Category: Evangelicals & Politics

D. L. Moody, Slavery, And More Discussion of Church Unity

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.

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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 all white 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)

“The Presence of the Kingdom” by Jacques Ellul

I visited Grand Rapids, Michigan last month, and I did what I always do when I travel; I checked out the used bookstores!

This trip, I picked up two books by the French, Christian thinker, professor, philosopher, Jacques Ellul which were new to me.

Jacques Ellul (1912 – 1994)

If you’ve never read Ellul, you need to begin today.

You’ll find few Christian writers as thoughtful and penetrating in his deconstruction of the modern world, its technological idols, and what it means for a Christian to follow Jesus faithfully through the maze of an ever evolving and broken society.

Rather than write up two book reviews for my readers, I decided to post a few excerpts to give you the flavor of each book, both about the kingdom of God.

Naturally, I never agree with everything Ellul says. I don’t even agree with myself much of the time! But I am always challenged and stimulated, often in a surprising, back-handed way, to think about the issues more deeply.

I hope you will be challenged too.

The first book I am excerpting today is Ellul’s 1948 publication titled, The Presence of the Kingdom (all emphasis is mine):

. . . The Christian is constantly obliged to reiterate the claims of God, to re-establish this God-willed ‘order,’ in presence of an order which constantly tends towards disorder. In consequence of the claims which God is always making on the world the Christian finds himself (sic), by that very fact, involved in a state of permanent revolution. Even when the institutions, the laws, the reforms which he has advocated have been achieved, even if society be re-organized according to his suggestions, he still has to be in opposition, he still must exact more, for the claim of God is a infinite as His forgiveness. Thus, the Christian is called to question unceasingly all that man calls progress, discovery, facts, established results, reality, etc. He can never be satisfied with all this human labour, and in consequence he is always claiming that it should be transcended, or replaced by something else.

 In his judgment he is guided by the Holy Spirit – he is making an essentially revolutionary act. If the Christian is not being revolutionary, then in some way or another he has been unfaithful to his calling in the world. . .

 . . . Thus, one who knows that he has been saved by Christ is not a man jealously and timidly attached to a past, however glorious it may be. He does not cling to the past of his Church (tradition), nor even to the past life of Jesus Christ (on which, however, the certainty of his faith depends) – but he is a man of the future…of the eschaton, of the coming break with this present world…All facts acquire their value in the light of the coming Kingdom of God, in the light of the Judgment, and the victory of God. . .

 . . . This theological truth also applies to social and political facts. The actual events of our world only acquire their value in the light of the coming Kingdom of God. It is the imminent return of Christ which gives genuine seriousness to each actual event . . . Without this direction history is an outbreak of madness. Now in this matter the Christian has no right to keep this truth to himself; by his action and by his thought it is his duty to bring the ‘coming event’ into the life of this present world. . . Every Christian who has received the Holy Spirit is now a prophet of the Return of Christ, and by this very fact he has a revolutionary mission in politics. . .

 . . . To be revolutionary is to judge the world by its present state, by actual facts, in the name of a truth which does not yet exist (but which is coming) – and it is to do so because we believe this truth to be more genuine and more real than the reality which surrounds us. Consequently, it means bringing the future into the present as an explosive force. . .

But, What About the Children?

The title to this post, But What About the Children, was a common catch phrase on the long-running Simpson’s cartoon on the Fox network.

Whenever the Simpsons’ neighborhood seemed poised to confront a new, intrusive cultural challenge, the local pastor’s wife could be counted on loudly to lament, “But what about the children?”, giving parody to conservative Christianity’s ostensible concern for the health and well-being of America’s young people.

Monday’s leaked draft of an (apparently?) imminent Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade is now fueling cries of jubilation among the evangelical community that has fought for decades to rid this country of abortion and the tearful tearing of garments among abortion’s distraught defenders.

Even though I am against abortion per se, I am also disturbed at what the social consequences will be if/when access to abortion becomes more restricted. (I also understand that nothing is certain about these things, and the aftermath will be complex and undoubtedly surprising. See the Constitutional, civil rights attorney, Glenn Greenwald’s helpful discussion of these Constitutional issues here.)

