I have been asked to fill-in at the First Parish in Needham tomorrow. I will be preaching a sermon on friendship. Service starts at 10:30 a.m. It will be my last in the Boston area before I start at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Greater Houston. 

Dear Members and Friends of First Parish Church:

Tomorrow will be my last Sunday with you. I have changed the topic of the sermon to “Love the Hell Out of the World” to fit with the sermon the I preached on June 3rd. In that sermon I suggested that part of ministry with you had been organized around three questions: Why does the First Parish Church exist? What difference does it make in your lives? What difference does it make in the wider world? On June 3rd I offered one way to answer those questions. Tomorrow I will offer another.

As part of the service there will be a second special collection to support the UUA’s Practice and Promise Campaign. The first special collection caught a few people off guard and we fell short of our fundraising goal. The Parish Committee decided hold a second special collection to give people who hadn’t yet had an opportunity to contribute to do so.

I am excited about the BBQ after the service on the common. It will be bittersweet for me. I have really loved the year that I have spent with you. It is difficult to say goodbye to your charming church building, historic graveyard, farms, farm houses, and greening woods.

After Asa and I left church on Sunday we visited with some members of the congregation who gave of us rhubarb and stumbled upon a small farm selling duck eggs, chicken eggs, and homemade teas. I also found a chicken-of-the-woods mushroom which the farmer was gracious enough to give me. The whole experience underscored just how special of a place Ashby is and how much we will miss being with you twice a month.

The poem I close with today will be used in the service tomorrow. It’s by the poet Kenneth Patchen. A few of the words aren’t quite pulpit appropriate and I’ll gloss them tomorrow morning. Here, however, is the poem in full:

“The Way Men Live is a Lie”

The way men live is a lie.
I say that I get so goddamned sick
Of all these pigs rooting at each other’s asses
To get a bloodstained dollar–Why don’t
You stop this senseless horror! this meaningless
Butchery of one another! Why don’t you at least
Wash your hands of it!

There is only one truth in the world:
Until we learn to love our neighbor,
There will be no life for anyone.

The man who says, “I don’t believe in war,
But after all somebody must protect us”–
Is obviously a fool–and a liar.
Is this so hard to understand!
That who supports murder, is a murderer?
That who destroys his fellow, destroys himself?

Force cannot be overthrown by force;
To hate any man is to despair of every man;
Evil breeds evil–the rest is a lie!

There is only one power that can save the world–
And that is the power of our love for all men everywhere.

love,

Colin

PS In case you haven’t seen it, I had a piece in the most recent issue of the UU World. You can read “The Universalist Klansman” online.

I have placed an embargo on my dissertation to aid in my chances of finding a publisher for the book that will come from it in the next few years. However, I have decided to publish the acknowledgements here so that the many people and institutions to whom I owe a debt a gratitude will not have to wait until the book is published to see them.

The genre of acknowledgements appears to require that the author thanks their family last. I wish to break with form and instead indicate that my biggest debt is to my children, Asa and Emma. The two of you have inspired me to keep working for a better world and to continue to pursue scholarship that I hope will help bring it about even during my most difficult moments. You remind me that the future is always worth struggling for. I am incredibly blessed to have you both in my life and I hope that this dissertation, written as it was in the midst of the tasks of parenting, has not detracted too much from our time together.

My parents, Howard and Kathy Bossen, have been an essential source of support as I have worked to complete this dissertation. Your willingness to travel to Massachusetts so I could travel elsewhere for research trips and conferences enabled me to discuss my work with colleagues and uncover vital archival sources. During the political right’s family values crusades of the 1990s, you told me that you objected to all of those who cast family values as inherently conservative saying, “We have family values. We have liberal family values.” As far as I can tell those values boil down to: love your family, treasure your friends, bring more beauty into the world, and hate fascism. I have done my best to live by each of those tenets.

