Over the past few years, The Intercept has produced a series of investigative articles covering questions of police brutality, budgeting, and reform in America.
Most recently Alice Speri, Alleen Brown, and Mara Hvistendahl have written “The George Floyd Killing in Minneapolis Exposes the Failures of Police Reform” giving greater depth to a point I made here.
Below is an excerpt.
“Reform is not the answer, we’ve been trying it for decades, and as you can see,
Neighborhood protest in Minneapolis
we’re just not getting anywhere,” he said. “We need a new paradigm of policing in the United States. It needs to be completely dismantled and reconstructed, not changing a policy here or there.”…
…“And what does it say about the limits of reform that the city of Minneapolis and the Minneapolis police department could be part of a multi-year, multimillion-dollar national project to enhance police community relations, and after all of that, here we are?”
A niece of Jamar Clark protested with a photograph of the two Minneapolis police officers who were involved in Clark’s murder on Oct. 15, 2016, in Minneapolis. Star Tribune via Getty Images
After years of investment in improved policing with no results to show for it, “the conversation has changed,” she added. “There’s much more of a public awareness and conversation about abolition, and what that means and what that might look like. … I think people were radicalized by Jamar Clark and Philando Castile. And then they saw the contradictions around Justine Damond.”
Montgomery, the director of Black Visions Collective, said that organizers are tired of just calling for prosecutions. “We’re moving past a conversation around prosecuting the police and individual officers — that doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t prevent another Philando Castile or George Floyd,” said Montgomery. “To me and many of my comrades, police reform is irrelevant.”
Some demands have shifted to community control. Organizer Sam Martinez told The Intercept that the Coalition for Justice 4 Jamar wants a board similar to a city council or school board to run the police: controlling its budget, approving union contracts, and deciding disciplinary actions. Martinez says the board would have to be fundamentally different from previous civilian police review councils that law enforcement has mostly ignored.
Umair Haque thinks the answer to that question is Yes.
His article is entitled, “It’s Not that I’m Negative, America Really is Screwed.” I am not an economist, but my inclination is to agree.
Here is an excerpt:
The economics of American collapse say that it’s probably too late to fix America. It’s probable that this is the new normal. Chaos, decline, incompetence, malice, poverty, hopelessness, despair.
Let me explain, as clearly as I can.
You can see, right about now, that America is what political scientists call a failed state. A President who tells people to drink bleach during a pandemic. 90,000 dead, of which 90% are needless. A society that’s not able to provide basics for it’s citizens anymore. A nation in which income, savings, life expectancy, happiness, trust are all in free-fall. This is the stuff of epic social collapse.
Now, the reason that America collapsed is straightforward. Americans never invested in building expansive social systems, unlike Europe. Systems to provide healthcare, retirement, childcare, finance, and so forth.
The result has been twofold. One, the average American now goes without these things. That’s because they’re largely unavailable. For example, the fresh food that I can get on any block in Europe is simply absent in huge chunks of the States. You buy processed food, or you don’t get food. The same is true of many, many things, like, say, education, or income. You don’t have a job with guarantees and protections like in Canada or Europe. You have a lower quality — not just quantity — of income.
Two, the the average American pays prices that the rest of the world considers absolutely absurd — because they are — for the very same things. Having a child? That’ll be $50K, thank you. An operation? That’ll be more than a house. Want to educate a kid? There go your life savings. Want a few fresh apples? That’ll be ten times the price Canadians or Europeans pay. These things — the basics of life — are eminently affordable in the rest of the rich world. In America, though, they cost more than the average person can afford.
How do I know that? Because the average American now dies in debt…
Over at the Medium website, Francis Taylor details the many ways that corona virus has exposed the deepening chasm separating the rich from everyone else in America.
His article is “COVID 19 Has Exposed the Class Divide.” Below is an excerpt.
Throughout the pandemic, American billionaires have continued to make fabulous profits. As Tommy Beer of Forbes reports, their total net worth has increased by more than $400 billion since March 18. While the poorest struggle simply to survive, the rich see their fortunes grow. And some have even show their willingness to throw workers into the thresher of capitalism. Both Tilman Fertitta and Lloyd Blankfein have called for the economy to re-open, knowing full well that they will not be exposed to the worst of the risks.
But special mention has to go to Jeff Bezos and his Amazon empire. The massive conglomerate, having provided an extra $2 an hour for the warehouse workers braving a pandemic, now plans to end the increase by the close of May.