Daniel K. Williams fine book, The Politics of the Cross: A Christian Alternative to Partisanship (Eerdmans, 2021), contains a very helpful analysis of abortion in the United States, the evangelical battle against Roe v. Wade, and what should be the Christian church’s response to the issue’s complexities.

[I encourage you to buy the book and read especially chapter three – I do not agree with everything he says, especially in his chapter on marriage and sexuality. I am also shocked that Stanley Hauerwas does not appear in his bibliography! But overall, Williams provides the most balanced discussion of hot button social issues I have yet found written by an evangelical Christian.]

Here are a few short excerpts from The Politics of the Cross (all emphasis mine):

But what most people involved in the abortion debate seem not to realize is that we have largely returned to a pre-Roe past even without a direct repeal of Roe. The number of abortions per year in the United States is now lower than in any year since 1973 [the year of the Roe v. Wade ruling]. . .The number of abortion clinics has fallen by about two-thirds during the past twenty-five years. There are now more than three times as many pro-life crisis pregnancy centers as there are abortion clinics [in this country]. (103)

The primary explanation given by women as to why they want an abortion is that they are too poor to successfully raise another child:

[Pro-lifers are right] in that restricting access to abortion. . . does reduce abortion rates. . . But pro-choice advocates are also right in saying that this method of reducing abortion rates is likely to keep more women in poverty. This suggests that if pro-lifers really care about protecting all human life, including the life of low-income pregnant women, they will not merely try to rescind Roe v. Wade but will instead couple their restrictions on abortion with expanded efforts to provide economic resources to the women whose poverty has been exacerbated by an additional pregnancy. (104).

Fifty-nine percent of women who have abortions are already mothers. . .75 percent of the women having abortions are impoverished or classified as “low income.” (105)

My conscience is deeply troubled by the close connection between abortion rates and poverty in this country.

The majority of women seeking an abortion in this country are moved by, not just a sense of hopelessness, but by the hopeless reality of their desperately impoverished lives. They have no hope that their new baby will have any chance whatsoever at a decent, safe, healthy future in America.

My conscience becomes even more deeply troubled when I remember that the number of Americans now falling into poverty has only continued to grow over the past thirty years.

When this fact is combined with the steady, draconian reduction of family, social services (both public and private) available to poor people today, my blood curdles and I begin to drift slowly in the forbidden direction of supporting Roe v. Wade.

Excuse me, but I find the conservative hypocrisy on this issue stunning.

For if we want to be genuinely pro-life, then we will not only care about reducing abortion, but we will care equally about providing universal health care, especially for mothers and their children, free neo-natal health care, free well-baby home visits, free classes in nutrition and infant care, free pre-school and Head Start programs, especially in poor neighborhoods.

Earlier this year politicians in D.C. fought tooth and nail over the “social welfare” provisions included in president Biden’s Covid Relief bill, ensuring that those aspects of the bill were whittled down to a mere shadow of their original goals.

Both Republicans and corporate Democrats – which is all Democratic Senators and the majority of Representatives – waved the red flag of “increasing the national debt” and “bankrupting our grandchildren!” So, the bill was raped and pillaged until it became a mere skeleton of its original version.

Yet, last week the president asked Congress to approve $33 billion for a new round of military support and arms purchases for Ukraine and our NATO allies.

I have no doubt that the same Senators and Representatives who were previously losing sleep over the nightmare of America’s poor and needy bankrupting the nation, will now happily sign their names to another $33 billion in armament to fight Russia!

Once again, as always, America has deep, deep pockets for war, but instantly becomes penniless and unconcerned when faced with her own impoverished mothers and children.

Every decision is made within a bigger context. Nothing is isolated. Nothing is pristine. Everything is connected.

The way in which those connections influence my actions will always reveal the truth about my moral priorities.

