I am privileged to count both the Rev. Drs. Mitri Raheb and Munther Isaac among my friends. You will meet them in this video from Democracy Now.
Together with the other Christian leaders of Bethlehem, they are speaking prophetically to the rest of the world as public celebrations have been cancelled in Bethlehem this Christmas.
Oh, they are not neglecting the wonder of Jesus’ birth. But they are grappling with the contexual realities of remembering Jesus’ birth while also suffering brutal Israeli attacks in both Gaza and the West Bank.
Thus, they haver turned to the Old Testament tradition of lament, that is crying out to God in protest against both worldly injustice and his apparent absence.
The western Christian church has become immune to the biblical concept of collective, corporate lament. Even when we try to construct a lament service, we don’t really know how to be comfortable with it.
In part, this awkwardness is due to American isolationism, ignorance, and lack of empathy for others.
We fail to identify with our Palestinian brothers and sisters in Christ because many don’t realize that Palestinian Christians exist.
We ignore the news of literal genocide occurring in Gaza because we are generally disinterested in the rest of the world.
And when we go to visit Israel, we are more feverish about visiting Zionist synagogue services than we are about worshiping with Palestinian brothers and sisters.
The Palestinian church is showing us once again what biblical lament means as they endure a multitude of the cruelest war time injustices.
Colin Gordon is a history professor at the University of Iowa who specializes in the history and long-term effects of American public policy.
Professor Colin Gordon
Professor Gordon recently wrote a highly informative article for Dissent Magazine which asks the question, “Who Segregated America?”
In this article he demonstrates the pernicious role played by private business interests in pioneering the highly discriminatory methods that would eventually be used by public, government policies to permanently entrench racial segregation through America’s neighborhoods.
Here is one more example of why an understanding of American racism and its dissection though tools like Critical Race Theory are so important to our educational system.
Frankly, it is impossible to understand either our history or our current racial predicament without it.
Below is an excerpt of “Who Segregated America?”:
Federal housing policies contributed to the segregation of American cities in the twentieth century. But it was private interests that led the way.
Recent scholarship and reporting on racial disparities in the United States have emphasized the role of public policy—especially federal policy—in the creation of what the 1968 Kerner Commission famously dubbed “two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.” This is especially true of housing policy. Ira Katznelson’s When Affirmative Action Was White (2005) skewers the stark exclusion of African-American veterans from the benefits of the GI Bill. Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law (2017) offers a damning synthesis on how the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) embraced Jim Crow. More recently, the digitization of the infamous “residential security” redlining maps prepared by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) in the late 1930s has spurred academic interest in the connections between the HOLC’s bluntly racial assessments and contemporary disparities.
This condemnation of federal policy is certainly warranted. Even the constraints of the New Deal coalition (in which the Democratic majority was, as Katznelson observes, a “strange marriage of Sweden and South Africa”) cannot excuse the FHA’s slavish deference to racial prejudice in private realty. One can and should expect more of a public agency, wielding billions in housing subsidies in one hand and the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause in the other, than a set of underwriting guidelines that “could well have been culled from the Nuremberg Laws,” as housing activist Charles Abrams observed in 1955.
But is it true, as Rothstein’s subtitle suggests, that “government segregated America”? Not really. As new work on the scope of private racial restrictions underscores, racial segregation in American cities (especially Northern and border cities) was largely accomplished by private interests and private action long before the FHA spent a dime or the HOLC opened its first bottle of red ink.
Race-restrictive deed covenants and agreements reserved the occupancy of individual lots or entire residential subdivisions to those (in the phrasing preferred by developers in St. Louis County) “wholly of the Caucasian Race.” The result was a sort of pointillist apartheid, filled in parcel by parcel, block by block, and subdivision by subdivision, on a scale sufficient to quarantine existing pockets of African-American residency and mark new developments as largely off limits. . .
(Observe in the following graphic how “Race-restrictive deed covenants and agreements reserved the occupancy of individual lots or entire residential subdivisions to those (in the phrasing preferred by developers in St. Louis County) ‘wholly of the Caucasian Race.'” In other words, private racial regulators orchestrated the creation of black ghettos and white suburbs with all the damaging consequences.)
