I’ve got another comparison of two video clips for you today. Except, this time I will allow you to make your own analysis without my input.
The first clip is of a dude on the Christian Broadcasting Network speaking about the recent mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
His verdict on the renewed debate over gun control? “We can govern our way out of chaos.” Tell me what’s wrong with his thinking.
The second clip is again from an interview on Democracy Now.
Amy Goodman discusses the actions taken in Australia after a mass shooting shocked the nation in 1996. No, Australia was not transformed by a religious revival. It was transformed by legislation.
As more details about the recent Texas school massacre are released, the picture becomes increasingly disturbing.
Eye-witnesses are now explaining that local police stood outside the school, leaving the killer inside the building for nearly an hour. They made no attempt to enter the school or to stop the shooter during this time.
In fact, the police prohibited locals gathered outside the school from launching an assault of their own when the police refused to intervene and stop the killing.
Police actually tasered one man who tried to enter the school on his own. Meanwhile, local police entered through the back door to remove their own children from the school while listening to the murderous gunfire killing 19 children and two teachers.
As it becomes increasingly clear that that US police are being trained to place their own safety above public safety, it is long past time to ask questions.
When and where was this decision made? Where are the training materials being produced? Why does anyone enlist for a potentially dangerous job if they are not willing to take risks?
Our risk-averse police force is literally killing people.
The police shoot unarmed black people regularly. Now they have the blood of another 21 people on their hands because they cared more about their own safety than they did about the little children they had sworn to serve.
The traditional law-enforcement motto, to protect and serve, seems now only to apply to themselves.
Javier Cazares, whose fourth grade daughter, Jacklyn Cazares, was killed in the attack, said he raced to the school when he heard about the shooting, arriving while police were still gathered outside the building.
Upset that police were not moving in, he raised the idea of charging into the school with several other bystanders.
“Let’s just rush in because the cops aren’t doing anything like they are supposed to,” he said. “More could have been done.”
Below is a clip from Breaking Points News which discusses this new dimension of the Texas shooting story. They include video of the parents standing outside the school shouting at police to enter and subdue the shooter:
The organization known as Defense for Children International, Palestine monitors the abuse of Palestinian children in the Occupied Territories (Gaza and the West Bank.)
They recently posted a horrifying story about a teenage girl being used as a
Ahed-Mohammad-Rida-Mereb. She was made a human shield by Israeli soldiers, made to stand in front of their Jeep, in the middle of a crossfire.
“human shield” by Israeli forces in the northern, West Bank refugee camp of Jenin.
The Israeli military often refers to itself as “the most moral army in the world.” But you must understand the ideology of political Zionism in order to understand the meaning of this slogan.
To the average westerner, being called “the most moral army in the world” means that Israeli soldiers always obey international law, will never commit war crimes, and will always fight justly and fairly.
Don’t believe it.
This phrase is actually another Zionist word game. But you won’t get the joke if you don’t understand what makes political Zionism tick. In the Zionist world, the most moral thing any Jewish person can do is to defend the Jewish state.
Thus, the “morality” of the Israeli military is not measured by international law or humanitarian standards of fair play or just war theory. These concerns have no bearing whatsoever on the truth or falsehood of Israel’s military proposition.
Instead, Israel’s military is supremely moral because they are “defending” the Jewish nation-state. And THAT, by definition, is the apex of military morality.
Consequently, I am not surprised to read this heartbreaking story of life-threatening child abuse committed by Israeli forces.
By the way, also notice the example of another war crime mentioned briefly at the end of this story. Because the teenager’s older brother was a wanted man, the army fire-bombed her family home.
This form of collective punishment is also a war crime regularly performed by Israel forces against Palestinian families. Imagine if your cousin had committed a crime but law enforcement came to destroy your home simply because you were family.
Israel does this, and so much more, all the time.
Read Ahed’s story below:
Ramallah, May 19, 2022—Israeli soldiers used a 16-year-old Palestinian girl as a human shield in front of an Israeli military vehicle while deployed in the northern occupied West Bank city of Jenin last week.
Israeli soldiers forced Ahed Mohammad Rida Mereb, 16, to stand in front of an Israeli military vehicle on May 13 around 8 a.m. in the Al Hadaf neighborhood of Jenin as Palestinian gunmen shot heavily toward the Israeli forces’ position, according to information collected by Defense for Children International – Palestine. Israeli forces ordered Ahed to stand outside the military vehicle for around two hours while they sat inside.
