entirely on a very limited scope of voluntary largely church-based aid all the way up to 1933. what kind of help did those agencies offer? who did they offer it to and

under what conditions? how did they fund that work? how did they navigate the greatest economic crisis since the civil war? and how did their work change in response to the new deal and in its aftermath. i'm goes to use as my example today memphis tennessee and the surrounding delta regions of mississippi and arkansas because that is where i focus my work and a region that provides an interesting set of answers to these questions. the city and the country needed voluntary aid until the 1930s. by that time memphis was a city of 250,000 people a majority of them white but 38% african-american. the delta, most part of the delta were a majority of black. the region provides insight into the distinct forms of aid available to black and white southerns in a jim crow order. private charities most of them religious, accounted for 76% of relief expenditures in memphis

in 1930. and for nearly 100% in the delta. between the civil war and the great depression, white protestant women and missions built schools, orphanages and settlement houses to reach needy whites but served only those they deemed deserving and appropriately deferent. concern that the members not be deemd a burden on the larger proddest about community, catholic and others served their own community and also reached people beyond those community. black churches women's societies and fraternal orders provided the only support for african-americans in need and they established schooled and medical needs in the city and the countryside. yet the need these organizations sought to alleviate outpaced the resources they could gather even before the depression and then disaster struck. it struck early in memphis and the delta. a record-setting brought in the

summer of 1930 parched the cotton in the fields as the prices for what little remained plummeted to a third of the previous years rates and this is a region that depended almost entirely on cotton. food crops shrifles before the cotton. a wave of bank failures swept the nation and those who put by little money saw their savings disappear. reports soon emerged of -- the red cross steps in and provides emergency aid after a lot of wrangling on the part of local politicians in mississippi. and soon reporters travel to the region and they talk about women walking miles for food, their feet wrapped in sacks, begging for medical aid for babies dying of malnutrition. and there are stories that emerge from the region of child lying under trees and dying before aid can tom to them. so when they tell you that the

depression didn't hurt and no one was starving in america, there is evidence to the contrary. so they faced three crises at once. the number of people who needed help sky rocketed. the defense that the poor deserved their lot fell apart in the state of widespread kries and last donations to charities plummeted while any savings they had vanished in the same bank failures that crushed farmers and the middle class. churches and charities tried to help. in december of 1929 memphis's salvation army the largest charity in the city had served 1700 meals. a year later in 1930, in december that number ballooned to 6500 meals and by april of 1930 they served more than 10,000 meals which was ten times more than one year previous. this the salvation army was a setter for men and drained the swimming pool to make room for men to sleep on the pool floor.

while the salvation army expanded, most other charities cut back. women's clubs an fraternal orders and quasireligion private organization suspended their work or disbanded altogether. and churches fared worse. many struggled to keep their doors open. between 1929 and 1932, national income domed by more than 30%. until 1933 church giving held steady as a proportion of national income but we are still talking about a 50% loss which proved crippling at the demands on church resources escalated. the churches caught benevolent spending first. the president of the southern baptist convention explained in 1931, we're putting off the lord's cause while we try to settle with our other creditors. now it was a fairly common sentiment. when the money ran out the churches turned the spending

inward, not outward. as they faced the suffering before them in their own inability to alleviate it, even conservative religious leaders joined social workers an hungry americans called for the federal government to step in. the barrage of legislation that roosevelt signed in the first days of 1933 approved a clear line between federal and private relief relief. the federal relief administration. it replaced herbert hoover's loans with grant to the states for relief projects. headed by ohioan harry hopkins it is the first program to put funds toward employment relief and to direct aid for the suffering administered at the state and local level. also the program that directly engaged with work once by private organizations. in june of 1933, hopkins stipulated as of july 1st only public agencies could administer

funds. now in practice leaders of private and religious agencies often transition to public positions and many private agencies including all of catholic charities in chicago gained public certification. still, hopkins decree established a clear boundary between the public and the private realms for farra and subsequent programs. the public and the private another. as significant as that boundary was the vastly larger pool of resources the federal government could leverage. again i'll use memphis as an example. at the peek of private giving in 1931, they raised a total of 88 cents per person in aid dollars. 85% of that was private. three years later by 1934 with the new deal in full swing they received 7.21 dollars per capita in aid but private contributions amounted to only 13 cents per capita, 1.6% of the total. so that is a swing from 85%