. . . More to the point, the FHA and other federal housing policies were always—and remain—little more than a poorly regulated trough for private housing interests. They exist not to secure homeownership but to sustain the residential construction and home finance industries with direct subsidies, socialized risk, and tax breaks. In that role, they have always parroted the goals, motives, and prejudices of private interests and deferred to their assessment of what boosted—or threatened—the value of private property.
The segregation of the American city was conceived, accomplished, and justified largely by private action in response to the demographic upheaval of the Great Migration. Federal housing policies unconscionably doubled down on both segregation and its assumptions, but the damage was already done.
I would say that the news clip below is “unbelievable” except that it appeared on the Christian Broadcast Network. A network that conforms its opinion pieces so closely to the conservative, Republican obsession with “law and order” that you’d be forgiven for assuming its commentators all had day jobs as prison guards.
This editorial discussion is supposedly highlighting the importance of the
Jayland Walker
public “having all the facts” about a situation before drawing conclusions or making objections to the work of the authorities.
But then, conservative Christianity has always highlighted the importance of “obeying the authorities,” no matter how abusive they may be.
The matter at hand is the police murder of Jayland Walker in Akron, Ohio and the quick display of community outrage that followed.
The initial police reports, the details of which have not been changed, explained that Mr. Walker was going to be stopped for some unspecified sort of traffic violation.
Mr. Walker then took the police on a high speed chase which ended with him leaping from his car and running away. Police allege that Walker fired a gun out his car window during the chase.
As Walker ran away, his was chased by 8 – 9 policemen who fired 90+ rounds at his back. Mr. Walker never returned fire because, as the police later discovered, he was unarmed. (Duh, the fact that he never turned to fire back while unsuccessfully dodging a hail-storm of gunfire, hadn’t tipped them off to this already?)
Walker’s body was hit by 60+ bullets. He died at the scene.
These were the original facts. They are still the facts.
Mr. Walker is another unarmed black man gunned down for the crime of running from the police who consistently insult, abuse, assault, and murder unarmed black men.
As an African-American friend asked me not long ago, “David, why can’t white people understand why we are afraid of the police? We have good reason to be.”
Nevertheless, these CBN commentators object. They insist that most, perhaps all?, media reports have not mentioned the (alleged) gunshot out of Walker’s car window during the car chase.
However, EVERY report that I have read and watched HAS either shown the relevant video or mentioned the alleged gun fire from Walker on the highway.
In other words, CBN is ginning up an illegitimate, irrelevant concern for their own rhetorical purposes. Can anyone say, MANIPULATION? or PROPAGANDA?
But they all say these things oh so unctuously with such apparent concern…
They also fail to mention the many, many times that the police have been caught LYING to the public in their initial police reports in order to protect themselves and hide their own wrongdoing.
Naturally, the local black community responded with a large, peaceful, public protest demanding answers and accountability.
The very next day these three CBN Christian stooges, doing the half-step shuffle for white privilege, self-righteousness, hard-heartedness, foolishness and stupidity, scold the black community (!) for expressing their grief and anger, while exercising their first amendment right to cry out in the streets for justice.
I am sorry, but I find the entire diatribe to be absolutely infuriating!
Here we see three comfortable, extremely well paid, audacious examples of the poisonous fruit of white privilege dripping with the decay of dead men’s bones, all white-washed and dressed up pretty for broadcast TV.
I am sorry, but this report is nothing but pious hackery, blindingly oblivious to the persistent and pernicious racial/racist dynamic playing itself out over and over and over again in our city streets.
It is also painfully obvious — AGAIN– that something has gone horribly wrong with the way police officers are being trained to handle both people and their weapons.
It’s not a few “bad apples,” folks. It’s the entire system that appears to be rotten.
I could go on, but I will stop now. Watch for yourself. Especially notice the mini-sermon about “unrighteous responses” given in coordination with the film of African-American protesters walking through the streets.
Really?!?!
I have asked in the past. I am asking again. If anyone has a video clip of an unarmed white man being shot or chocked to death by police, please send it to me.
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.