“International law is explicit and absolutely prohibits the use of children as human shields by armed forces or armed groups,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, Accountability Program director at Defense for Children International – Palestine. “Israeli forces intentionally putting a child in grave danger in order to shield themselves constitutes a war crime.”
Israeli forces besieged Ahed’s home around 6 a.m. on May 13 in order to arrest her 20-year-old brother, according to documentation collected by DCIP. Israeli forces ordered Ahed, her parents, and her two younger brothers out of the house and to move to a yard across the street. Israeli forces exchanged fire with Ahed’s older brother, who remained in the house. Around 8 a.m., Palestinian gunmen shot heavily toward an Israeli military vehicle, which is when Israeli forces ordered Ahed to stand outside the military vehicle.
“Bullets were being fired at the military vehicle from all directions,” Ahed told DCIP. “I was trembling and crying and shouting to the soldiers to remove me because the bullets were passing over my head, but one of them ordered me in Arabic through a small window in the military vehicle, ‘Stay where you are and don’t move. You’re a terrorist. Stand in your place until you say goodbye to your brother.’”
Ahed tried to tilt her head to the side to dodge the bullets, but one of the Israeli soldiers ordered her to stand up straight, according to information collected by DCIP. Ahed stood in front of the Israeli military vehicle for about two hours before running to a nearby tree and collapsing on the ground, according to documentation collected by DCIP.
Around two hours later, Israeli forces evacuated Ahed’s two-story house, where she lived with her parents, three brothers, grandparents, two uncles and their wives, and their eight children ranging in age from one to 11 years old, according to information collected by DCIP. After the family evacuated, Israeli forces bombed the house with rocket-propelled grenades, which caused the house to catch on fire. Israeli forces also shot live ammunition at the house, according to documentation collected by DCIP.
Israeli forces withdrew from Ahed’s neighborhood around 11 a.m. She learned that Israeli forces arrested her older brother and that neighborhood residents posted on social media that she was being used as a human shield by Israeli forces, which led the Palestinian gunmen to stop shooting at the Israeli military vehicle.
Ahed was transferred by private vehicle to Jenin Hospital and was treated for intense mental stress and a severe lack of oxygen, according to documentation collected by DCIP.
The use of civilians as human shields, wherein civilians are forced to directly assist military operations or used to shield armed forces or armed groups or objects from attack, is prohibited under international law. The practice is also prohibited under Israeli law based on a 2005 ruling by the Israeli High Court of Justice.
Since 2000, DCIP has documented at least 26 cases involving Palestinian children being used as human shields by the Israeli army. All except one case have occurred after the Israeli High Court of Justice ruling. Only one of those cases led to the conviction of two soldiers for “inappropriate behavior” and “overstepping authority.” Both were demoted in rank and given three-month suspended sentences.
Chris Hedges’ most recent editorial at Scheerpost is titled “No Way Out But War.”
As thorough and prescient as ever, Mr. Hedges catalogues the many ways in
Chris Hedges
which the American political-corporate-industrial establishment — a thoroughly bipartisan, insatiable behemoth — is destroying our country through the pursuit of endless wars.
None of our wars are “wars of necessity,” as if there has ever been such an ugly but cuddly beast. No. American wars are unnecessary wars of imperial aggression, pure and simple.
And this includes the current war in Ukraine, for which the US bears a sizeable load of responsibility.
Below is an excerpt from Mr. Hedges’ article. All emphasis is mine:
Permanent war has cannibalized the country. It has created a social, political, and economic morass. Each new military debacle is another nail in the coffin of Pax Americana.
The United States, as the near unanimous vote to provide nearly $40 billion in aid to Ukraine illustrates, is trapped in the death spiral of unchecked militarism. No high speed trains. No universal health care. No viable Covid relief program. No respite from 8.3 percent inflation. No infrastructure programs to repair decaying roads and bridges, which require $41.8 billion to fix the 43,586 structurally deficient bridges, on average 68 years old. No forgiveness of $1.7 trillion in student debt. No addressing income inequality. No program to feed the 17 million children who go to bed each night hungry. No rational gun control or curbing of the epidemic of nihilistic violence and mass shootings. No help for the 100,000 Americans who die each year of drug overdoses. No minimum wage of $15 an hour to counter 44 years of wage stagnation. No respite from gas prices that are projected to hit $6 a gallon.