Being a single parent and a graduate student has been a challenge and I offer thanks to all of those who have helped with Asa and encouraged me over the last several years. Shatha Almutawa, Age and Jim Austin, Jorin Bossen and Liat Shore, Noah and Sara Irwin-Evans, Roxanne Rivas, Wendy Salkin, Nate Silver and Robert Gauldin, Rebecca Silver, Wedstanley Thomas, Sarah Stewart and Andrew Morrow, Kristi Stone, this project would not have been possible without you. Special thanks must be given to Brian, Henry, and Susan Frederick-Gray. I could not ask for better friends or truer comrades. My world is better for having you in it. The world is better because of your leadership.

My dissertation would not have been possible without my incredible committee. Dan McKanan and Mayra Rivera Rivera have been the most generous advisors that I could have hoped for. Mayra, I am deeply appreciative of your willingness to step into the co-chair roll last autumn. Your insights into theology, the Bible, the social and religious construction of race, and the connections between UNIA and the Caribbean have been crucial. Your consistent attention to my text paired with your requests for greater clarification of my claims have made me both a better scholar and a better writer. Dan, thank you for helping me make the transition back into the academy from the parish ministry. You have been a steady companion on my journey. I have benefited greatly from your encyclopedic knowledge of social movements and American religion. And I am thankful for your willingness read to versions of this project in all states, from fragments of rough drafts to final product. Lisa McGirr, as my third reader you have pushed me to more clearly articulate my contributions to the historical discipline and explain why the study of religion matters to the analysis of social movements. Your occasional skepticism has prompted me to dig deeper and read more closely than I might have been inclined to do otherwise. As a result, I think my analysis is that much the better. Sylvester Johnson, thank you for your willingness to serve as an outside reader. I will bring your excellent questions with me as this project moves from dissertation to book.

I owe thanks as well to the many friends, colleagues, and mentors who commented on drafts: Chris Allison, John Bell, Carleigh Beriont, Andrew Block, Ann Braude, Catherine Brekus, Carla Cevasco, Kate Coyer, Bradley Craig, Marissa Egerstrom, Amy Fish, Healan Gaston, John Gee, Balraj Gill, David Hempton, David Holland, Cassie Houtz, Andrew Jewett, Michael King, James Kloppenberg, Adelaide Mandeville, Rosemarie Bray McNatt, Mary McNeil, Laura Nelson, Zachary Nowack, Eva Payne, Catie Peters, Charles Peterson, Andrew Pope, Evan Price, Cori Price, Allison Puglisi, and Simon Sun. Special thanks goes to John Stauffer who encouraged me to include the IWW in my dissertation in the first place. Another one goes to Arthur Patton-Hock. I know you didn’t read the dissertation but your hard work as Administrative Director of the American Studies Program certainly made it possible.

I was lucky enough to present drafts of this dissertation to several different workshops and audiences. At Harvard, members of the North American Religions Colloquium and the Twentieth Century History Dissertation Group read some form of almost all of the chapters. The American Studies Workshop was also very useful. Further afield, the Religion and Violence Group of the American Academy of Religion, Collegium: Scholarship Serving Unitarian Universalism, the Unitarian Universalist Emerging Scholars, L’Association Française d’Etudes Américaines, and Starr King School for the Ministry all provided venues for me to present my work.

Financial support for my research and writing came from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in the form of a Merit and Term-Time Fellowship, a Dissertation Completion Fellowship, and three of Winkler Fellowships. I also received a Graduate Seed Grant from Harvard’s Center for American Political Studies and several years of support from the American Studies Program. Support from the Fund for Nurturing Unitarian Universalist Scholarship, the Living Tradition Fund, the Joseph Sumner Smith Scholarship, and Joseph Gitler Fund for Religion and Ethics, all administered by the Unitarian Universalist Association, was vital. So too was support from the Biosophical Institute in the form of a Frederick Kettner Scholarship.

Thanks as well to all of the archives and libraries whose staff welcomed and worked with me. Material for the dissertation came from Washington State Historical Society, the Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University, the Joseph A. Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan, the Hargrett Rare Book & Manuscript Library at the University of Georgia, the Indiana State Library, the Indiana State Historical Society, the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Columbia University, and Houghton Library of Harvard University. I suspect Morgan Miller is the unofficial archivist of the American left. Thank you for providing me with IWW materials long thought destroyed. I have no idea how you collect everything you do.

