Officer A. Cab has written a powerful autobiographical article at Medium confessing and repenting of his 10 years as a cop.
He describes, from the inside, why police “reform” will never work. He also makes the argument for why “defunding” (though that word is misleading and unhelpful) the police is essential if we hope to see real change.
I hope you will read the entire piece. I have excerpted select sections below. You can find the entire article here. It is worth your time.
I was a police officer for nearly ten years and I was a bastard. We all were.
This essay has been kicking around in my head for years now and I’ve never felt confident enough to write it. It’s a time in my life I’m ashamed of. It’s a time that I hurt people and, through inaction, allowed others to be hurt.
——
While every cop’s individual biases come into play, it’s the profession itself that is toxic, and it starts from day 1 of training.
Every police academy is different but all of them share certain features: taught by old cops, run like a paramilitary bootcamp, strong emphasis on protecting yourself more than anyone else. The majority of my time in the academy was spent doing aggressive physical training and watching video after video after video of police officers being murdered on duty.
——-
Once police training has – through repetition, indoctrination, and violent spectacle – promised officers that everyone in the world is out to kill them, the next lesson is that your partners are the only people protecting you.
——
The question is this: did I need a gun and sweeping police powers to help the average person on the average night? The answer is no. When I was doing my best work as a cop, I was doing mediocre work as a therapist or a social worker.
——
Police officers do not protect and serve people, they protect and serve the status quo, “polite society”, and private property. Using the incremental mechanisms of the status quo will never reform the police because the status quo relies on police violence to exist.
Danielle Kilgo, journalism professor at Indiana University, presents the
Prof. Danielle Kilgo
results of her research into the way journalists present, or frame, protest movements depending on the issues at stake. Her article at Consortium News is entitled, “Riot or Resistance: Media Framing Shapes Public View.”
Her data demonstrates the inherent bias of reporters depending on the issues being protested and the effects of reporter bias on public perception. Below is an excerpt.
My research has found that some protest movements have more trouble than others getting legitimacy. My co-author Summer Harlow and I have studied how local and metropolitan newspapers cover protests. We found that narratives about the Women’s March and anti-Trump protests gave voice to protesters and significantly explored their grievances. On the other end of the spectrum, protests about anti-black racism and indigenous people’s rights received the least legitimizing coverage, with them more often seen as threatening and violent.
Decades ago, scholars James Hertog and Douglas McLeod identified how news coverage of protests contributes to the maintenance of the status quo, a phenomenon referred to as “the protest paradigm.” They held that media narratives tend to emphasize the drama, inconvenience and disruption of protests rather than the demands, grievances and agendas of protesters. These narratives trivialize protests and ultimately dent public support.
The predictable mantra has begun – “we have to maintain law and order.”
Calls for law and order in the midst of nation-wide demonstrations against police brutality and in favor of racial justice are as predictable as the sunset. It always happens.
Well timed calls for law and order always served the purposes of the powerful who pretend to care.
Keith Childress, shot for carrying a cell phone
It is always the great “BUT” working to obscure the issue at hand; to distract from the problems of racial injustice and police violence.
Law and order is the subversive language deployed by people who are not at risk as they feign comradeship with those who are. It allows the bogus compatriot to say, in fact, “I am with you as long as you keep your objections within my boundaries of safety.”
When members of the establishment say things like, “I believe in peaceful protest, BUT…I believe in racial equality, BUT…I support the protests, BUT I condemn the looting…BUT we need to maintain law and order,” they merely repeat the establishment code for defending the status quo.
Defending law and order has always been the message of the establishment,
Bettie Jones, shot and killed for helping a neighbor and opening the door to police
allowing it to maintain its mask of humanity while tacitly supporting acts of inhumanity.
We have seen it all before.
Law and order was the message of pro-segregationist governors and mayors in the deep south who believed that ANY expression of civil disobedience, no matter how peaceful, especially when committed by black people and other civil rights advocates, was a dangerous act of lawlessness demanding brutal, police suppression.
Lester Maddox, the racist, segregationist governor of Georgia, always insisted that he accepted black people as equals. He just didn’t want them living next door. And he would gladly sic the police on any black person who tried to move into his neighborhood. (Watch his racist confessions with Jim Brown on the Dick Cavett show here. I recall watching a different Cavett show where Maddox walked off the set).
It was also Richard Nixon’s Republican party code for keeping black people
Jamar Clark, witnesses say he was shot and killed while handcuffed and unarmed
in their place at the height of the civil rights movement in 1968. It was also a very successful code language that spoke volumes to conservative America and led to his presidential victory that year.