The permanent war economy, implanted since the end of World War II, has destroyed the private economy, bankrupted the nation, and squandered trillions of dollars of taxpayer money. The monopolization of capital by the military has driven the US debt to $30 trillion, $ 6 trillion more than the US GDP of $ 24 trillion. Servicing this debt costs $300 billion a year. We spent more on the military, $ 813 billion for fiscal year 2023, than the next nine countries, including China and Russia, combined.
We are paying a heavy social, political, and economic cost for our militarism. Washington watches passively as the U.S. rots, morally, politically, economically, and physically, while China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, and other countries extract themselves from the tyranny of the U.S. dollar and the international Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a messaging network banks and other financial institutions use to send and receive information, such as money transfer instructions. Once the U.S. dollar is no longer the world’s reserve currency, once there is an alternative to SWIFT, it will precipitate an internal economic collapse. It will force the immediate contraction of the U.S. empire shuttering most of its nearly 800 overseas military installations. It will signal the death of Pax Americana.
Democrat or Republican. It does not matter.War is the raison d’état of the state. Extravagant military expenditures are justified in the name of “national security.” The nearly $40 billion allocated for Ukraine, most of it going into the hands of weapons manufacturers such as Raytheon Technologies, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing, is only the beginning. Military strategists, who say the war will be long and protracted, are talking about infusions of $4 or $5 billion in military aid a month to Ukraine. We face existential threats. But these do not count. The proposed budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in fiscal year 2023 is $10.675 billion. The proposed budget for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is $11.881 billion. Ukraine alone gets more than double that amount. Pandemics and the climate emergency are afterthoughts. War is all that matters. This is a recipe for collective suicide. . .
. . .The 57 Republicans who refused to support the $40 billion aid package to Ukraine, along with many of the 19 bills that included an earlier $13.6 billion in aid for Ukraine, come out of the kooky conspiratorial world of Trump. They, like Trump, repeat this heresy. They too are attacked and censored. But the longer Biden and the ruling class continue to pour resources into war at our expense, the more these proto fascists, already set to wipe out Democratic gains in the House and the Senate this fall, will be ascendant. Marjorie Taylor Greene, during the debate on the aid package to Ukraine, which most members were not given time to closely examine, said: “$40 billion dollars but there’s no baby formula for American mothers and babies.”
“An unknown amount of money to the CIA and Ukraine supplemental bill but there’s no formula for American babies,” she added. “Stop funding regime change and money laundering scams. A US politician covers up their crimes in countries like Ukraine.”
Democrat Jamie Raskin immediately attacked Greene for parroting the propaganda of Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Greene, like Trump, spoke a truth that resonates with a beleaguered public. The opposition to permanent war should have come from the tiny progressive wing of the Democratic Party, which unfortunately sold out to the craven Democratic Party leadership to save their political careers. Greene is demented, but Raskin and the Democrats peddle their own brand of lunacy. We are going to pay a very steep price for this burlesque.
If you missed part 1 of this discussion yesterday you can click here to watch the two brief videos I am discussing now in Part 2.
My primary interest yesterday was offering a critique of a typical, conservative Christian discussion of America’s problem with gun violence and mass shootings. A recent editorial on the Christian Broadcasting Network provides the standard bromides of personal piety, individual reformation, and godly parenting as the redemptive trifecta for cultural transformation in this country.
However, my second analysis is provided by Amy Spitalnick on Democracy Now. Ms. Spitalnick offers a different perspective on changing society by tackling the systemic issues that perpetuate the status quo.
For example, she began an organization which sued the leaders of the various
The murder drove his car into the crowd of anti-Nazi protesters
white supremacist organizations that participated in the 2017 “Unite the Right” in Charlottesville, VA which resulted in the murder of Heather Heyer, who was deliberately run over by a car.
Ms. Spitalnick’s organization won over $26 million in damages and succeeded in bankrupting the Nazi organizations involved. Her focus was not on changing people’s hearts or minds, though that may have happened too, but on crippling or eliminating the power blocks — groups, organizations, clubs, networks of people — who were carrying the banners of white replacement theory and chanting “Jews will not replace us.”
Her goal was to put the organizations responsible for fomenting Ms. Heyer’s
Heather Heyer memorial on the street where she was run over by a white supremacist
murder out of commission, and she succeeded.
Christians need to engage in these types of organizational efforts aimed at crippling the seats of power which perpetuate the social evils we believe are in need of correction.
The insistence of the Religious Right in making every social problem an exclusively individualistic issue that can only be addressed through evangelism and personal repentance has never made sense to me.