Some final thanks are owed to the congregations that I served while studying in graduate school. My summer ministries at the First Parish Lexington and the First Parish Milton, my sabbatical ministry at the First Religious Society of Carlisle, and my year as minister of the First Parish Church, Ashby, all reminded me that religion can play a powerful role in creating movements for justice. The members of those congregations helped me to clarify my voice as an abolitionist and urged me to conduct scholarship that was relevant to the task of collective liberation. It is my sincerest hope that this dissertation is in that vein.

Dear Members and Friends of First Parish Church:

Yesterday during the service I let the congregation know that I will not be able to renew my contract with the First Parish Church for a second year. I have accepted a position as the senior interim minister of the First Unitarian Universalist Church, Greater Houston, Texas. I am both excited and disappointed about this opportunity. I am excited to have the chance to serve a large vibrant congregation as they go through the process of seeking a new settled minister. And I am disappointed to have to draw my ministerial relationship with First Parish Church to a close. I have had a truly wonderful year with you all and will be forever grateful for your accompaniment during my last year of graduate school. Thank you so much for everything!

I will be with you for two more Sundays in June. During the first of those services, June 3rd, we will be welcoming new members into the church. At the second, June 17th, we will be celebrating the congregation’s annual flower communion. I look forward to both of them and the end of the year picnic after the June 17th service.

Again, thank you for the wonderful year! I close by offering you not a poem about endings or leave taking but simply one of my favorite texts of all time, Tu Fu’s “By the Winding River I” as translated by Kenneth Rexroth. The last two lines include a question I ask myself most days as I struggle to make sense of all of the beauty and the madness in the world. I will miss you!

“By the Winding River I”

Every day on the way home from
My office I pawn another
Of my Spring clothes. Every day
I come home from the river bank
Drunk. Everywhere I go, I owe
Money for wine. History
Records few men who lived to be
Seventy. I watch the yellow
Butterflies drink deep of the
Flowers, and the dragonflies
Dipping the surface of the
Water again and again.
I cry out to the Spring wind,
And the light and the passing hours.
We enjoy life such a litte
While, why should men cross each other?

love,

Colin

Dear Members of the First Houston Community:

I am thrilled to be joining you this August as your senior interim minister. A time of ministerial transition is a very special time for a congregation. It can bring anxiety and hope as you both celebrate First Houston’s past and imagine its future while you prepare for your next settled ministry. I look forward to accompanying you in your process.

A little bit about me: I bring to your congregation a wealth of experience from my more than ten years as a parish and community minister. Next week I graduate from Harvard University with a PhD in American Studies. I love the ministry and this year I have decided to transition back to the parish ministry following several years in the academy. Prior to my time at Harvard I served as the settled minister of the Unitarian Universalist Society of Cleveland. And for the last year, I have served as the minister of the First Parish Church, Ashby, MA. My eleven year-old son Asa will be coming to Houston with me. My nineteen year-old daughter is currently a sophomore at Lewis and Clark in Portland, OR. She was actually in Houston this past March with my parents. My father is one of the judges at Fotofest. You can learn more about me via my website www.colinbossen.com.

One of my core beliefs is we should each work to bring a little bit more beauty into the world. There are many ways we can do this: simple acts of kindness, arranging flowers, sharing a meal, creating a work of art, drawing a brush across a snare drum… I love poetry. I think it makes the world a more beautiful place. And so, I will generally include at least a fragment of a poem in each of my regular newsletter columns. Today I offer you “Trying to Name What Doesn’t Change” by the Palestinian-American (and Texan) poet Naimi Shihab Nye:

Roselva says the only thing that doesn’t change
is train tracks. She’s sure of it.
The train changes, or the weeds that grow up spidery
by the side, but not the tracks.
I’ve watched one for three years, she says,
and it doesn’t curve, doesn’t break, doesn’t grow.

Peter isn’t sure. He saw an abandoned track
near Sabinas, Mexico, and says a track without a train
is a changed track. The metal wasn’t shiny anymore.
The wood was split and some of the ties were gone.

Every Tuesday on Morales Street
butchers crack the necks of a hundred hens.
The widow in the tilted house
spices her soup with cinnamon.
Ask her what doesn’t change.