Another right-wing vigilante walks free in the USA. The fact that I was even mildly hopeful Kyle Rittenhouse would get some prison time only proves my eternal optimism. Once again, that optimism was misplaced. After all, it is the United States of America that I’m talking about; a nation whose history is replete
Rittenhouse drinking beer and sharing white supremacists hand-signs with members of the Proud Boys shortly after he killed two men and wounded a third
with stories of white men walking free after murdering individuals who made them afraid. It is the United States of America; a nation whose history is replete with stories of Black men lynched, executed, or imprisoned for crimes the state knew they didn’t commit. It is the United States of America; a land where the defense of property takes precedence over human life in the courts and in the streets. Especially when that property is owned by a white man.
Nothing could be more typically American than Kyle Rittenhouse’s murder spree and its aftermath. From the shooting itself to his courtroom defense that he “was only defending himself,” the entire scenario reeks of arrogance and sociopathy. Indeed, it’s a perfect metaphor for the US empire and its “foreign policy,” where
Right-wings groups, including white evangelicals, donated $2 million to Kyle’s defense fund
the concept of self-defense often involves traveling away from one’s home with a loaded weapon, walking down unfamiliar streets away from home, and then murdering people who tell you to go away? This series of events is the template for what US politicians (and many citizens) call US foreign policy. The mindset it inculcates is one that creates the Kyle Rittenhouses among its residents.
Make no mistake, the Rittenhouse trial was a political trial. The far-right knew it could manipulate the evidence in its favor, especially given the nature of stand your ground laws. The jury selection was also manipulated and the judge was not sympathetic to the murdered men. As for the prosecution, I was reminded of those grand juries that fail to indict murderous police officers because the state presents its case in such a way that makes indictment unlikely if not impossible. The assumptions of a jury’s members are played upon with the intention of bringing forth their fears and prejudices. A sophisticated legal team can convince a jury that what they see is not fact and that the legal team’s fiction is. Often, this manipulation involves removing the context of the acts being considered, shortening the timeline, and ultimately transferring the blame to the victims. This is a standard approach for the defense when police officers are charged with murder. It was used quite deftly by the Rittenhouse defense team.
Let’s pretend Rittenhouse was a leftist/BLM protester and had murdered two pro-police protesters in the same scenario like the one he was in when he killed those men. I doubt he would be a free man today. Instead, he would have been portrayed as the active shooter that he was, walking the streets of Kenosha fully armed and under the illusion he had the right to shoot people if they challenged him. In this imaginary circumstance, the pro-police protesters attempting to disarm a scared left-wing Rittenhouse would have been the heroes, and that Rittenhouse would have been the killer the real Rittenhouse is. This scenario assumes that a murdering left-wing Rittenhouse would not have been shot down in the streets by the police—a big assumption. I have protested too many Klan and Nazi rallies that were protected by the forces of law and order to think otherwise.
Today the online version of Comment magazine published my essay about Critical Race Theory (CRT) and the conflict is has generated in American society, but especially in US evangelicalism.
This essay began as a review of the best-selling book by Voddie Baucham, Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe, a book that is highly critical of CRT describing it as a major threat to the Christian church.
What began as a simple book review evolved into a larger essay discussing the broader historical and social context of our current culture-wars over CRT.
You can find my essay HERE. The title is “Among the Tailings of Southern Segregation and Western Imperialism.”
I appreciate the editorial staff at Comment for their willingness to publish this article, as well as for their acute editorial eye.
I hope you will find my essay helpful, educational, and suggestive of the changes needed today in the American church.
I recently came across this interview with the well-known US, mega-
Pastor John MacArthur
church pastor, John MacArthur. He is being asked about Critical Race Theory, which he describes as THE greatest danger to the evangelical church in the last 100 years.
Really?
Check it out below. My thoughts appear afterwards:
First, the majority of MacArthur’s remarks are, frankly, incoherent. He is rambling. There is no logic to anything he says. He is simply making “authoritative” declarations, without any apparent logical connection linking them together, while expecting his listeners to take him seriously.
Apparently, MacArthur has basked in his status as an adored, authoritarian mega-church preacher for far too long.
Second, MacArthur is obviously a dedicated American individualist, as are most evangelicals in this country. He speaks strictly in terms of individual sins and personal responsibility. But that is only half the picture. Every society is a collective enterprise in which the whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts.