Folks, it IS possible to walk and chew gum at the same time. The proposed solutions need not be reduced to either/or alternatives. Christian can share
Car that ran over Heather Heyer
their faith, address the individual needs of broken, corrupted people, while also organizing to disrupt the power structures in our fallen society that harbor racism and white supremacy, simultaneously.
In fact, the conservative evangelical caricature of all social ills as exclusively individualistic diseases does not even describe their own work in these areas. For example, the imminent reversal of Roe vs. Wade is the direct result of evangelicals apply the same structural strategies as Ms. Spitalnick.
Anti-abortion protests are not what grabbed the Supreme Court’s attention. Rather, it was the long-term organizational work of coordinated fund raising and nation-wide litigation efforts, all aiming for the goal of getting anti-abortion cases before the Supreme Court on appeal.
And now that organizational and lobbying and prosecutorial work all appears to have paid off for the anti-abortion movement.
In his important book To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, & Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (Oxford, 2010), author James Davison Hunter convincingly argues that:
Without a fundamental restructuring of the institutions of culture formation and transmission in our society — the market, government-sponsored cultural institutions, education at all levels, advertising, entertainment, publishing, and the news media, not to mention church — revival would have a negligible long-term effect on the reconstitution of the culture. (46)
I believe that professor Hunter is absolutely correct.
So, why do evangelical activists continue to speak out of both sides of their mouths, organizing collectively on the one hand, while insisting that only individual transformations, one person at a time, will ever change the world, on the other?
In part, this schizophrenia reveals the long-term effects of fundamentalist revivalism in the American church. I recently wrote about the paradigmatic role of Dwight L. Moody in steering nineteenth century evangelicals away from political activism while focusing exclusively on personal piety.
That anti-systemic nihilism remains deeply embedded in the conservative, evangelical psyche.
Yet, at the same time, the Republican party turned evangelicals into the anti-abortion movement long ago, knowing that their alliance guaranteed the Republicans millions of guaranteed votes for the foreseeable future.
Beyond this dichotomy, I suspect that evangelical, big-business powerbrokers insist on offering old-fashioned, narrowly pietistic, reductionist solutions to every social ill because maintaining the capitalistic status quo is, finally, far more important to them than effectively reducing gun violence or marginalizing white supremacy.
Everyone has an agenda.
Sadly, for too many “Christians” that agenda does not prioritize the collective love of neighbor as much as it does keeping the powerful in power and the marginalized on the margins.
Waving magical Bible wands while repeatedly mumbling “prayer in public schools, prayer in public schools” is a sufficiently religious sop to keep the collective mind dulled and unthinking.
Enquiring minds won’t want to know because truly enquiring minds are made few and far between. Welcome to the world of the Christian Broadcasting Network.
May I suggest that you change stations and begin watching Democracy Now.
(The photos throughout this post display only some of the victims of the mass shooting in Buffalo.)
Below I have posted two very different analyses of the recent mass shooting committed by a young white supremacist in Buffalo, NY.
They are both fairly brief. So, watch both and then rejoin me at the bottom to read my own thoughts about each perspective. I will try to keep my comments as short as possible.
If you want to explore this issue further with me, just make a comment on the blog page. I always respond as quickly as possible.
The first is an editorial from the Christian Broadcasting Network titled “How Americans Can Prevent More Mass Shootings.” The second is an interview from the alternative news program Democracy Now titled “Lessons for Buffalo? Meet the Activist Who Sued the White Supremacists Behind Charlottesville & Won.”
My response. (I’ll give you a heads up — I disagree with everything in the CBN editorial. The Jewish granddaughter of Holocaust survivors makes much more sense and offers far better suggestions for change):
Celestine Chaney
We must begin by noting CBN’s utter neglect of the white supremacist ideology that motivated the Buffalo murders. It only mentions that he had “come under the spell of others” briefly as if he were unwittingly seduced my mysterious, dark forces.
The fact that the shooter wrote a very lengthy online manifesto declaring both his hatred of African-Americans and brown-skinned immigrants as well as his plans to commit a mass shooting are conveniently ignored.
Consequently, the obvious questions for local law enforcement as to how in
Ruth Whitfield
the world a young white supremacist, spewing vitriol, who had previously been brought in for questioning after threatening to commit a local school shooting, are nowhere within earshot.
The idea that his young man had personal agency and willingly embraced his racist ideology is also buried very deeply. My suspicion is that CBN’s right-wing Republican political stance is on full display in this editorial decision.