This constellation of recent, national actions concerning Covid Relief, the Supreme Court, poverty levels, and military appropriations lead me to one, inevitable conclusion: American conservatives are no more “pro-life” than the Roadrunner or Bugs Bunny. They are pro-a-particularly-sick-and-twisted-conservative-political-economic-ideology.

I am telling you here and now, Jesus of Nazareth has never been a member of that club. And neither should you.

What Would Jesus Say to a Football Coach Who Goes to Court Over His “Right” to Kneel in Prayer on the Fifty Yard Line?

I suspect that my readers are familiar with the Supreme Court case brought by football coach Joseph Kennedy of Bremerton, WA.

He was suspended from his job in 2015 for refusing to abide by the school’s  request that he stop kneeling in prayer on the football field during games.

After all, he insists, it is his right under America’s religious liberty provisions to pray in public whenever he wishes.

But quite apart from whether or not Mr. Kennedy has a legal right to behave this way, what does Jesus say about such public displays of prayer?

Especially as Kennedy’s actions become another salvo in this country’s culture wars?

Well, Jesus has already told us. His opinion about such public displays is clear:

And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. (Matthew 6:5-8)

Did You Know that America was Hitler’s Main Model for The Nazis’ Nuremberg Laws?

I recently read James Q. Whitman’s eye-opening book, Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law (Princeton, 2017).

No school teacher had ever explained to me that during the second half of the 19th century and first half of the 20th century the USA was THE most officially racist country in the world.

What Whitman demonstrates is not only that our Southern states had racist Jim Crow laws intended to disenfranchise anyone who was not white from exercising their constitutional rights as citizens. But beyond that, the entire country, both north and south, was governed by an elaborate system of laws, ordinances, and regulations legislating three vital arenas of citizenship: immigration law, citizenship law, and marriage law. And these laws were far more restrictive than those found in any other country.

These were “the Big Three,” the three legislative arenas that made the good ole’ US of A the most racist nation in the world.

As state legislatures around this country continue to make new laws banning the teaching of Critical Race Theory – even in places where it is not being taught! – I wish that my public education had included the historical information laid out in Whitman’s important book.

Below is an excerpt from Hitler’s American Model. I urge you to read the entire book for yourself. I will make a few comments after the excerpt:

On June 5, 1934, about a year and a half after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of the Reich, the leading lawyers of Nazi Germany gathered at a meeting to plan what would become the Nuremberg Laws, the notorious anti-Jewish legislation of the Nazi race regime…The meeting involved detailed and lengthy discussions of the law of the United States. In the opening minutes, Justice Minister Gürtner presented a memo on American race law, which had been carefully prepared by the officials of the ministry for purposes of the gathering; and the participants returned repeatedly to the American models of racist legislation in the course of their discussions. It is particularly startling to discover that the most radical Nazis present were the most ardent champions of the lessons that American approaches held for Germany…Indeed in Mein Kampf Hitler praised America as nothing less than “the one state” that had made progress toward the creation of a healthy racist order of the kind the Nuremberg Laws were intended to establish. (1-2)

This too is a part of American history.

There is only one way to teach this history: straightforwardly and honestly. Hiding it, ignoring it only perpetuates the cultural deformities that gave overt racism so much power over our society in the first place.

Yes, every student in an American classroom needs to learn about this part of our story. Yes, courses in Critical Race Theory must continue in colleges, universities, and law schools. Efforts at teaching multiculturalism and inclusion must continue unabated, from our elementary schools on up.

The fact that so many are now fighting against such educational efforts to make the full spectrum of America’s racist history known is, perhaps, the nation’s loudest bellwether proving that America is, in fact, an anti-Christian nation.

Genuine followers of Jesus want to know the truth, the truth about themselves and the truth about the world around them.

Genuine followers of Jesus are more devoted to their citizenship in the kingdom of God and the ethics of Jesus than they are to the mythologies or civic religions of any earthly nation-state, including the one they live in.

Genuine followers of Jesus willingly confess the ugly truths about themselves, their heritage, families, and societies. This is because genuine followers of Jesus are in the habit of confessing their sins and seeking forgiveness from both God and others.