It should be noted that the additional wage has been in place for less than three months.
This terminated increase follows Amazon’s decision to scrap unlimited unpaid leave for workers who fear the Coronavirus and its dismissal of Christian Smalls after he spearheaded a walkout at their Staten Island Warehouse over safety concerns. Although the company maintains that Smalls and other protesting workers were fired for violating internal policies, Tim Bray, a former vice president at Amazon Web Services, avers that past workers have been “turfed” for whistleblowing. He also quit the company earlier this May, citing these punitive measures as the main reason.
It would seem then that Amazon is sending a clear message to its workers: the lot of you are interchangeable cogs, and if you squeak with acrimony you can always be replaced.
Martin Luther King, Jr. said that “riots are the language of the unheard,” because rioting is the only way for the oppressed to grab the oppressor’s attention.
I can’t help but notice that those who are comfortable, content with the
George Floyd
status quo, and not at risk of being brutalized or murdered by the police, are also first in line to condemn rioting.
Let’s face it. A white person, especially a wealthy, white person, is rarely threatened by police violence – unless you are someone like Jeffrey Epstein who threatens to expose the hypocrisy and corruption of other rich, white people.
The hysterical pearl-clutching we are now witnessing from comfortable, white citizens condemning the riots in Minneapolis is the socially acceptable way of condoning police brutality.
After all, these commentators (like Tucker Carlson) have considerable excess energy stored up from their lack of protesting (much less rioting) against the grotesque acts of excessive force used by police as they regularly murder black people in this country.
Members of the white establishment are free to jog down their streets without fear. Whereas, black joggers are always at risk of being shot by white vigilantes, racists who know they can probably get away with murdering a black person (unless a video of their crime happens to go viral).
The video of George Floyd’s murder shows not one but three police officers kneeling on Mr. Floyd’s passive body, pinning him to the ground. His hands are secured behind his back as he repeats his last words, “I can’t breathe.”
The cop looking towards the camera is unmoved, ignoring the dying man’s pleas for help, for just enough room to breathe. His conscience is unfazed as he literally snuffs the life out of Mr. Floyd.
It’s not the first time America has heard a black man’s suffocating request for breath. Nor will it be the last. At least, not as long as there are public officials like this Mississippi mayor who defended the police by saying, “If you can say you ‘can’t breathe, then you are breathing.”
Prosecuting the cops involved is just another sop thrown from the master’s table.
Yes, prosecution and conviction need to happen. But America’s violent, over-the-top policing problems are not due to a few bad apples. No, the bad apples are spilling out of rotten barrels.
Don’t forget that the cop pressing his knee into Mr. Floyd’s neck had been reported for the excessive use of force numerous times. Yet, no action was ever taken to discipline him, to address his misbehavior, or to evaluate his penchant for cruelty, much less to get him off the streets.
The state prosecutor is already talking about the extenuating circumstances that may work in the policeman’s favor when the case finally goes to trial.
Week after week we see the class-based, racist, violent culture of America’s law enforcement establishment. All of it testimony to the fact that our police academies, training, and supervisory mechanisms are all broken. In fact, the entire policing establishment of this country needs to be torn down to the ground and rebuilt from scratch.
Our police are too militarized. They are obviously trained to protect themselves first instead of serving their communities.
Too often they approach the public as it we are the enemy – an attitude entrenched by America’s ludicrous cross-training with the Israeli military, an army which exists only to pulverize Palestinians. It’s no wonder that pulverizing people of color has become a weekly news item for us.
The well-known “solid blue wall” of uniformed unity, where all cops are expected to cover for other cops no matter their crimes, weeds out the honest men and women who refuse to conform to the prevalent culture of might makes right.
What else can we conclude but that there is an element in police culture that condones sadism.
Let’s be honest. Power is intoxicating. Holding power over others can be an elixir to certain pathological personalities. Giving a gun and a badge to someone with an authoritarian personality, twisted by psychopathic tendencies, is a recipe for policing disaster.
Put that person in an environment where his love of control and leanings towards violence are rarely if ever rebuked by his peers (because they have been weeded out as unfit weaklings), and you have what we see in America today.
The police murder people in our streets with seeming impunity.
God’s people need to wake up.