Roberta Drury
More than that, I suspect that CBN producers regularly consult with Republican party leaders to gather the newest party “talking points.” The Republicans are very busy working to separate their public image from violent racism at the moment — while continuing openly to embrace this evil on the campaign trail, especially when visiting Mara Lago to kiss Trump’s ring — so CBN was almost certainly told to keep
Heyward Patterson
this issue hidden beneath their tight fitting neocon helmet.
Unsurprisingly, the idea of tougher gun laws is put to bed immediately. The implication is crystal clear: restrictive gun laws do not work in limiting gun violence. The spokesman rightly points out that NY state already has very restrictive gun laws, but those laws did not prevent this shooting.
Aaron Salter
At this point, CBN demonstrates the complete absence of “fact-checkers” in the news room. It’s been widely reported that the NY shooter crossed the state line and purchased the guns and ammunition used in the shooting from a Massachusetts gun shop.
The obvious implication — at least, it appears obvious to my feeble mind — is the need for greater uniformity in US gun laws beginning with a nation-wide, federal ban on all semi-automatic rifles. The shooter ought not have been able to purchase his murderous implements anywhere in the country.
But then, on second thought, perhaps there are fact-checkers at CBN, but the powers-that-be decided to manipulate their conservative, anti-gun law viewers with gross misinformation, which are in fact, outright lies.
If this is the case, then so much for the Christian morality and integrity that the editorialist beats the drum about towards the editorial’s conclusion.
The heart of the problem, according to CBN, is American immorality, most profoundly displayed in the absence of any generally maintained “Christian world-view” among American church-goers.
I have an earlier post criticizing this particular red herring, so I won’t repeat myself here. You can read the previous post if interested.
Geraldine Talley
This supposed lack of a robust Christian world-view among American Christians then becomes a launching pad for the standard, conservative lament about the egregious moral decline of our society, as if we all now inhabit the historic, indecent nadir of US moral degeneracy.
Here it becomes obvious that along with the absent fact-checkers, neither are there any American historians in the CBN editorial room.
But the standard tropes are trotted out once again. The two successive turning points for America’s irreligious degradation are the well-known bobbsy twins of US degeneracy: the outlawing of prayer in our public schools (a ruling that strangely never affected me during my public school career, since I prayed regularly in school without difficulty or interruption), and the Supreme Court ruling of Roe vs. Wade.
As a direct result of these two legal decisions, the United States began a
Pearl Young
rapid descent into indecency and flagrant wickedness that has swept the nation and now instigates young, white men like the Buffalo shooter to “randomly” mow down black Americans with a semi-automatic rifle in the local grocery’s produce aisle.
Does that make sense to you? I must confess that it totally baffles me.
Naturally, by the end of CBN’s ahistorical and irrational monologue it all comes down to the failure of parents, meaning that the obvious solution is to, once again, “focus on the family.”
Cultivating stronger, more godly families is, as always, the social, cultural, political, religious panacea needed to solve the problems of white supremacy and gun violence in this country of ours.
More Christian parents, promoting the properly Biblical world-view, taking greater responsibility for the spiritual nurture of their children becomes the one-size-fits-all remedy for everything that ails America.
It’s just that simple.
Or is it? Come back tomorrow for part two of my response to these two videos. I’ve got a lot more to say…unsurprisingly. But I think that this post is already long enough.
Not long ago I had conversation with two old friends about a topic I have written about previously on this blog (here and here): regaining a unified church after Donald Trump’s presidency.
Their church has essentially undergone a split, both numerically and spiritually, sparked by the contentious political debates fomented around president Trump and his “America first” policies.
One of my friends, who is a staff member at the church, explained the various efforts – including programs focusing on collective reconciliation – the church leadership has been pursuing.
She lamented that, so far, nothing has proven particularly successful. Many members who left the church (mainly Trump devotees) appear to be gone for good. Political antagonisms remain. They are now sublimated beneath the surface of their community’s life, but they continue to be subtly divisive.
Of course, I felt compelled to offer my perspective. I won’t repeat it here; you can reread by previous two posts if you want to catch up. Let me just say that I am not a great fan of this prevalent urge “to reclaim the old church community.” I believe that it is fundamentally misguided, and I told them so (in a nice way; really, I was nice).
However, I was more than a little insulted when they both laughed in my face. (I am not exaggerating.) Their message was clear: “Oh there goes crazy David again with his weird ideas about the church! Don’t you know that church unity is essential?!”
As you can guess, this part of our conversation went nowhere. And I will admit that my thinking on this matter will undoubtedly sound “weird” to many, but then the Bible can be a very weird book.