Genuine followers of Jesus eagerly work to make amends to those who have been injured by the consequences of whatever evils their heritage has inflicted onto others.

Genuine followers of Jesus, inasmuch as it is possible, seek reconciliation and work for justice in their relationships with those around them.

The disturbing fact that so many ostensibly “Christian” leaders are in the forefront of this current culture war campaign to hide the story of how America triumphantly won the crown as the world’s most officially racist country, tells us a lot about how unimportant the crucified Jesus truly is to American evangelicalism.

What Does It Mean to “Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem”?

If you are unfamiliar with something called Christian Zionism, allow me to introduce you to it.

Christian Zionism (CZ) is a kissin’ cousin to the ideology called political Zionism which governs the modern nation-state of Israel. CZ is a similar political ideology that draws from the Bible to defend the Jewish, Zionist conquest of Palestine in 1948 as the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy.

Psalm 122, especially verses 6-9, is commonly cited by CZ folks as setting God’s spiritual goal posts for his future work in the land of Israel. The psalmist says:

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
    “May those who love you be secure.
May there be peace within your walls
    and security within your citadels.”
For the sake of my family and friends,
    I will say, “Peace be within you.”
For the sake of the house of the Lord our God,
    I will seek your prosperity.

Establishing peace in the literal city of Jerusalem, as the physical capitol of territorial Israel, will be the centerpiece of God’s work of ushering in the New Heavens and the New Earth according to my CZ friends.

I just finished reading an article by a CZ scholar who quotes Psalm 122 while concluding with a plea for the end of conflict in Israel/Palestine — notably, while seeming to assume that the Jewish people will maintain their ethnic domination over resident Palestinians.

Reading this scholar’s quotation reminded me that I was recently interviewed by the good folks at ChristianZionism.org. We had a friendly conversation about the events in my life that led me to write my book, Like Birds in a Cage: Christian Zionism’s Collusion in Israel’s Oppression of the Palestinian People.

Perhaps you will be interested in my story. I also talk briefly about life in a Palestinian refugee camp.

The final question my friend asked me was to explain the meaning of Psalm 122. So I did, applying what I will call the New Testament, “apostolic” method for reading the Old Testament (as I explain in my book).

It comes out very differently than the interpretations offered by my CZ brothers and sister.

You can read my entire interview here.

I have excerpted the interview below by posting my answer to the question, “Scripture tells us to ‘pray for the peace of Jerusalem’ (Ps 122:6). What should that look like?”

I am convinced that this is the proper Christian response to the question:

Psalm 122 is a “psalm of ascent” that was sung by ancient pilgrims as they travelled to Jerusalem. Jerusalem was the center of Jewish worship because the city’s temple was God’s earthly residence. The psalmist’s calls for peace and harmony within the city and among God’s congregation of worshipers (verses 6 – 9), visualize the blessings of God’s presence reflected in harmony among God’s people. Christians today understand that our incarnate Savior, Jesus Christ, was the new temple of God’s presence here on earth (John 2:19 – 22; 4:21 – 24), who is now seated on David’s throne (verse 5) inside the heavenly temple at the right hand of God (Hebrews 1:1 – 4). An earthly temple is no longer needed. We now pray for the expansion of God’s peaceable kingdom on earth: for all of God’s people throughout the world to reflect the peace of Jesus Christ as they worship together and work together to extend God’s peace to the world around them. The New Testament vision of “the peace of Jerusalem” extends far beyond the provincialism, territorialism, and ethnic nationalism embraced by Christian Zionists.

See the Image of God Shine Brightly in Abby Martin

Our current American moment offers an glaring example of the corporate media’s power to generate, manipulate. and circumscribe public opinion.

If it’s not broadcast on the news, then it does not exist. Corporate editors at CNN, Fox, or whichever newsroom decide what we will care about today.

They only show us what they want us to see, knowing full well that the average American will never look any further than the edited images her favorite news channel shows to her.