The comfortable white church must shake off the scales of its class-based slumber. The police don’t look at us and assume that we must be criminals, unless perhaps you are among the white under-class struggling to survive. Whereas, that is exactly how they look at people of color, and the poor of all colors, who dare to get too uppity.
Our black, Latino, and Native brothers and sisters live in a completely different world. Frankly, had I been born and raised in their world, I probably would be rioting, too.
Now is a time for white leaders, especially white leaders in the Christian church, to stand up and shout like hell, to rock the boat and insist, not just on prosecutions against murderous cops, but on a complete overhaul of the American system of policing, as it currently exists.
The problem is not a few bad apples but a nation filled with rotten barrels, all spilling rotten, racist, violent thugs into our streets cloaked in blue uniforms. (No, I am not describing all police officers. But don’t evade the point by resorting to straw-man bluster.)
Now is not the time for white Christian leaders to condemn rioting.
Now is a time to repent for our decades of inattention, while we ignored our fellow citizens of color, refusing to take their stories seriously.
Now is the time to listen to the stories of non-white Americans and to confess our self-centeredness that says, “If it doesn’t happen in my neighborhood, then it ain’t my problem.”
Except, wherever the Image of God is being oppressed in this world, it IS the Christian’s problem.
Whenever flagrant, systemic injustice digs its privileged knees into the exposed necks of people loved by God – in a supposedly “Christian country,” no less! – God’s real people must see our national illness as the church’s problem to address.
No, now is not the time to condemn rioting.
Now is the time to condemn the establishment’s war against the poor, the weak, the sick, the powerless, and the marginalized.
Now is the time loudly to condemn social injustice. Now is the time to condemn the power-brokers who exploit their power at the expense of the powerless.
Now is the time for Christian leaders of all colors to stand and shout together, “No more. We demand change. We demand justice for all. And we demand it right now.”
Now is the time for Christian leaders blessed with the expertise, ability, access, and opportunity to roll up their sleeves and work for a more equal, more just society.
Ahmaud Arbery was murdered last February while jogging in the state of
Ahmaud Arbery
Georgia.
Mr. Arbery was black. His two murderers, a father and son, are white. Neither of them has been arrested or jailed. The father is a retired police officer who worked as an investigator for the state attorney’s office. The son killed Mr. Arbery with a shotgun at close range (as you can see in the video below).
The two men saw Mr. Arbery jogging through their all white neighborhood and immediately saw him as a criminal. So, they jumped into their pick-up truck and hunted him down, killing him in the street.
They claimed he looked like a burglary suspect – probably because all black men look alike to them. Their defense claims that they acted in accordance with Georgia’s Stand Your Ground law, even though they had driven blocks away from their home in order to ambush Mr. Arbery, who was shot in the middle of a public road.
Ironically, their “stand your ground” defense is actually a testament to their own racist sensibility. Obviously, in their minds, all of America is the white man’s ground, where all black Americans are trespassers and criminals.
Their actions unveil the deeply ingrained suspicion throughout white America that all African-Americans are suspect, guilty until proven innocent.
Imagine how differently this incident would have been handled if two black men had shot down a white jogger running through the neighborhood. The shooters would have been beaten by the arresting officers, thrown in jail without bail, and quickly convicted with life sentences.
Mr. Arbery’s murderers have not suffered any of these things. They are white men living in white America, an American where black people are still – in 2020 – considered to be inferior, a genetically criminal underclass.
White protesters at the Michigan state capitol building
[I have often thought of this racial double-standard when watching the white, anti-government demonstrators protesting their governor’s stay- at-home orders. A good number of these protesters arrive at their state capitols with guns, often semi-automatic, high-powered rifles. Oh, my goodness, how very, very differently these demonstrators would be handled by the authorities if they were angry black Americans doing the same things.]
Three state attorneys have been taken off the case for conflicts of interest. The Arbery family lawyer will soon have a chance (finally) to present his case before a grand jury, where the proceedings will probably remain closed.
Had the video recording of Mr. Arbery’s murder not been disclosed, the two murders would undoubtedly have gone free after being declared innocent.
When the local police informed the victim’s mother about her son’s death, they simply repeated the murders’ version of the story. They told Mrs. Arbery that her son was a robbery suspect and that he aggressively started the confrontation that ended in his death.
But the police version of the story merely repeats a long-standing racist trope: whites are driven to defend themselves against the aggression of inherently violent black men.