But every reactionary plea for “law and order” must first answer the question, “Whose law, and whose order?”
Because the fact is that, in America today, there are two difference types of law and order, one for white, middle/upper-class communities, and another for (poor) communities of color.
As the repeated, public murders of African-Americans demonstrate, law and order for black people in America is unlike law and order for white people. For African-Americans, law and order means (1) people of color are born guilty; they are always suspect, which means that (2) the police are free to treat them as they wish.
Law and order for black people in America includes breaking down their doors for no good reason; shooting them dead inside their own homes, even when police are at the wrong address; planting evidence while making
Michael Marshall, suffered from mental illness; died after being “restrained” into a coma
illegal arrests; and the list goes on.
That is the “law and order” enforced in America’s black neighborhoods today.
So, whose law and order are the public pearl-clutchers advocating and defending when they condemn protesters for violating the norms of “law and order”?
Where were these easy-street advocates of public order when black neighborhoods were being patrolled by cops who viewed community residents as the enemy to be controlled rather than as citizens to be protected and served?
Where were the white marches launched in defense of black communities when they needed defending against a local, militarized police force eagerly searching for excuses to deploy their new body armor, armored vehicles, stun guns, rubber bullets, 4-foot batons, rubber bullets and tear gas?
George Floyd, Sandra Bland, Michael Brown, and Ahmaud Arbery are only the tip of the iceberg.
Unarmed black people are 5x more likely to be shot and killed by police than
Ahmaud Arbery, shot and killed for jogging in a white neighborhood
are white people in America. That shocking statistic alone tells us that murdering unarmed black people (although possessing a weapon is not a significant distinguishing factor) is completely acceptable and well within the bounds of American law and order.
Concerning the present protests, an overwhelming amount of video evidence proves that the police themselves regularly instigate violence where protesters were behaving peacefully.
The police are masters at escalating violence needlessly as an expression of their own presumption of authoritarian privilege. (Watch this compilation video of cops attacking peaceful demonstrators with impunity). I have personally experienced how the police use excessive force to instigate violence during an anti-war protest in Chicago in 2012. I then watched as the establishment media turned the facts upside down to accuse the demonstrators of attacking the police!
By condemning these calls for law and order, I am not condoning violence.
Sandra Bland, arrested during a routine traffic stop; supposedly (and unbelievably) committed suicide in jail
Rather, I am highlighting the fact that we must learn to insist and to resist.
First, we must insistthat the public spot light remain focused on the central issues: racism and police brutality. We cannot be distracted.
Second, we must resist the power of corporate media to socialize us into (a) complacency and (b) collaboration. The problem being exposed by protesters right now is notsome tendency for peaceful rallies to be exploited by chaotic troublemakers. Don’t allow the media to suggest otherwise.
The problem is white America’s sleepy indifference to the daily mistreatment of our black brothers and sisters – an evil with which God’s people can never collaborate or become complacent.
The problem is white America’s indifference to the fact that a separate code of law and order is applied to communities of color every single day.
The problem is not the disintegration of law and order but the historic
Eric Garner, choked to death by police while pleading, “I can’t breathe.”
application of arbitrary, dehumanizing law and order at the whim of our dehumanized police force.
Here is a basic Christian principle: God’s people must always stand with the oppressed and the disadvantaged, just as we must always stand up for equality and justice. This is God’s way, and it must always be ours.
Thus, the ethics of God’s kingdom demand both pacifism and civil disobedience whenever cultures work to shape kingdom people, both black and white, into ungodly configurations.
Resistance is difficult but essential if we hope to become more like Jesus. Which means that the church cannot lazily mimic cultural mantras, whatever they may be.
Instead, God’s people are obligated to INSIST on justice and to RESIST falling in line.
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.
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?
American democracy died a long time ago, but just in case some folks hadn’t noticed, the political antics of 2020 have proven that fact, once and for all.
We began with the Republican-controlled Senate acquitting our guilty-as-sin-president on all counts of his multiple impeachment indictments.
The Senate’s dismissal of those charges was only the climax to the egregious failure of the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives to bring any additional – and far more significant — impeachment charges over Trump’s numerous, prior violations of the Constitution. (See the article by Chris Hedges outlining at least 12 Constitutional breaches by Trump and others by presidents of both partiesdemonstrating that “the rule of law” is now an empty phrase in this country).
