 | By Peter Catapano Senior Staff Editor, Opinion |
Last July, Susan Stubson, a sixth-generation Wyomingite, self-described distant relative of Calamity Jane and descended from a family of "judges, politicians, business leaders, ranchers and roughnecks," wrote in a guest essay about her state's embattled and soon to be disempowered Representative Liz Cheney: "Given that Mr. Trump has endorsed Ms. Cheney's primary challenger, Harriet Hageman, it is a short leap across a dry bed to assume Ms. Cheney is toast." Stubson was right of course. Cheney lost the primary by a large margin, partly as a result of her outspoken stand against Trump's lies about the 2020 election. |
Wyoming, she wrote, "is the Trumpiest of places." |
Stubson, though, expressed admiration for Cheney's integrity, as well as the hope that the nuanced politics of the state, which has long included moderates as well as staunch conservatives, might hold sway and keep intact its traditionally independent and live-and-let-live ethos. "The moderates speak less," she wrote, "but they vote." |
Nearly one year later — as she recounts in another essay — the author finds her state changed in a way she had not predicted, as a result of a Christian nationalist surge that is at odds with both her religious beliefs as a Christian and her political beliefs as a conservative Republican who supports the separation of church and state. |
Wyoming is big, land-wise, at least, nearly 100,000 square miles. But it has just 580,000 residents; only Alaska is more sparsely populated. "There is an adage here," Stubson wrote last year, "that Wyoming is one small town with long streets." |
The state is also very clear about its identity. Section 8-3-123 of its state code is derived from the book "Cowboy Ethics" by James P. Owen, and includes the sayings "Live each day with courage," "Be tough, but fair," "When you make a promise, keep it" and "Know where to draw the line." For Stubson, this current strain of Christian nationalism, with policies that instill fear and encourage enforcement that harms "the least of us," has crossed that line. |
As other Times Opinion writers, including most recently the columnist Michelle Goldberg, have noted, Christian nationalism is exerting an outsize and destructive influence on American politics. In Wyoming, it has left Stubson "adrift." She writes: "Christians are called to serve God, not a political party, to put our faith in a higher power, not in human beings. We're taught not to bow to false idols. Yet idolatry is increasingly prominent and our foundational principles — humility, kindness and compassion — in short supply." |
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