Look at any photograph of an American lynching, for that is what we are talking about here. What do you see? A crowd of armed white people looking at the mutilated body of a black man accused of some crime against a white person.
America is still infected with such racism.
Examples similar to Mr. Arbery’s occur regularly all throughout this country, month after month, week after week. Often the assaults are committed by uniformed police officers – perhaps you have seen the recent videos of policemen beating black citizens for not wearing face masks in public. [So, why haven’t the Capitol police punched Donald Trump in the face?]
White America’s suspicions about the racial inferiority of “colored people” continues to cast a heavy, destructive shadow all across in this country.
African Americans live with the weight of that oppressive shadow every day of their lives.
So my question remains: what is the white church in America doing to help eliminate that racist burden for our brothers and sisters blessed by God with a different skin color?
Update 1: Please take a few minutes to watch political activist and former Ohia state legislator Nina Turner’s response to Ahmaud Arbery’s murder on HillTV’s program “Rising.” She speaks from her heart as an African-American mother, poignantly describing the effects such crimes have within the black community.
Update 2: I just read a southern pastor’s blog post lamenting Ahmaud Arbery’s death. It is a good example of what is wrong with so much of white American Christianity. His analysis is entirely emotive and individualistic. In his mind, Arbery’s death is one more example of “sin in our society.” His solution is to “hold your children close” and “pray for Jesus to come quickly.” He has nothing more to offer. Frankly, it’s pathetic. No wonder African-Americans attend their own churches, while seeing white congregations as out of touch.
I believe that political engagement is an important task for the Christian church. I don’t buy the rationale that says secular politics is a distraction from gospel priorities. On the contrary. Political engagement is demanded by gospel priorities when properly understood.
If believers in Jesus Christ take his Lordship seriously, then submission to our Savior King requires us to behave as citizens of God’s kingdom in every element of our earthly citizenship. Politics in the public square is unavoidable.
The question is, what does that mean in practice?
I know that I am not alone in believing that the church needs to be
Rev. Jerry Falwell
politically active. The African-American church has always understood this fact. Jerry Falwell helped American fundamentalists and evangelicals finally come to grips with this, too. Obviously, maintaining this conviction makes for strange bed-fellows nowadays.
So, is Christian political activism nothing more than the public expression of privately held religious preferences; preferences created by the kind of neighborhood you grew up in and whether it was on the right or the wrong side of the tracks?
Answering this question is crucial in the present era of “Christians for Trump.”
I am firmly convinced, and quite happy to debate anyone who cares to
MIAMI, UNITED STATES – JANUARY 03, 2020: Evangelical supporters of Donald Trump are being led in prayers inside the El Rey Jesus church. – PHOTOGRAPH BY Adam DelGiudice / Echoes Wire/ Barcroft Media (Photo credit should read Adam DelGiudice / Echoes Wire / Barcroft Media via Getty Images)
disagree, that the evangelical church’s uniform support for Donald Trump, the Republican party, and their policy agenda, has exposed the thorough-going secularization of American Christianity.
It is symptomatic of the wholesale debasement of genuine Christian faith into unabashed, nationalistic civil religion. And that is the definition of American apostasy.
This damning secularization of Christian thought and action is, perhaps, the most influential legacy of the Religious Right. Anyone who takes his/her
Ralph Reed, founder of the Faith & Freedom Coalition
marching orders from partisan political strategists (like Ralph Reed, for example) has abandoned the Lordship of Christ. The ethics and righteousness of God’s kingdom do not align with any of the Republican or Democratic party agendas given to us.
Obviously, many religious conservatives think otherwise. I don’t doubt the sincerity of their convictions, but sincerity alone doesn’t manufacture truth. Aristotle and Ptolemy sincerely believed that the sun orbited around the earth, and they were sincerely wrong.
The question becomes: Which partner is leading in the evangelical dance with politics?
Is your partisan, political commitment leading your life of discipleship?
Or is your citizenship in the kingdom of God leading your political commitments?
We all know what the correct answer is. And, of course, members of the Religious Right insist that they are living out that answer, for example, in their support of the “pro-life” movement, their fight for staff-led prayer in public schools, and their hostility against equal rights legislation for LGBT human beings.
All of this begs the question. How should the Christian’s citizenship in God’s kingdom transform the way we live out our American citizenship? If Jesus’ teaching about kingdom righteousness becomes our benchmark for public engagement, then what elements of our partisanship (whether to the right or the left) must be thrown away and replaced with Jesus’ new kingdom ethic?