private aid to 98% public aid over the course of three years. the swing is easier to track in the city where there is data but even more pronounced in the delta where starvation remained commonplace. because it was the only new deal agency to provide direct aid to the needy it was important to religious leaders. people have finally begun to receive the help they desperately needed an the churches and civic organizations have been unable to provide. now they turned to the state rather than religious groups for personal aid and religious guidance. and even that was a temporary measure only to meet the immediate physical needs of people devastated by the depression. the program expired in 1945, replaced in part by two programs at the second new deal, the work pros res administration and the social security act. because these two programs created permanent structures that overlapped what the churches had done in september

of 1935 as they were enacted roosevelt sent a letter to the nation's clergy, asking what they thought of the ploe grams and received 12,000 replies within two months. a full 84% of the replies proved favorable in tone, particularly toward the social security act which made provisions for the elderly, the orphaned and disabled. the methodist journal wrote above all else is the social security program. for the first time in our hist your we have a national administration seeking to realize the objectives of the social decree of the churches. catholics, protestants and jews. for religious leaders like this, it represents a religious achievement and not an encroachment on the church's work. it freed the churches to focus on supplementary work or refocus on evangelism.

a few clergy expressed concerns that grew widespread by the 1930s, especially by protestants. one self-proclaimed southern democrat worried the state had severed the church's cold on community members who now had someplace else to go when they wanted help. where they once had community contacts for cooperation and sentiment sentiment, they now look to the government for everything. it made it possible for poor families, and now clergy expressed alarm and outrage. so although decent against the new deal grew, roosevelts programs remained popular in the region and the churches for decades afterward. black and white workers proved loyal to the president that they credited with pulling them out of the depression as did much of the region's middle class.

the south's republican turn lay in the future. the memory of the inadequacy of private relief and its utter collapse in a moment of crisis still fresh. southerners in the 30s and 40s embraced the nascent welfare state. but soon american religious institutions took roles complementary to the welfare state and integral to it and funded by it. after world war ii secular and religious nonprofits worked as subsidiaries of the government to provide overseas relief. as the domestic welfare expanded under republican and democratic presidents from the 40s to the 60s, federal officials relied on religious organizations to administer new programs. as conservative critics rose to power in the 80s and 90s, they pushed further privatization of services but it was democrat bill clinton who signed the personal responsibility and work

reclamation act ensuring religious providers receive equal competition for funds. his successor george w. bush established the faith based community initiatives which allowed churches and not just religious charities to receive federal funds. so as the welfare state shrank it went to explicitly religious providers. more than 80 years since the new deal established a federal safety net it is hard to imagine the united states without basic protection for citizens but many libertarians call for that, a past that didn't exist. and in which the deserving poor received what they needed from generous private charities. i'm not sure where that money came from. yet those very charities have become so deeplien twined in the federal government in the post world war ii decades in dismandling the welfare state

they admit dismantling themselves. thanks. [ applause ] . good afternoon. in november 2001, first lady laura bush offered the presidential week lip radio address. she invited listeners to a worldwide effort to eliminate brutality against women and children. she focused her remarks on afghanistan. she claimed that all people of good will, including many muslims, deplored taliban treatment of women and girls. mothers could not leave their homes unaccompanied and suffered beatings for laughing out loud and girls could not attend school and women have their fingernails pulled out if they dared wear nail polish. and she skpared women's status under the taliban to places around the globe effected by the terrorist network.

her protection of foreign women has a long history in the united states. since the founding era, some have said [ inaudible ] har ems in the middle east and abandoned or fans in central america. they have expressed concern for foreigners within u.s. boundaries including native american women in nomadicen en encampments and women and children working in urban fact or y. they have argued that foreign women demand our sympathy but also saving action. amy cap lynn has called this saving impulse, imperial domesticity. in her study of antebellum home manuels, female writers focused on problems besetting women and children and offered domestic life to savages in both the u.s. and abroad. today would you like to consider the operations of impeer

dommistic isity in times of war. mrs. bush's remarks interest me not only as a statement of domestic organization but as an example of war time rhetoric. she offered her address as they initiated a bombing campaign in afghanistan and followed it with the ground invasion that drove the taliban from power. the u.s. was in war with a country populated by women americans longed so save. because women and children are considered nonkpat ants support hes and points have argued for protecting them from harm. at the same time, the discourse of imperial dommist isity said women and child require elimination from their cultures. religious leaders who invest in both warfare and the nation's regard for women and children with moral meaning have played an important role in blurring