The network news room also decides how we will think and feel about the events they have selected for us to see that day. We are all constantly being manipulated by the big business arms of major media outlets.

Tragically, the conservative wing of the Christian church is among the most  easily manipulated because we confine ourselves to the most narrow, like-minded sources of information — Fox News and whichever “Christian” TV and/or radio stations we prefer, all of which are promotional arms of the Republican party.

Thus are we manicured, buffed, groomed, trimmed, and made to fit into the preconstructed box of conventional, American nationalism — including Christian nationalism.

This box guarantees that America always wears the white hat while America’s enemies (as defined by the American government and its communication stooges) always wear the black hats.

Yet, that brand of patriotic, nationalistic identity is as far removed from life in the kingdom of God as is the east from the west, or as far as heaven is removed from hell.

Yet, the wisdom available by way of God’s Image within us, an Image with which every human being is equally endowed, still shines brightly in many.

Anyone who has followed this blog knows how much I admire the investigative journalism of Abby Martin. Her program The Empire Files has long provided a wide-ranging, independent, internationalist perspective on world events. The very perspective that US corporate media will never provide.

Abby was recently interviewed by The Real News Network — another independent outlet I highly recommend — to discuss the Russian invasion of Ukraine as well as the role played by the US and NATO in fostering this conflict.

I suspect that Abby is an atheist or agnostic, although I don’t know for sure. However, her humanistic moral compass points to true north. The following excerpt from her interview provides the most “Christian” analysis that I have yet to hear about America’s relationship to the war in Ukraine.

Abby begins by reminding everyone of the many bombs dropped regularly by the US and our allies around the world every day. The map below was drawn up yesterday. How many Americans are mourning for the brown and black bombing victims in Syria, Yemen, or Somalia?

I’ll tell you:  few, if any.

The media ensures that our national heartache is very narrowly circumscribed, limited to only the “worthy victims” that the US government identifies as the victims of “our enemies.”

It also should be noted that these worthy victims are also white Europeans. People who look like us. That is a large part of what makes them “worthy.”

Ukrainians are not like the brown and black “hoards” fleeing as displaced refugees from the homelands that the US and its allies have demolished in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. Those poor people are “unworthy victims” who deserve to be turned away at the border.

What condemnable, wicked rubbish is fed to us by our corporate masters under the label “news.”

And oh how completely we condemn ourselves by surrendering our loyalty to the deceitful siren songs of national pride and foreign policy preferences.

Now, please watch as Abby Martin reflects more of the mind of Christ regarding world affairs than I have ever heard from the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aUFTsnbvSA

More Absurd Propaganda from the Christian Broadcasting Network

CBN has a journalist reporting from Ukraine. Here is the conclusion of his most recent report. CBN labels the clip, “Who is going to stand up for freedom and democracy?”:

Is this man a propagandist stooge? Is he ignorant about recent European history? Or is he so heavily invested in American Christian nationalism that he cannot think outside of his tiny American box?

Returning to the ridiculous propaganda created by George W. Bush is not only ignorant but dangerous. Remember when president Bush justified his absurd “war on terror” by declaring that the “terrorists” (whoever they might be) “hated us because of our freedom.”?

That was not true then, and it is not true today.

Explaining Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by saying that “Russia hates Ukrainian democracy and freedom” is merely a lazy conservative’s way of saying, “I don’t know what in the world is happening here.”

Remember, this is the news network that has never seen an American invasion of another sovereign country, or an American led coup overturning a foreign government, that it didn’t approve of.

CBN cheered for America’s criminal destruction of Iraq.

They have applauded the American demolition of Syria.

The list could go on and on…

And now they condemn Russia for invading Ukraine?

This report is a dangerous example of Christian nationalist propaganda. It is dangerous because the obvious tragedy of war is manipulated to serve the interests of imperial America in eastern Europe.

The reporter’s tearful, closing rhetorical question is an obvious appeal to American sympathies. Humanitarian sympathies that will then be corrupted by US politicians and military recruiters who will justify another round of warfare by happily sacrificing the next generation of “freedom fighters” on the altar of imperialistic, American self-righteousness.