Here is an historical example:
Members of the Confessing Church. Bonhoeffer is in the 2nd row at the far left
When the “Confessing Church” (composed of German, Protestant leaders who opposed Hitler’s attempts to control their churches) began its resistance against Nazi religious policies, debating these questions eventually led to a deep divide in their movement.
Everyone agreed that resistance to Nazi attempts at manipulating Christian worship services and determining church membership was every leader’s duty before God. But where should they draw the boundaries? The leaders often disagreed over which acts of resistance were (a) necessary expressions of Christian faith (so everyone could support it) and which actions were (b) merely an expression of personal political preferences. Seldom was there unanimity on this question. In fact, bitter arguments sometimes erupted threatening the organization’s future.
Of course, those accused of being “too political” or “unspiritual” in their
A Nazi German “Christian” flag
proposals responded by pointing out that it was impossible to separate the gospel’s ethical requirements from one’s evaluation of a patently immoral government policy. (I will ignore the ghastly role played by Martin Luther’s “two kingdoms” theology in the German church’s submission to Hitler).
The angry differences that erupted among these sincere, committed
churchmen exposed the differing horizons of their moral universes. After all, isn’t immorality in the eye of the beholder? Well, it shouldn’t be if everyone claiming to be a disciple of Jesus actually “fixes their eyes on Jesus,” as the writer to the Hebrews insists we should (12:2).
Every Christian’s moral universe ought to align with Jesus’ example of living as a righteous citizen in the kingdom of God.
Among all the members of the German Confessing Church, the leaders most remembered and applauded today are those who traced out the most expansive moral universes, with boundaries unconstrained by partisan politics or subservience to government authority.
After the war, surviving members of the Confessing Church sometimes admitted that, for all the risks they had taken (and some were imprisoned and/or executed), they had not gone far enough. Their ethical boundaries had been too narrow. They had not always acted as faithful citizens of God’s kingdom.
Martin Niemöller (who was imprisoned) became one of the most outspoken in lamenting the fact that the Confessing Church had never publicly
Karl Barth’s statement on the failure of the Confessing Church to defend Jews throughout Europe
condemned Hitler’s policies of anti-Semitism. They had never publicly defended their Jewish neighbors. Nor had a single church leader publicly opposed the Nazi eugenics program that took thousands from their medical asylums and sent them off to die.
This is our challenge today.
Every Christian’s lifetime goal must be the conformation of one’s own moral universe to the righteousness of God’s kingdom as taught and modeled for us by Jesus of Nazareth. As our Lord said in the Sermon on the Mount, “Seek first the Father’s kingdom and his righteousness, and everything else will follow” (my paraphrase, Matt. 6:33).
I once preached a message on those words of Jesus in a white, middle-class, Protestant church where the elders nearly banned me from the pulpit. [There were two services. An elder walked out of the first service in protest. I was summoned to a meeting with the others before the second service. At least one of them believed that I ought not to preach again).
The goal of my message was to pose this challenge: How should our commitment to live as righteous citizens of God’s kingdom here and now shape the ways we think and behave as earthly citizens of an imperialist nation with a massive military budget that loves to make war?
IF we want to take Jesus’ words seriously, that we seek God’s kingdom righteousness first, then we MUST grapple with these kinds of questions. And change our behavior accordingly.
Tragically, those church elders were spiritually crippled, straight-jacketed inside a minuscule moral universe grossly deformed by their American first, nationalistic, Republican party world-view. They were not interested in seeking the Father’s kingdom and righteousness FIRST in EVERY area of life. They were not thorough-going disciples of Jesus Christ.
We are currently facing a spiritual pandemic that is killing evangelicalism and its public witness.
An American “Christian” flag
The church is infected with a deadly political virus called partisanship. That partisanship is an ugly symptom of our deeply rooted secularism. In pursuing the cause of militaristic nationalism, we have taken our eyes off Jesus.
Huge swaths of the church have been coopted by the commercialized, smoothly marketed messaging created by high-paid political operatives who began courting evangelicals during the Reagan presidency. Rather than seeking God’s kingdom, we seek victory for their side, predominantly Republican, in the next political campaign.
This brand of herd loyalty is easy to implement. Whereas, conforming our lives to the pattern given to us by the suffering, crucified Jesus of Nazareth is far more difficult and costly.