the lines between calls for protection and projects of liberation. i want to explore this rhetorical pattern in two historical situations. the 19th century indian wars an the present day war on terror. religious leaders and writers perhaps unconsciously obscure the difference between protection and liberation in ways that classify native american and muslim and women children as innocents requiring deliverance often by violent meins from the hostile extremist and terrorist male relations. in november 1864, colonel john schiffing ton led his forces to an attack on an unexpecting fight, his troops attacked women and children. he said he punished indians who attacked innocent white people

and suggested that his soldiers killed but few women and children. some of them in command disagreed. one captain offered gruesome details about the sand creek attack. ip was present at a massacre of 300 indians, mostly women and children. it was a horrible scene and i would not let my company fire. other soldiers however did fire. and the decenting captain recalled in a letter to his mother it looks too hard to see little children on their knees begging for their lives to have their brains beat out like dogs. this was 1864. late in the american civil war and not long after a union army order that established criteria for inflicting violence against civilians. in 1862 president lincoln commissioned a new code of war conduct, called leibers code, just as the union was about to initiate hard war against the confederacy. the code included a section on nonkpat ants. code affirmed that advances in civilization required the

distinction between private individuals belonging to a hostile country and the hostile country itself with its men in arms. while establishing the priority of protecting civilians, leiber's code included a clause about military necessity. sometimes the -- securing the ends of war demanded only -- targeted not only armed enemies but other persons whose destruction is incidentally unavoidable. while it shaped engagement in the south, historians debated the impact in indian country. they did not believe indabs were legitimate combatants and military officials argue tad the indian style of warfare and nomadic encampments made it difficult to defeat them and they authorized devastating attacks on entire villages which caused high rates of women and children casualties.

even so protocols for the civilian leiber code reflected the attacks on women and children. responses to sand creek revealed the strength of those convictions. within days of the attack people condemned chivington and many added their voices to a riding tide of condemnation. when colorado's governor published a report claiming that troops had slaughtered indians, a presbyterian paper reprinted it under the headlines, indians murdered by our troops, national sins that demand punishment. he called it a disgraceful act, unfit for the age we live in. over the next decades sand creek came to symbolize assaults on american women and children. anti-indian writers counters with attacks on americans.

religious leaders acknowledged the attacks and called them brutal acts by immigrants. while contextualizing indians reflected many american's sense that they unlike native americans were civilized enough to refrain from killing innocent bystanders. in this way determining moral forms of warfare figured an american's classification of american savagery. so did domestic ideals and gender norms. in this time they circled poko haunt as to the squaw. they envisioned indian women as domestic slaves to her husbands. stories of overworked indian wives confirmed that native women longed for freedom from their savage husbands. in the 19th century writers in the religious press focused on

indian woman as they articulated innocent noncombatants and at the same time they argued for the innocent rights. they were friendry because they did not associate them with marriages. sand creek focused on difficult questions about civilian casualties but relied on the troeps of imperial domesticity that showed indian women as a particular kind of innocent. similar to the indian wars outcry over president obama's expanded drone program included protecting and liberating foreign women. critics of the drone program point to high number of civilian casualties despite the reputation for precision targeting. religious leaders and writers in the religious press criticize

high civilian casualty rates invoking law of war principles an just war theory to argue the drone program must be radically altered if not ended altogether. contemporary law of wore includes regulation for war time conduct and provides for distinction and directing distinct wishment. the president has invoked principals in the discussion on terror and drone policies. administration officials have stated it would not be consistent with the law of war to continue an operation if anticipated civilian casualties would be excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage. law of war principals overlap with the centuries old christian tradition of just war theory. augustin articulated principals when thomas equine as systemized in the century.

they settled on two sets of principals. criterion for going to war and measures for war time conduct. some criteria, including necessity, distinction and proportionality were accepted by the international community as part of the law of war. in his public discussion of drones president obama has evoked language from the just war tradition. he has insisted that drone strikes can be undertaken only if there is near center that no civilians will be killed or injured. obama has also acknowledged civilian deaths due to american drone strikes. he calls these losses haunting but necessary if the u.s. was to reduce civilian casualties that would result if terrorist networks operated without restriction. the use of drones and the war on terror, obama has declared is part of a quote, just war, a war waged proportionally in last resort and in self-defense.

critics have regularly sounded their displeasure with the drone products and in articles stretching from 2009 to 2014 and shown women and children harmed by drones. writers in the religious press have employed just war press to express their concerns. in a 2013 anti-drone video publicized by cnn belief net this criticized obama and claimed it violated proportionality and distinction. some religious bodies from the national conference of catholic bishops to the moderate disciples of crist to the black church initiative have publicized their decent.