Now the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is reminding us that corruption is a bipartisan affair in Washington D. C. as the party mandarins brush off its 2016 playbook and rig another series of primaries; this time against Bernie Sanders, in favor of Joe Biden.
How is it happening?
Joe Biden
First, the Democratic party is openly promoting a loser candidate who pledges to protect the status quo.
Biden is clearly the Democratic establishment preference even though he will very predictably LOSE to Donald Trump in the general election, just as Hillary Clinton — the previous establishment darling — lost to Trump in 2016.
The party establishment obviously wants another neo-liberal centrist like Clinton who will protect the current state of affairs in D.C., despite abundant evidence that a majority of the American public want change.
For example:
Most Americans want Medicare-for-All (which numerous studies have shown to be cheaper than our current system. This includes one study financed by the infamous, libertarian Koch brothers!).
64% of Americans believe that our massive income inequality gap is a problem that needs to be rectified. (Ignore NPR’s deliberately misleading headline for this story.)
Only one candidate has a lifetime track record of discussing all of these social problems while offering specific solutions that would get to the root of such serious challenges. That man is Bernie Sanders, not Joe Biden. (No, this is not a campaign advertisement. I’m simply pointing out a few realities here.)
Check out this compilation of 10 polls collected by Real Clear Politics –YES, count ‘em, TEN! – which ALL show that Bernie Sanders beats Donald Trump in the general election.
Second, the mainstream, corporate media does not want change any more than the Democratic party does. (They are all making too much money the way things are). So mainstream, corporate “news” coverage provides free advertisement and propaganda promoting Joe Biden.
The media continually pushes the narrative about Sanders’ unelectability, despite the many polls showing otherwise.
You will never hear about those polls showing Sanders’ popularity from our corporate news media. In fact, all you will hear from corporate/cable news is continuous applause for lie’n Biden (who promises not to upset the apple cart and to maintain the status quo), coupled with non-stop derision of Bernie Sanders. — For an important presentation of Biden’s many lies on the campaign trail, watch this. —
But the Democratic party does not care about the will of the people any more than does the Republican party.
Both parties have their noses buried far too deeply into the dark-money orifices created by big-money donors, lobbyists, CEOs, special interests, private insurance & pharmaceutical companies, the fossil fuel industries, and other major corporations.
They are following the lead of wealthy donors like Former Goldman Sachs CEO and lifelong Democrat Lloyd Blankfein who has said that if Sanders were the Democratic nominee, he would vote for Trump.
Even the New York Times finally admitted to the biased coverage given to these two men by major new outlets (print, radio and TV), including themselves. Watch this clip from Kyle Kulinsky talking about the recent story. You can also read it online, but you need to be a subscriber.)
Have you noticed how the media Talking-Heads weep, wail and gnash their teeth whenever Sanders wins a primary, but turn around a rejoice in
MSNBC host Chris Matthews warns of executions in Central Park after Sanders wins
jubilation when Biden wins? It’s common behavior because they, too, are very rich people who network and socialize with people like Lloyd Blankfein.
Third, not only did the Democratic party establishment admit to rigging the 2016 primaries, they have argued in court that it is their Constitutional right to rig the presidential primaries in favor of their preferred candidate(s).
Yep, you can’t make this stuff up, folks.
In the face of at least one lawsuit brought after the 2016 primaries, DNC lawyers successfully arguedthat not only do they have the right to rig primaries, it is an exercise of their Constitutional right to freedom of speech.
So, let’s be clear. There is now a court precedent affirming that rigging presidential primaries is a Constitutional right for our political parties. In fact, rigging primaries is an exercise of the party’s right to “freedom of speech.”
Donna Brazile, a major player on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 election campaign,
Donna Brazile, Political strategist
wrote a book in which she confessed to the many ways in which the Clinton campaign had controlled the DNC and directed its execution of the 2016 primary process. (Also look here, here, here, and there are many more reports available).
One of the reasons that the Democratic establishment hates Julian Assange (who is a journalistic hero being persecuted by the Western media-surveillance-military-industrial complex) and Wikileaks as much as the Republicans do is because Wikileaks published the countless DNC memos written by Democratic leaders admitting to the various ways they had rigged the primaries for Hillary Clinton.
There is no reason to think that the DNC’s prejudicial planning has changed in 2020. After all, why should they abandon their newly defined Constitutional right to cheat the voters?