The problem, as I see it, is that those, like my friends, who remain emotionally distraught over the supposed “loss” of church unity, generated by the politics of Donald Trump and his MAGA movement, are chasing after the wrong goal.
They have set their eyes on an abstract concept of Christian togetherness, instantiated for them in the physical presence of familiar faces, when they should be “setting their eyes of Jesus” (Hebrews 12:2) and what it means for Him to be glorified.
These two objectives are very, very different.
Let me explain what I mean by sharing a few thoughts recently prompted by a book which has motivated me to write about this topic one more time.
**********
Dwight L. Moody (1837-1899) was the nineteenth century equivalent of the
Dwight L. Moody
evangelist Billy Graham throughout the English-speaking world.
As a young man in Boston, Moody had been a committed abolitionist actively agitating for the end of slavery in America. But as his revivalist career began to develop, and he became more and more well-known, Moody was faced with a challenge.
The remarkable book by historian Edward J. Blum, Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and the American Nationalism 1865-1989 (Louisiana State University, 2005), lucidly explains the nature of Moody’s challenge and the ominous political, social, cultural challenges that confronted every public, religious figure in the aftermath of the Civil War.
That challenge concerned the unity of God’s American church.
The Civil War had embedded a seemingly permanent split between the northern and southern branches of American Christianity. Bridging that gap and healing those wounds, bringing the church together again as one unified, national community, was a major concern all throughout American society at the time.
A large number of national, Christian leaders, including Moody, decided that solving this problem meant that all political discussions must be set aside. This included any mention of slavery, black equality, or human rights. Instead, pastors and evangelists were to focus only on the “spiritual” demands of personal salvation and individual piety.
To further calm these divided waters and work towards unity between the north and south, Moody segregated his southern revivals in order not to offend southern churchgoers. After the war, he would openly praise “the lost cause” otherwise known as the southern rebellion. Unsurprisingly, a majority of black churchgoers, their friends and family boycotted Moody’s crusades.
Black leaders like Frederick Douglas and Ida B. Wells excoriated Moody’s betrayal of Christian morality for the sake of unifying the white church. One “negro” representative at an annual conference of the African Methodist Episcopal church wrote:
(Moody’s) conduct toward the Negro’s during his southern tour has been shameless, and I would not have him preach in a barroom, let alone a church.”
Frederick Douglas said (among many other things) of Moody’s segregated revivals:
Of all the forms of Negro hate in this world, save me from that one which clothes itself with the name of loving Jesus.
Ida B. Wells also condemned Moody for his version of “Jim Crow revivalism.”
Blum concludes that Moody’s Jim Crow strategy for church unity proved to be a major factor in the eventual reunion of northern and southern allwhite churches by the close of the nineteenth century:
Highlighting social consensus at the expense of social reform, Moody’s revivals contributed to the. . . spiritual justification to an ethnic nationalism centered upon whiteness.
Yes, white churches rediscovered unity across the Mason-Dixon line, but at what cost? Was it the type of unity Christ wants for his people? We dare not forget who was finally excluded from this long-sought unity.
Moody abandoned his previous Christian principles in order to accomplish a sociological result.
Consequently, Moody helped to infuse a permanent state of all pervasive segregation throughout the white and black churches in both the north and the south. Something that had not been true before the war.
But what Moody accomplished was not unity but a pernicious, intractable brand of sectarian division within the church.
Moody also helped to banish social reform and the ethics of political/social behavior from the evangelical vocabulary. His focus on personal piety at the expense of public, political ethics is still keeping evangelical churches on the sidelines of today’s continuing conversations about racial inequality.
This unbiblical separation of the spiritual from the political also continues to infect today’s efforts at reuniting the post-Trump, evangelical church.
Learning to tolerate opposing political opinions is a far cry from grappling with the outlandish moral failures exemplified in many of those opinions and their resulting policies. The first is called learning to live like an adult. The second is called learning to think and behave like a genuine disciple of Jesus Christ.
By refusing to talk about slavery; by failing openly to condemn the enslavement of fellow human beings; by embracing pro-slavery brothers and sisters into all white churches without any expectation of confession and repentance, Moody and those like him became guilty, not only of rank moral failure, but of an egregious betrayal of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Misguided obsessions with unity for unity’s sake are replicating similar mistakes today. Seeing “Trumpers” and “Non-Trumpers” worshiping together again, in their pre-2016 blissfulness, is a fool’s dream about a bogus, vanilla brand of artificial fellowship.