Following a crucified Savior entails suffering, but it also demands carefully focused, consistent thinking, from top to bottom. How must Jesus’ kingdom-directed life and teaching transform the way we address our contemporary problems? There is no political playbook from any party providing easy answers to that question.
Take for instance the “pro-life” movement. The label itself is an example of a very self-conscious political framing. The words pro-life do not honestly describe the movement. As many others have pointed out, the pro-life movement is not actually pro-life. It is anti-abortion and pro-birth, but the movement’s pro-life interests vanish quickly once a baby is delivered.
For example, it is a demonstrable fact that publicly funded preschool programs, the WIC nutrition program and Head Start, to name only a few, make significant improvements in the future prospects, health and well-being of young children, especially those growing up in poor communities.
Yet, conservative “pro-life” voters typically back policies intended to defund these sorts of community assistance programs that give a leg up to our most vulnerable citizens. In this regard, supposedly pro-life conservatives most often vote anti-life.
Worse yet, these faux pro-lifers support politicians who want to slash the budgets of social benefits programs and in order to channel those funds to
A US bomber over Afghanistan
the ballooning budgets for military contractors and our wasteful Pentagon. Instead of helping to enrich the lives of America’s most vulnerable, our tax dollars are spent on expanding assassination programs, and devising new weaponry intended for the efficient slaughter and impoverishment of hungry people around the world who happen to stand in the way of American empire.
That is the opposite of pro-life. It is pro-death, pain, exploitation, and suffering.
But what about the Supreme Court?! (I hear certain readers ask). This is the new clarion call among today’s pro-lifers. Overturning Roe vs. Wade is the end-all-and-be-all of to a pro-life political victory.
It’s true. Adding anti-abortion advocates like Gorsuch and Kavanaugh to the court may eventually lead to that result. But in the meantime, America’s highest court is now stacked with justices who regularly act to strengthen corporate power against the interests of the working class.
For example, Justice Kavanaugh only appeared on the president’s list of nominees after his decision as an appeals court judge to support a trucking company’s decision to fire one of their drivers. The driver violated
Brett Kavanaugh at his Senate confirmation hearing
company policy by leaving his truck unattended in order to walk to a nearby convenience store. The truck had broken down in a blizzard. After calling for help and waiting, the driver soon found that he could no longer feel his legs. He feared that he might die of hypothermia as he waited. Should he stay with his truck? Or should he walk to a nearby convenience store to warm up?
What would you have done?
Judge Kavanaugh, the latest pro-life darling, determined that the company was justified in firing an employee who refused to lay down his life for their sixteen-wheeler. That ruling won Kavanaugh his contentious nomination. And the vast majority of evangelicals stood to cheer. (I won’t even begin to comment on the vile conservative abuse spewed out against the women who accused Kavanaugh of sexual abuse).
Was Kavanaugh really a pro-life nominee?
America’s broken, corrupted “justice” system serves the political purposes of bi-partisan mass incarceration laws filling our jails and prisons with people of color who are slapped down by onerous convictions, while white people – especially wealthy white people – receive a slap on the wrist for committing identical offenses. This country’s “injustice system” has become a calcified showcase for the most racist, Jim Crow artifacts in a nation where all people are notequal before the law.
Why did the NYC police department implement its “stop and frisk” policy in black neighborhoods but never on Wall Street? I suspect they would have collected more cocaine stashed comfortably in the sleek suit pockets of hedge fund managers than they ever discovered in the hands of African-Americans walking to the market.
Yet, American evangelicals regularly rally around the bi-partisan flag demanding that officials get “tough on crime” – excepting, of course, the white-collar crime flagrantly committed by men like Donald Trump, Jared Kushner, and their corporate donors.
Tell me again. What, exactly, is pro-life about any of this behavior?
America’s population is now separated by the greatest economic divide between the haves and the have-nots since the Great Depression. That divide expands and deepens year by year as a result of government, economic boondoggles ensuring that wealth redistribution is always moving upwards to further enrich the already rich. All the while, most evangelicals link arms with the wealthy, corporate interests who exploit the poor and the working class.
There simply is no excuse for any Christian supporting the policies of either party which perpetuate national behaviors so cravenly antithetical to Jesus’ teaching about the righteousness of God’s kingdom.