Stars explode.
The rose curls up as if there is fire in the petals.
The cat who knew me is buried under the bush.

The train whistle still wails its ancient sound
but when it goes away, shrinking back
from the walls of the brain,
it takes something different with it every time.

Nye’s words are ones that give me comfort during times of transition. They remind me that the cliche is true: the only constant is change. Embracing that truism will be part of our work together during my interim ministry. We will work on honoring the past, accepting change, and planning, dreaming, and hoping for the future. I know it will be an exciting time and I am honored to share it with you.

love,

Colin

Dear Friends:

April was a busy month, both for me and for the congregation. As many of you know, I successfully defended my dissertation on April 26th. I am now officially the Rev. Dr. Colin Bossen! The completion of my doctorate was the result of six years of hard work. I am grateful to the many people who have supported me throughout the process including you, the members and friends of First Parish Church. It has been a privilege to serve as your minister during the final year of my process and I really couldn’t have made it across the finish line without the support and encouragement you all have given me.

April was also a busy month for the First Parish Church. The congregation hosted an Earth Day event which was well attended by both members and people who live in town. The annual meeting took place as well. Attendance was better than it has been in the recent past. I think that’s a good sign of the increase in energy that seems to be present in First Parish Church. There’s excitement about the congregation’s social justice and public events. In addition, Sunday morning service attendance is holding steady and the stewardship campaign has been the most successful in several years.

My own personal busyness has meant that I have fallen behind on posting my sermons online. I will rectify that next week. When I post tomorrow’s sermon and April’s sermons online I will send you an email to let you know they are available. I apologize for my delay but in addition to submitting and defending the dissertation I also spent part of last week traveling to consult with a private philanthropic organization about the future of social justice organizing. It was an interesting experience, and one that I will happily discuss with you, but it meant that I fell slightly behind on my work with you.

Tomorrow my sermon is inspired by Taoism and titled “Zhuangzi and the Butterfly.” I will be back in Ashby on May 20 to preach a belated sermon in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. It is titled “The Most Notorious Liar in America.” In the near future one of our services will also be featuring a new members ceremony. It seems that there are a few people who want to join First Parish Church. I am excited about welcoming them into congregational membership.

This month’s sermons don’t use poems for their readings. And so, rather than offering you a poem that we will read as a part of service, I simply offer you one of my favorite poems:

Recuerdo by Edna St. Vincent Millay

We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable—
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed, “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

I hope to see you soon!

love,

Colin

Dear Friends:

I am looking forward to seeing many of you at the seder the congregation is hosting this evening and during the service tomorrow morning. As you might know, I grew up in an interfaith family that celebrated both Jewish and Christian holidays. My parents raised us Unitarian Universalist because they felt Unitarian Universalism offered a community that welcomed both of their religious traditions. When I lived with my parents we observed both Easter and Passover.

I have continued to observe both holidays as an adult and to celebrate them with my children. My theology leans pretty far away from the resurrection narrative or the idea that Jesus was a divine savior. Nonetheless, I find rich meaning in the ways that Easter reminds us love can conquer death. After despair comes the hope of spring.

In my parents’ house, Passover was a time when we lifted up hope for human liberation from oppression. Some years we had a fairly traditional seder. Other times, we used a Haggadah from the civil rights movement that related the Passover story to the long struggle for justice. In both cases, we remembered what previous generations had undergone. We also paused to reflect upon all of the work needed so that next year the world that may be peace.

While I am celebrating Passover tonight, tomorrow, I will be preaching a sermon for Easter titled “Finding Each Other on the Road to Emmaus.” I will be with you all again at the end of the month for “A Place to Grow Our Souls: Bring a Friend Sunday.” As the title suggests, the service will be an opportunity to bring a friend to the congregation. Please invite someone so we can share with them a little of the special something that is the First Parish Church! On April 22nd, instead of a regular worship service there will be a service service in which people will gather to mark Earth Day by leading a townwide clean-up. If you’re interested in participating just meet at the congregation at 10:00 a.m. like you would on a regular Sunday.

