Essay on “Mornings with Carmen” on HOM Billboard
By Scott Lohman
A group I’m involved with, the Humanists of Minnesota, sponsored a number of billboards around the Minneapolis St. Paul area. The billboard says “Reject Christian Nationalism, Keep Religion out of Government.” And apparently we are controversial.
I regularly listen to “Faith Radio” which is a radio network out of the University of Northwestern in St Paul Minnesota. It is a bunch of radio stations in a number of states. It was started 74 years ago by Billy Graham. This is just some basic background on the radio station. The station runs mostly SBC (Southern Baptist Convention) flavored ministry programs. They also have 3 live programs produced out of the St Paul campus. One of those is “Morning’s with Carmen”. It is their morning program from 6-8 am (central time).
Carmen LaBerge is the host/namesake of the show. She talks to a variety of guests from pastors to political commentators. One of those guests is Dr.Adam Carrington from Hillsdale college. He is associate professor of politics there. He is a guest regularly on the program. Hillsdale College is an independent college in Michigan. The college is very conservative in terms of its philosophy and what they teach. They publish a newsletter called “Imprimis”. It is published monthly and generally prints speeches given at the college.
All of the above is a quick background for this. It was during her conversation with Carrington on Monday May 15, 2023, that LaBerge brought up the Humanists of Minnesota billboards. The StarTribune, our local major newspaper, published an article about the HOM billboards with quotes from the president of the group about what the HOM are about and what we do. LaBerge first said it’s “huge”, like we Humanists managed to get a supersized billboard instead of normal sized ones. Her initial comments were that the secularist are trying to get “Christians” out of government, when what Christian’s are trying to do is “help” people. As if that is the only reason why “Christians” are involved in government. I’m using quotes around the word christian as there are thousands and thousands of versions of Christianity in the world. LaBerge and Carrington generally only mean their version of Christianity. In this case the Christianity they are talking about is both religiously and politically conservative.
Their first set of comments is that the Humanists are trying to stop Christians from being involved, which is not what we are doing. What we want is that we stop emphasizing and legislating conservative Christian policies into law. If Christians were there to “help” people, we’d be glad to help with that. Volunteers from the humanist group do that all the time at food shelves, teen group homes and many other places. My issue with them picking the wrong thing to say the Humanist are advocating with the billboard is what they talked about immediately afterwards. There are advocates in Uganda, wanting to have single payer healthcare. Why they picked this as important escapes me when there are plenty of healthcare issues to talk about here in the US. LaBerges’s politics about healthcare was perfect on why religion should not be the starting point on what should be considered part of healthcare. She immediately wants abortion, transpeople care and other sexually related care eliminated from being part of healthcare.
Using your religious and political philosophy to advocate for your policies is what we all do, however what the conservative right wants to do is control what is covered as part of healthcare and what they want to exclude and therefor make it tougher for people to deal with their own body issues. LaBerge and Carrington are quite fine with there being more regulations on the female reproductive system than on guns. They want trans people to be “out of sight, out of mind” instead of getting the medical care they need.
The discussion was a clear case of “moving the goalposts” arguments. LaBerge and Carrington started by being offended by saying Humanists “want to exclude anyone who is religious” from being involved in government to shifting to them saying they are going to decide what is healthcare and what is not. This clearly shows that everyone needs to be involved in the politics around everything and that we humanists can make a difference if an 8 word billboard can get them offended.
Notes Along The Way 