Tom Perez
Journalist Kevin Gosztola has tracked down the identities and policy preferences of many recent super-delegates appointed by DNC chairman Tom Perez, ALL of whom are strongly pro-Biden and anti-Sanders. So, if the primaries happen (miraculously) to lead to a contested convention, Sanders still doesn’t stand a chance.
Fourth, the American electoral landscape has changed radically in the last several years, in very prejudicial ways. (And I cannot discover any evidence of the Democratic party working to reverse this horrible trend).
have been closed in 13 (primarily southern) states since the 2013 Supreme Court ruling that gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Most if not all of those vanished polling places were in districts with a majority of black and Hispanic voters.
Though Sanders has not been doing well with older voters in the black (or white) community, he has done extremely well with both Hispanic and young African-Americans. The same groups whose voting stations have been extensively eradicated.
The Democratic party has rigged both the primary and the convention system on behalf of Joe Biden because they are more interested in protecting their money and power than they are in listening to the people.
The United States is not a democracy. It hasn’t been for a long time.
We are an oligarchy (ruled by the powerful few).
We are also a plutocracy (ruled by the richest 1%).
Our ruling class — in both parties; it’s a bipartisan affair — merely directs periodic exercises in national, kabuki theater for a naïve, ill-informed, easily manipulated public.
They allow the illusion of influence.
They direct us as we play out our powerless part in the scripted, manipulated stage production called “American democracy.”
Mother Emmanuel African Methodist-Episcopal Church
On June 17, 2015 Dylann Roof walked into the Mother Emmanuel African Methodist-Episcopal church and sat down to join a Bible study group.
Dylann was welcomed by all, and invited to sit with them. As everyone’s eyes were closed for the final prayer, Dylann took out his gun and killed nine people, shooting them at point-blank range.
One of the victims was the leader of the group, 59-year-old Myra Thompson, a retired public-school teacher and guidance counselor, who
Myra Thompson
just hours before had just been licensed to preach in that very church.
I heard about Rev. Thompson’s book while listening to a local Christian radio station. Rev. Thompson was telling his amazing story of what it had taken for him to forgive Dylann Roof for the crime of killing his wife.
More than that, Rev. Thompson mentioned his continuing attempts to befriend Roof and visit with him in prison, where he is serving a life sentence with no chance of parole.
I heard a powerful story about the healing power of Christ’s forgiveness and the personal resolve of a deeply compassionate, unusually obedient disciple of Jesus Christ.
It was a story that might normally bring tears to my eyes, were it not for the one thing that the interviewer and host of the program failed to mention – the very thing that I had suspected would go unremarked.
The interviewer and hosts failed to mention that Dylann Root is an avowed
White supremacist, Dylann Roof
white supremacist and neo-Nazi. His most chilling statement from prison was a declaration that he had no regrets. He was not the least bit sorry, remorseful or apologetic for what he had done.
Neither did the radio hosts mention that Root had chosen the Mother Emmanuel African Methodist-Episcopal church because it is a black congregation.
Root deliberately chose a venue for his act of terrorism where he knew every bullet fired was guaranteed to penetrate the body of a black person.
Slaughtering African-American men, women and children was Root’s one and only goal.
None of the white people hosting the interview with Rev. Thompson bothered to connect the Charleston church shooting with the shocking rise in Right-Wing, conservative terrorism in this country.
No one bothered to point out that Root’s online manifesto, entitled The Last Rhodesian, was a white-supremacist screed calling for a race war against all people of color in America. Root confessed that he hoped his massacre would trigger that war.
No one mentioned that the Rev. Thompson’s Christ-like act of forgiveness is (or, at least, I assume it is) a very old, well-practiced act of Christian discipleship exercised within the African American church. A community that continues to confront the never-ending story of racism, discrimination, white violence, lynching and Jim Crow in this country.
I realize that my reader may object.
“Perhaps the radio producers wanted to keep politics out of it,’ you say. “They didn’t want Rev. Thompson’s story about the power of forgiveness to be overshadowed by a political message.”
My response, however, is baloney!
American Christian radio is one of THE most politically driven media outlets available today.
The problem is: Christian radio is driven by conservative, right-wing, Republican politics. A brand a politics that refuses to admit its heinous contribution to the rise of white supremacy in this country.
So, the producers at the right-wing, Christian radio station offer their obeisance to the toadies of the Religious Right political movement and reframe the heartbreaking story of an explicitly racist, white-on-black mass-murder as a heart-warming, tear-jerker testimony to “the power of forgiveness.”
This sin of omission tells us everything we need to know about the Right, including the so-called Christian Right.