In case you missed them, the texts from last month’s sermons are available online. The March 4th stewardship service was “For What We Have, For What We Give” and the March 25th service was “Our Foremothers’ Blessing.” 

Instead of a poem this month, I offer you a few words from the late Detroit based activist Grace Lee Boggs. She writes:

These are the times that try our souls. Each of us needs to undergo a tremendous philosophical and spiritual transformation. Each of us needs to be awakened to a personal and compassionate recognition of the inseparable interconnection between our minds, hearts, and bodies, between our physical and psychical well-being, and between our selves and all the other selves in our country and in the world. Each of us needs to stop being a passive observer of the suffering that we know is going on in the world and start identifying with the sufferers. Each of us needs to make a leap that is both practical and philosophical, beyond determinism to self-determination. Each of us has to be true to and enhance our own humanity by embracing and practicing the conviction that as human beings we have free will; that despite the powers and principalities that are bent on objectifying and commodifying us and all our human relationships, the interlocking crises of our time require that we exercise the power within us to make principled choices in our ongoing daily and political lives, choices that will eventually, although not inevitably—there are no guarantees—make a difference.

I hope to see you soon!

love,

Colin

Dear Friends:

The Nor’easter hit our neighborhood in Medford pretty hard. We didn’t lose power and no one, as far as I know, was injured but one of the big trees in the next door neighbor’s yard came crashing down and ruined another neighbor’s fence. The front door also blew off our apartment building. I hope that nothing similar happened to any of you out in Ashby and its environs. Such a storm was a humble reminder that we humans only have so much control over our lives. Much of the time we’re subjected to fickle winds.

Community is one of the things that helps us bear such storms. When the winds of life batten us down it is often our communities that help us endure. Unitarian Universalism has always been a vital community in my life and if you’re a friend or member of First Parish Church I suspect it has been a vital community for you as well.

This month, in an effort to sustain the communities that sustain us, the congregation will be conducting its annual stewardship campaign. As part of the campaign those of you who are pledging members and friends should receive a pledge card and a stewardship letter in the mail next week. Tomorrow, I will be preaching a sermon titled “For What We Have, For What We Give” to kick off the campaign. Here’s a brief description: “Robert Walsh writes, ‘We are the feeders, and we are those who are fed.’ In this sermon on stewardship we’ll consider how giving and receiving gifts is a spiritual practice.” At the end of the month I’ll be following up with people who haven’t made their pledges to make sure you’ve gotten pledge letters and to learn what your intentions are towards the congregation.

March is women’s history month and I will be back in the pulpit on March 25th to offer a service centered on Margaret Fuller, one of our most famous Unitarian ancestors. She has much teach us about what it means to live a life that is intentionally devoted to beauty and justice.

The text from last month’s sermons are available online, in case you missed them. “Intangible Dreams” is the service from February 6th.  “A Black Christ” is the service from February 18th. On my blog you’ll also find a tribute to the late Rev. Kay Jorgensen, one of my earliest mentors in the ministry.  Last month I also had the opportunity to preach at the First Unitarian Church of Dallas, one of the largest congregations in our denomination. There’s a video of the service on YouTube if you’re interested. 

Finally, the social justice group met and I understand that there are a number of exciting things potentially in the works. I am sure that the Parish Committee and the social justice group will be updating everyone soon. In the meantime, friend of the congregation Emily Fine has started a petition to thank Dick’s Sporting Goods for deciding to stop selling assault rifles and limit gun sales to those 21 years of age and older. You can sign it here. 

As is my practice, I would like to close with a few verses of poetry. Since we’ll be having a service devoted to Margaret Fuller at the end of the month it seems fitting to share one of her poems:

Flaxman

We deemed the secret lost, the spirit gone,
Which spake in Greek simplicity of thought,
And in the forms of gods and heroes wrought
Eternal beauty from the sculptured stone,—
A higher charm than modern culture won
With all the wealth of metaphysic lore,
Gifted to analyze, dissect, explore.
A many-colored light flows from one sun;
Art, ’neath its beams, a motley thread has spun;
The prism modifies the perfect day;
But thou hast known such mediums to shun,
And cast once more on life a pure, white ray.
Absorbed in the creations of thy mind,
Forgetting daily self, my truest self I find.