Now is the time to talk about Christian ethics, both public and private, political, social, and cultural. This is the conversation that ought to take center-stage in any genuine attempt at church unity.
Was supporting Donald Trump and his policies a moral position for any of God’s people to take? Yes, or no? Defend yourself from scripture, chapter and verse.
Obviously, people will remain divided, but the substance of the divisions will have been altered; they will become clear: these are now ethical, moral fault- lines created by different understandings of Jesus Christ, the nature of the Good News, the arrival of God’s kingdom, and what Jesus requires of his followers.
Not everyone will want to hang around once the “political” differences are described in this absolutely necessary, moral framework. People may leave to attend other churches. Let them.
So what?
Moody’s slovenly strategy for church unity was a pig in a poke.
Once again, the church is being sifted. It happens. For cryin’ out loud, don’t we remember what the apostle Paul said?
The time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. (2 Timothy 4:3)
No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God’s approval. (1 Corinthians 11:19)
David J. Rothkopf is an American professor of international relations, political scientist and journalist.
Today’s issue of Haaretz newspaper published an insightful comparison witten by Rothkopf of the essential similarity between yesterday’s attack by Israeli soldiers against the murdered Palestinian journalist’s, Shireen Abu Aqla’s, funeral procession in east Jerusalem, and the mass murder of 10 African-American’s in Buffalo, NY by a young, white supremacist.
What do both have in common? Professor Rothkopf hits a bull’s eye when he says, Ethnic Nationalism.
The mass murderer in Buffal0 is a white supremacist worried about white people being “replaced” by immigrants and other people of color. In other words, he killed for his dream of a “white’s only nation.”
The entire Israeli state apparatus is built upon the foundation of Jewish supremacy, a supremacy that the Jewish state will defend at all costs. The murder of the Palestinian journalist, Ms. Abu Aqla; the unprovoked attack against her funeral procession; the continued military occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, are all examples of Israel’s continuing efforts to preserve a “Jew’s only nation.”
Ethnic nationalism is never pretty.
My single disagreement with Rothkopf concerns his idea that Jewish ethnic nationalism is embraced only by Israel’s right-wing. However, my book, Like Birds in a Cage shows how very, very wrong this misconception is.
An 18-year-old walks into a grocery store in Buffalo, New York and opens fire, killing ten. On the barrel of his gun is written a racist epithet so offensive that most media simply refer to it as the “n-word.”
Israeli police brutally assault mourners at the funeral of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. They rip the Palestinian flag off the hearse carrying Abu Akleh’s coffin.
Two events, worlds apart. What could they possibly have in common?
After all, the Buffalo shooter, Payton S. Gendron, was an avowed antisemite who feared that Jews and Blacks and people of color were seeking to “replace” whites. Another symbol on his gun, the number 14, evoked a white supremacist credo, “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” He was a criminal.
According to the Israeli police they were seeking to “facilitate a calm andIsraeli soldiers attack mourners and pall bearers at Ms. Abu Aqla’s funeral procession.
dignified funeral.” What could their behavior possibly have to do with that of an unhinged racist who perceived those who were different from him as a mortal threat and, as a result, felt justified in turning to violence against them? . . .
. . . the underlying impetus behind both assaults was hatred fueled by fear of the “other.” Yes, both Gendron and the Israeli police acted with reckless disregard human life or decency. Yes, the police and Gendron were both actively protecting a world view in which people of different races and creeds were seen as lesser, in which denying them basic freedoms, even depriving them of life, has become commonplace.
Yes, the white replacement theory espoused by Gendron was promoted by right-wing media like Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News. And yes, when Fox star Tucker Carlson was attacked for espousing “white replacement theory,” his defense was to cite the case of Israel: “It is unrealistic and unacceptable to expect the State of Israel to voluntarily subvert its own sovereign existence and nationalist identity and become a vulnerable minority within what was once its own territory.”
And as repulsive as Carlson’s comments were, the logic that brought him to cite Israeli views toward Palestinians was akin to American white supremacists’ views toward non-Christians and non-whites is easily understood.
The racism and hate-mongering of right-wing media in both countries is linked directly to political parties in the U.S. and Israel who have tapped into race hatred and fears to fuel their popularity. . .
. . . Both acts flowed from irrational hate fueled by ethno-nationalist politicians who have made crimes like these ever more likely, offered the predicate for the attacks (even if the monstrous behavior was very different in nature), and one way or another made available the weapons used in the crimes. . .