Framing is everything.
By trying to avoid politics, a story becomes disgustingly political in the worst way possible.
The nine church shooting victims
For this particular framing of the Mother Emmanuel African Methodist-Episcopal church shooting is blatantly racist.
It’s silence shouts all too loudly, “We will not face the truth about who and what we are as white, American evangelicals.”
“We will support Donald Trump’s racist border policies. But we will not tell the truth about our implicit racism towards our black brothers and sisters in Christ, about whom we know so little. And for whom we care even less – unless, of course, we can turn your experience of pain and suffering in white America into a warm and fuzzy feel-good story for our largely white, evangelical, pro-Trump listening audience.”
I too am a white, American evangelical, and I continually feel ashamed of my community.
President Trump spoke yesterday in Minneapolis to loud applause supplied by a large crowd of supporters, many wearing bright, red shirts emblazoned, “make American great again.”
If you didn’t see the speech, check out the excerpts and excellent response provided by The Young Turkshere. It’s well worth watching.
In the course of his rambling diatribe (the longest he has yet given), the president mocked and ridiculed individual Democrats and members of the House.
He targeted more lies and slander against Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Somali refugee from Minnesota. Rep. Omar and her family already receive around the clock security protection because of the regular death threats she receives, week in and week out, as she does her job for the people of Minnesota who elected her.
Omar also receives a surge in the number of threats against her life every time Trump mocks her in public, as he did again last night.
Trump then expanded his racist threats against the entire Somali refugee community in Minnesota, leading the crowd in cheers and applause as he bemoaned the horrible presence of hard-working, brown-skinned families finding refuge from their own war-torn country (partly facilitated by the U.S. military) in the bosom of white America.
The audience cheered again when the president promised that he will protect the good, white people of Minneapolis from the inconvenient threat of more dark-skinned refugees from Africa moving into their city.
How many of these red-shirted fans applauding Trump’s grotesque, racist drivel claim to be Christians? How many say they are evangelicals?
Well, it’s long past time to draw the line, folks.
And here’s the line:
People who follow Jesus will NEVER cheer or applaud for such wretched, verbal trash.
People who follow Jesus will NEVER endorse the inhumane policies – like closing our doors to refugees and asylum seekers, separating families and kidnapping children at the border – that are produced by this man’s dark and evil heart.
As I now listen to Trump speaking at the “Voters Values Summit,” he is
Rep. Ilhan Omar
again falsely accusing Rep. Omar of saying things that she has never said. And he is being applauded by the audience!
We are witnessing the complete apostasy of American evangelicalism. It’s happening before our eyes.
If you or your friends voted for Trump in 2016 and now regret that decision, hallelujah! Confession your foolishness. Ask for forgiveness for facilitating the rise to power of this latest anti-Christ now spewing his putrid filth onto the American stage.
Pray for wisdom to do better next time as a well-educated voter.
But if you or your friends plan to vote for Trump in 2020, if you too applaud at his rally speeches, then you must face the truth.
You have driven the Holy Spirit from your heart, if, indeed, you ever knew Him.
You, too, are a racist.
You have become an idolater.
Your conservative politics are more important to you than Jesus Christ.
You are cheering for a fascist, a blasphemer, a sexual predator, a racist, and a career criminal.
It is impossible to be an obedient follower of Jesus of Nazareth and persistently endorse such wickedness.
You may have known Jesus at one time, but no longer.
You have become one of the choked, blighted, dying seeds woefully described in Jesus’ parable of the Sower in Mark 4:1-20. You have lost whatever connect to the Savior you may once have had.
You have become like the pompous “miracle workers” condemned by Jesus at the close of his Sermon on the Mount. Despite their protests of devotion, he says to these people boasting of their “godly” accomplishments, “Get away from me, you evil doers, for I never knew you” (Matthew 7:23).
It is LONG past time for faithful pastors to speak up and to speak out against the evangelical apostasy occurring before our eyes.
Pastors, your people need Biblical teaching and education in the ethics of God’s kingdom. Hiding behind the pretense of avoiding partisanship in the pulpit is and has always been a cop out.
The church desperately needs your help.
Where are the true, faithful shepherds who will risk giving offense by teaching the FULL counsel of God and emphasizing the radical, upside-down lifestyle demanded by Jesus Christ?
Within evangelical congregations, they seem to be few and far between…
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.
problem that needs to be rectified. (Ignore NPR’s deliberately misleading headline for this story.)
in Right-Wing, conservative terrorism in this country.