Thus, social evils are always sins of the collective. And the collective is only changed through new legislation, restructuring, and advocacy for a renewed type of social conscience. MacArthur is either unwilling or incapable of recognizing this fact. Thus, his comments have little relevance to people working to improve the broken social structures in which we live.
To pursue justice within a society, it is not only possible but necessary to address the problems of BOTH individual AND corporate, collectivesins. Like far too many evangelicals, MacArthur cannot or will not acknowledge this fact.
Third, MacArthur believes that the current controversies over “social justice” (SJ) within evangelicalism pose the most dangerous threat to the church in the past century!
Frankly, that assertion strikes me as a remarkable “chicken little” type of over statement, to put it mildly.
Why does he believe the social justice movement is so dangerous? Because, (a) in his view, social justice is actually socialism, the eternal boogey-man for American conservatives. [Does he honestly not understand that history has been filled with godly Christian socialists?] (b) He further claims that SJ is simply a “euphemism for equality of outcomes.” (c) “Critical Race Theory only wants to destroy,” “to abolish everything.” And (d) CRT insists that individuals are not responsible for evil; only society bears that responsibility.
MacArthur’s claims are nothing more than fear-mongering falsehoods. Frankly, he does not know what he is talking about, plain and simple. Each of these points is demonstrably false.
CRT uncovers the many ways in which western society, constructed by white Europeans, has legalized an unequal social system that has historically granted significant advantages to white folks while denying them to people of color. That sort of system needs to be torn down in same way that slavery was torn down by Christian politicians in 19th century England.
Every follower of Jesus, who sees every fellow human being as made in the Image of God, should want to see all racial privilege and systemic inequalities abolished! There is nothing the least bit radical about any of this!
The fact that SJ is now “dividing the church” simply reveals how deeply paternalistic, reactionary conservatism — more specifically, white, paternalistic, reactionary conservatism — is embedded within American evangelicalism!
It is always difficult for those who rest easy in the enjoyment of their social privileges to recognize, confess, and repent of their ignorance and indifference to the difficulties created for others by the very system from which they have always benefited.
I do not know John MacArthur’s heart. But I will say that he is a misguided, reactionary white man whose “criticisms” of SJ and CRT are very similar to the arguments used by Southern segregationists as they combatted the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s and 70s.
Leaders like John MacArthur need to be ignored when they address important topics with such arrogance and self-satisfaction.
The National Football League recently announced its plans to stop the practice known as “race norming” after two black football players filed a civil rights suit.
Race norming has long been a part of the settlement process when retired players filed for disability benefits due to the brain damage we now know is
Pittsburgh Steelers’ Najeh Davenport is one of the players suing the NFL over its practice of race norming. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
caused by multiple concussions.
After years of resistance and legal wrangling, the NFL began a compensation program to help these players deal with the medical expenses and life adjustments made necessary by their brain damage.
That racist assumption systematically reduced the severity of claims made by black players as compared to white players.
Hopefully, the NFL will remain true to its word by not only abolishing race norming but by also reimbursing all the black players who received inadequate settlements in the past.
Race norming is yet another clear example of systemic racism at work in American society.
As far as I am concerned, these revelations about the NFL’s race norming practices puts a big, big score on the side of Critical Race Theory, which clarifies the many subtle ways in which systemic racism is embedded throughout our society.
Yet, far too many in the country continue to deny the existence of systemic racism! While evangelical Christianity has deepened its condemnation of Critical Race Theory.
The contradiction on display here is as palpable as it is repulsive.
Perhaps the most important lesson to be learned from this particular intersection of events is the stark exposure of white evangelicalism’s moral turpitude.
The evangelical church is more concerned with fighting its culture wars while tilting at secular windmills than it is in following Jesus. For Jesus taught us to confess our sins and repent, daily.
Confession requires introspection and honest self-examination. Confession means that we ask the Holy Spirit to reveal our faults and then listen as He speaks to us through others who recognize the habits we have closed our eyes to.
This story of race norming in the NFL ought to be the final nail in the coffin for all those — I am thinking especially of the Southern Baptist Convention, where members will reschedule Sunday services around the afternoon football game — ethically calloused and racially obtuse Christians who refuse to recognize the facts of systemic racism in America.