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Here is an exercise in seeing the difference that “framing” makes in the way different “authorities” can tell the same story to very different effects.
The first clip below is from an Israeli national news program. You will hear a conversation about yesterday’s fatal shooting of the Palestinian journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh. Listen and make a few mental notes on what you hear.
What is emphasized? What are the guest’s primary concerns? What do you think is omitted from this discussion?
The next clip is from the alternative news site Democracy Now. Amy Goodman talks with Dr. Rashid Khalidi, the Edward W. Said professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University.
You will notice that professor Khalidi’s way of framing of the shooting is very different from Dan Perry’s framing in the Israeli clip.
Make some mental notes. What is Khalidi’s emphasis? What does he discuss that you did not hear in the previous interview? What did Mr. Perry discuss that you do not hear about from Khalidi?
How can you account for these differences?
A number of issues strike me as very important.
First, notice how Mr. Perry frames the issues in terms of competing media narratives, or battling storylines. He laments that fact that, in his opinion, Israel is currently “losing” the media battle to the Palestinian version of the story.
Personally, I do not believe that he has a basis for his lament, although his focus of the public’s perception of Israel — quite apart from what actually happened — is typical of what you will hear from Israeli representatives.
Second, I also hear Perry repeat the characteristic lament over “Israeli victimhood”; my words, not his. For the Israeli propaganda machine (yes, I know, I am letting my own framing show itself at this point), Israel is always under attack; Israel is always the innocent victim; any and all accusations made against Israeli behavior are inevitable examples of the world’s eternal hatred of the Jews.
This victim mentality is an essential component of political Zionism.
Third, I do agree with Perry, however, when he criticizes the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, for refusing to cooperate in a joint enquiry into the shooting. This is a foolish move on his part, which will hopefully be overturned quickly.
Fourth, notice the alternative framing offered by professor Khalidi. He describes this shooting as another in a long line of murderous incidents illustrating the brutality of Israeli settler-colonialism — a perspective with which I happen to agree.
Naturally, Mr. Perry never raises this settler-colonial perspective because the majority of Israelis refuse to see themselves in this light. This is not surprising, however.
All throughout history, colonizers have always tried to whitewash their
Filling a mass grave with frozen Lakota bodies after the massacre at Wounded Knee (1890)
crimes, in one way or another. Guilt is always laid at the feet of those who have been colonized. The settlers were bringing civilization to eradicate the barren wilderness and to bring enlightenment to primitive people.
Both the bloodshed, the shirking of responsibility, and the political rhetoric in Israel-Palestine are no different. This is why the two video clips above offer such divergent analyses.
The frozen body of Spotted Elk, leader of the Sioux band slaughtered at Wounded Knee in 1890
Think of the 17th to the 19th century settlement history of the United States. The white, European settlers commonly, almost universally, framed themselves as the innocent victims of Native savagery.
To the white mind, the Indians were always the senseless aggressors. Every
settler storyline began at the moment the Indians appeared threatening or attacked,
Spotted Elk’s village at Wounded Knee prior to the cavalry’s attack. Government authorities feared the Lakota enthusiasm for the new Ghost Dance ceremonies might lead to rebellion
unjustly, inexplicably. Rarely did anyone discuss what the settlers had been doing to the Natives beforehand.
White settlers also never lacked a noble justification for their latest betrayal.
Modern Israel is the last settler-colonial state in this world of ours, and we are seeing the same colonial distortions of history working themselves out in Israel-Palestine today.
Israel’s airwaves provide the final frontier of media battles over “competing narratives.” Israel, and its many Zionist sympathizers, tell their stories from the settlers’ perspective.
Frozen, dead bodies and burned teepees are all that remain after the soldiers attack at Wounded Knee
Palestinians, on the other hand, tell their stories from the Native perspective. The Palestinian narrative, whether or not it “wins” the nonstop media battle, explains how a powerless, conquered people continue to be abused by their conquerors, conquerors who hold the power and always carry the biggest weapons.
As usual, Chris Hedges hits the nail on the head when it comes to the disastrous Obama presidency. This clip is titled “The Obama Scam.” Take a listen:
The Civil War had embedded a seemingly permanent split between the northern and southern branches of American Christianity. Bridging that gap and healing those wounds, bringing the church together again as one unified, national community, was a major concern all throughout American society at the time.
My single disagreement with Rothkopf concerns his idea that Jewish ethnic nationalism is embraced only by Israel’s right-wing. However, my book, Like Birds in a Cage shows how very, very wrong this misconception is.