Millions of uninformed, patriotic, nationalistic, evangelical American Christians will watch this CBN report and naïvely swallow it all hook, line, and sinker. America wears the shining white hat of freedom. Russia wears the  malicious black hat of tyranny.

Such manipulation works best among the uninformed. And, sadly, American evangelicals are among the most uninformed.

The average listener will not know anything about the recent history of American-Russian-Ukrainian relations.

They won’t know about Russia’s protests against NATO expansion, or that the US broke it’s promise to Russia that NATO would not be expanded.

They won’t know about the various proposals for a unified European military arrangement that would have included Russia, all of which were negated by the US.

They won’t know that Russia asked to join NATO several times over the years. Mikhail Gorbachev proposed the idea in 1990. Vladimir Putin asked president Clinton for Russia’s admission to NATO.

They won’t know that the US was deeply involved in the 2014 coup that overthrew the democratically elected Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych who was replaced by a hand-picked, America-friendly politician.

So, please, it is the height of hypocrisy for anyone to pretend that this current crisis is about the defense of democracy.

The US has always needed its Russian boogeyman. NATO preferred to maintain its “defense profile” as an anti-Russian organization and so rejected or ignored Russia’s requests for membership. Consequently, Russia was deliberately isolated as it watched NATO forces march further and further east, until they now sit cheek-to-jowl on the Russian border.

How many times can you poke a bear with a sharp stick before it turns on you?

We are now witnessing the answer to that question in Ukraine. Yes, Putin’s aggression must be condemned. He and he alone started this war. He is the premier warmonger of the moment.

But the United States as well as every NATO member state must share responsibility for the looming Ukrainian death toll. We too are guilty. We have used and abused Ukraine as a pawn in our psychotic phobia to hate Russia.

Watching a “Christian” journalist wallow in this phobia as he propagates the damnable heresy of Christian nationalism is both pathetic and heartbreaking.

Didn’t he, or anyone else at CBN, ever have a pastor or a professor or a good friend explain to them that as followers of Jesus we are always citizens of God’s kingdom, first, last, and always?

Allegiance to Jesus leaves no room for anyone’s nationalism. Neither does it allow for narrow mindedness, ignorance, or the deliberate exploitation of misinformation. War is too serious a matter.

The Seduction of War

Chris Hedges was a war correspondent for the New York Times for 20 years. As an on the ground reporter who has seen war’s destructive power up close and personal, he lost numerous friends and can tell his own near-death experiences.

Perhaps his most important book, in my opinion, is his dissection of war’s seductive, erotic power and the dehumanizing effects it has for all concerned. The book is entitled War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.

I encourage you to read it if you haven’t already.

As the US government continues to beat its war drums, feeding our major news outlets with a steady stream of evidence-free accusations against Russia, all intended to stir American blood-lust, we should stop and ask ourselves why opposing voices are never given time publicly to explain their opposition to war with Russia.

Doesn’t that seem suspicious to you? Why is there no public debate?

Below is an excerpt from one of Hedges speeches during the lead up the war in Iraq. He summarizes his arguments from his book, War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. I encourage you to sit down and listen.

The Biden administration is working hard to convince us that America’s newest meaning and purpose is a violent conflict with another major superpower.

Don’t buy it. It’s a lie. It’s a lie forged in the pit of hell and now propagated by devilish warmongers who calculate only dollar signs when they should see precious human lives.

How Israel Steals Palestinian Land

The massacre of Palestinian villagers at Tantura in 1948 was one of many similar horrific, criminal acts committed by the Israeli military during the founding of modern Israel.

Professor Ilan Pappe

The Israeli historian Ilan Pappe has documented an additional thirty-one confirmed massacres of unarmed Palestinian civilians, including women and children, with the possibility of another six needing further investigation.

This video from the Middle East Eye focuses on the Tantura massacre. Pappe describes the Israeli killing spree in some detail in his book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, pages 133-137. As many as 230 villagers were executed at Tantura, lined up and shot in the back of the head.