Evangelicalism’s silence on this score is its own condemnation.
While writing my latest book about the Jewish-supremacist state of Israel, its ongoing decimation of the Palestinian people, and the role played by
Professor Miguel de la Torre
American, conservative Christianity (i.e., Christian Zionism) in perpetuating this Middle Eastern tragedy, I became convinced that two perspectives were crucial to understanding the Zionist-Palestinian conflict.
The first perspective requires grasping that the creation of Israel was the last venture of Western colonialism, launched – quite ironically – at the dawn of a purportedly post-colonial awakening in the West. (Actually, it was the beginning of a neo-colonialist era, but that’s a subject for another post). Israel is and always has been a settler-colonial state. This insight is key to understanding everything that happens there.
The second perspective developed as I explored the close affinity that Americans have long harbored for Israel – an affinity rooted in the colonial history, a white colonial history, that Israel and America hold in common. The power structures of both nations maintain and applaud this white, colonial heritage. Consequently, large swaths of their citizenry continue to maintain a white, colonial mindset that perverts their view of themselves and the rest of the world. The deadly results appear in the domineering policies directed by national commitments to American and Israeli exceptionalism.
Thinking about these matters made me eager to read Dr. Miguel A. de la Torre’s new book, Decolonizing Christianity: Becoming Badass Believers (yes, I object to the subtitle, too, for a variety of reasons that I won’t go into here). Dr. de la Torre is the author of over thirty books and a professor of social ethics and Latinx studies at Iliff School of Theology. He is also an activist and a major voice crying out for justice on behalf of the Hispanic/Latinx/Immigrant community in the United States.
A more apt title for the book would be something along the lines of Ending White Christianity’s Addiction to Colonialism. As it is, the book’s title implies (intentionally or unintentionally) not that Christianity is inclined towards colonialism, but that Christianity itself has been colonized by some foreign, oppressive power. Perhaps that is the title’s intent, though it is unclear to me. If it is, then the title (remembering that author’s rarely get to select their own book titles) introduces a book that aptly and insightfullyindicts white Christianity for allowing itself to become colonized by a demonic belief in white superiority and privilege.
Professor de la Torre argues (correctly in my view) that the Body of Christ has been infested with anti-Christian beliefs that have made white Christianity an eager agent of white supremacy throughout world history. One obvious consequence has been “missionary Christianity’s” collaboration with Western colonialism (including Jewish, political Zionism in Israel, curiously enough, but you’ll have to buy my book to learn about that); another is the contemporary power dynamics that entrench structural racism into American life.
Decolonizing Christianity offers a rigorous dissection of the crass immorality endorsed by white evangelicalism during the Trump presidency, exposing the many, pernicious ways in which “The Donald” brought the ugly reality of American race-consciousness to light for all to see. Nope, the Obama presidency did not prove that America had finally become a color-blind nation. Quite the opposite. Professor de la Torre rightly insists that Trump was not an aberration. He was/is the age-old, proverbial pig of historic, American white supremacy with all the fashionable make-up and lipstick wiped off its pasty mug.
More than that, de la Torre aptly excoriates white evangelicalism for abandoning Jesus Christ our Savior in exchange for Donald Trump our president. His lengthy exposé on the many ways church leaders compromised the gospel by extolling Trump as Christian America’s savior figure (supported with example after example) makes for shameful reading – even for an anti-Trump person like me. Professor de la Torre rightly argues that in making this exchange so fervently, white evangelicalism revealed its true nature: it is an apostate church body eager to embrace the latest anti-christ, primarily because it never understood Jesus and his gospel in the first place.
From this perspective, professor de la Torres offers a much-needed prophetic critique of American Christianity and the role it plays in normalizing some of our society’s worst characteristics. However, even though I deeply appreciate his prophetic message, I have several problems with the route he takes to arrive at his criticisms (that is, his methodology). Since my area of expertise is New Testament studies, I will focus my criticisms through engaging his troublesome use of scripture. (A related set of differences are foreshadowed in my recent survey of Critical Race Theoryhere, here, here, here, here, here, and here).