Let’s call such public behavior for what it really is, especially when it is endorsed by a majority of evangelicals: grotesque displays of hypocrisy, partisan blindness, and anti-Christian thinking.
Such misguided thinking is an investment in the work of the anti-Christ. The resulting behaviors reveal the overt repudiation of Jesus’ Lordship over his church.
Genuinely pro-life behavior begins among the citizens of Christ’s kingdom who live it out in the streets by enhancing the lives of those who most need help. That includes influencing the culture around us, our society, our leaders, and our nation, by working to enact consistent pro-life policies for all people everywhere.
To further stretch our moral boundaries, evangelicals should be in the forefront of calling for the US to abandon its budget-breaking quest for global supremacy, a quest that tramples other nations underfoot like discarded human refuse left behind for global scavengers to devour.
Now that would be pro-life.
Jesus is clear. His kingdom’s pro-life values declare:
The first will be last, and the last will be first
Woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your reward
Woe to those who neglect to do justice
Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry
Our Lord welcomes every immigrant and asylum seeker with open arms.
Our Lord prioritizes the poor. He picks them up and cares for them. He does not ridicule them as lazy creators of their own hardships.
How can any society be positively influenced by a secularized church that long ago exchanged the mind of Christ for the distorted thinking of this evil age?
How can the church show others the importance of thorough-going pro-life policies when we are incapable of implementing them among ourselves?
American evangelicalism has become the useless salt described by Jesus: You are [supposed to be] the salt of the earth, but once that salt loses its saltiness, it becomes useless, good for nothing. It can only be thrown out onto the dirt (my paraphrase, Matthew 5:13).
Jesus’ words address the American church today.
No, Donald Trump is not the church’s greatest friend. He is another in a long line of anti-Christs. He is a parasite who has attached himself to the Religious Right in order to exploit their evangelical base for his own political benefit.
Evangelicals are president Trump’s useful idiots.
I am sorry, but any purported “Christian” who cannot perceive these facts about our president, American politics, and our nation’s behavior throughout the world has become a spiritual alien who knows little if anything about God’s kingdom.
Such people are spiritually malnourished, perhaps even dead, after suckling at the swollen teats of American civil religion, that secular, bastardized gospel which subverts Jesus’ kingdom values while substituting the depraved values of this fallen world.
God’s kingdom is what truly matters. The church is its citizenry. All of which entails much, much more than simply “getting people saved.”
Saved for what?
Jesus calls us to love indiscriminately. To prioritize people in need, no matter who they are. Yes, personal acts of benefaction are crucial, but that is not enough. The scale of America’s social problems is so vast that our government must play a major role in rectifying our problems. Only true citizens of the kingdom of God possess the vision necessary for developing the required solutions.
Will a mass movement of the Christian church stand up to demand that our government take greater and greater steps towards mercy and justice for all?
are secured behind his back as he repeats his last words, “I can’t breathe.”
It’s not the first time America has heard a black man’s suffocating request for breath. Nor will it be the last. At least, not as long as there are public officials like this 
entrenched by America’s ludicrous cross-training with the Israeli military, an army which exists only to pulverize Palestinians. It’s no wonder that pulverizing people of color has become a weekly news item for us.
their support of the “pro-life” movement, their fight for staff-led prayer in public schools, and their hostility against equal rights legislation for LGBT human beings.
everyone claiming to be a disciple of Jesus actually “fixes their eyes on Jesus,” as the writer to the Hebrews insists we should (12:2).
describe the movement. As many others have pointed out, the pro-life movement is not actually pro-life. It is anti-abortion and pro-birth, but the movement’s pro-life interests vanish quickly once a baby is delivered.
of bi-partisan mass incarceration laws filling our jails and prisons with people of color who are slapped down by onerous convictions, while white people – especially wealthy white people – receive a slap on the wrist for committing identical offenses. This country’s “injustice system” has become a calcified showcase for the most racist, Jim Crow artifacts in a nation where all people are not equal before the law.
collected more cocaine stashed comfortably in the sleek suit pockets of hedge fund managers than they ever discovered in the hands of African-Americans walking to the market.
Let’s call such public behavior for what it really is, especially when it is endorsed by a majority of evangelicals: grotesque displays of hypocrisy, partisan blindness, and anti-Christian thinking.
long line of anti-Christs. He is a parasite who has attached himself to the Religious Right in order to exploit their evangelical base for his own political benefit.