I hope to see you soon!

love,

Colin

Dear Friends:

I am looking forward to seeing you tomorrow for our first service of the New Year! I hope that you’ve been weathering the cold and snow as best you can. At my place in Medford we managed to more-or-less unbury ourselves the evening the big snow quit with the help of our landlord’s snow plow.

It was wonderful seeing so many people out for the congregation’s annual Christmas Eve service. It was truly special and I was glad to bring both my son and a couple of my colleagues from Harvard along. They are from mainland China and it was there first time at an American Christmas Eve service. Asa also got to ring the Paul Revere Bell (with Cedwyn’s help). If you haven’t checked out the video of them tolling away is pretty hilarious. Guess who got pulled into the air?

If you weren’t able to make the Christmas Eve service and want a little late Christmas spirit you can find my homily online. The text of my sermon from the beginning of the month, “Into the Dark of the Night” is also available through my website.

This month I will be leading two services on how we come to know the self, our sense of personal interior being. The first is tomorrow and is titled “You and I.” The second will be on January 21 and is titled “Two Bodies, One Heart.” In both I will be suggesting that the self, the sense of I that each of us has, is something we come to know through others.

I also have a bit of exciting professional news. I have been selected to be the Spring 2019 Minns lecturer. The Minns lectures are a series of annual lectures given in Boston that are designed to “an innovative force in Unitarian Universalist thought.” My lectures will be on “American Populism and Unitarian Universalism.”

As is my practice, I close with a fragment of poetry; a winter miracle to help with the icy nights ahead:

Asked on the icy steps
what she concealed in her mantle,
Elizabeth of Hungary
felt compelled to show her husband
the eggs, bread, and meat.
Instead, white roses,
red–though it was mid-December–
spilled from the heavy cloth.
In this miracle, she is most often painted.

from “A Recurring Possibility” by Jane Hirshfield

I hope to see you soon!

love,

Colin

I have been invited to give the 2019 Spring Minns Lectures. The Minns lectures are an annual lecture series in Boston that date to 1942. They are designed to be “an innovative force in Unitarian Universalist thought.” In recent years, lecturers have included: the author of Black Pioneers in a White Denomination, Mark Morrison-Reed; the President of Starr King School for the Ministry, Rosemary Bray McNatt; best-selling author Kate Braestrup; and past Presidents of the Unitarian Universalist Association John Buehrens and William Sinkford. James Luther Adams and George Huntston Williams, professors at Harvard Divinity School and the towering figures in Unitarian, and later Unitarian Universalist, theology in the mid-twentieth-century. The 2018 Autumn lecturer will be Samira Mehta, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Albright College.

My lectures are tentatively titled “American Populism and Unitarian Universalism.” Here is their two paragraph summary:

This three-part lecture series is organized around the question: How should Unitarian Universalists respond to populism? In recent years, populist movements have been on the rise in the United States and throughout the globe. Apocalyptic in outlook, dividing the world into a righteous people and a corrupt elite, and often organized around solidarities of nation and race, there is much about populism that makes most Unitarian Universalists uncomfortable. Yet in its left-wing forms populism can also be a socially regenerative force, pushing institutions to be more accountable to the many rather than the few. What can Unitarian Universalists learn from populism? How does populism relate to liberalism and progressivism—political traditions with which many Unitarian Universalists are more comfortable? Is populism a force that can be used to build a broad religious left? Or does it contain flaws that doom populist movements to create greater social division?

This lecture series aims to provide Unitarian Universalists with some of the analytical and historical tools necessary to foster more effective social engagement. It will begin by examining the social and theological roots of populism before turning to two case studies. The first will explore the tensions between Francis Greenwood Peabody and late-nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century populists. The second will focus on the relationship between the Pan-African populist leader Marcus Garvey and the black liberal religionists and humanists affiliated with Egbert Ethelred Brown’s Harlem Unitarian Church. The series will conclude with reflections on how Unitarian Universalists are being called to act during a time when white right-wing populism is a dominant force in American politics.