Professor de la Torre roots his theology of social transformation in a long-standing (albeit totally mistaken) interpretation of Jesus’ parable of the sheep and the goats (Matt. 25:31-46). By his reading of Matthew 25, caring for the poor, the naked, the hungry, and the imprisoned is the sole measure for determining who is and who is not embraced by the Lord Jesus on Judgment Day. It is hard to avoid the impression that, according to professor de la Torres, radical social transformation, prioritizing the marginalized and afflicted, is the Christian church’s #1 mission in this world.
Of course, de la Torres is not the first to make this particular reading of Matthew 25 central to his understanding of the church and the Christian life. Mother Teresa was also convinced of its centrality to her mission and never hesitated to say so. However, regardless of its ancient roots, this interpretation of Matthew 25 has always been wrong. Unfortunately, its errors have shaped the false starts in professor de la Torres’ analysis, marring an otherwise excellent dissection of the American church. I will explain what I mean by this in an additional post (coming soon — it is now here) that will focus on the proper way of reading Jesus’ parable within its Matthean context and the radically different view of the church which results. Stay tuned.
But here I can more fully explore a briefer example of how professor de la Torres misinterprets scripture by looking at his use of Matthew 15:21-28, Jesus’ encounter with the Canaanite woman (69-78). Here Jesus initially refuses a woman’s request for help, and even likens her to a dog(!). De la Torres explains Jesus’ reaction by claiming that she was rejected because she came from a “mongrel race of inferior people” (69), just like modern-day immigrants at the southern border. Here de la Torres gives us an example of Biblical interpretation from the margins, as they say nowadays; that is through the eyes of the marginalized.
De la Torres argues that this uncomfortable encounter was pivotal in teaching Jesus to outgrow his parochial, Jewish chauvinism (77-78). He was being forced “to mature” in his humanity. The Canaanite woman taught him to become more inclusive and to reject his upbringing in Jewish, racial privilege. When Jesus suggests that the woman is like a dog begging for food (de la Torres prefers the word bitch) de la Torres draws from his own experience to make a connection with Latinx immigrants in this country who regularly are treated as dogs. For de la Torres, the Canaanite woman is a prototypical Latinx immigrant while Jesus exemplifies what the white Christian church ought to be doing – growing up and leaving its racial privilege behind.
Unfortunately, the professor does not recognize (or has deliberately rejected the idea) that Jesus initially rejects this woman because she is a Gentile, not because Canaanites were especially “mongrelized.” This is an important theme throughout Matthew’s gospel. There is a tension, an unfolding development, between the initial exclusivism of Jesus’ early mission (recall that he sends out the Twelve only to the people of Israel, explicitly instructing them not to visit any Gentiles or Samaritans; see Matt. 10:1-6), on the one hand, and the emerging universalism that arises after Jesus is rejected by Israel’s leadership, on the other.
Regardless of what we modern-folk think about it, Jesus arrived as the Jewish messiah for the Jewish people first, just as the apostle Paul regularly went “first to the Jews and then to the Gentiles.” In rejecting the Canaanite woman, Jesus was not rejecting mongrelized Latinx farm workers or other marginalized groups, as de la Torre suggests. He was rejecting all Gentiles at that point in his ministry as a feature of salvation-history. Gentiles needed to wait their turn, and their turn would come. Remember that the woman’s persistent faith quickly overcame Jesus’ reticence to help her. (Space limits prevent me from exploring this issue further here).
De la Torre’s twisting of Matthew 15 to his own political/social application illustrates several problems endemic to the current trend of racializing biblical interpretation. De la Torre regularly indicts what he perceives as the endemic racism of white Christianity as the inevitable result of “white, Eurocentric” philosophy and theology. Though he never fleshes out the specific intellectual connections he sees between white academic theology and the inevitability of white Christian racism, the clear implication is to highlight the importance of Latinx, Black, and Native American theology and interpretation. The fact that most academic theology has been written by white, Eurocentric men is (in de la Torre’s view) the prime facie reason to lay all responsibility for the racism of white Christianity at the door of Eurocentric white theology.
However, I suggest that more substantive evidence is required to demonstrate such cause and effect in this case. Perhaps the professor has fleshed this out more fully in his earlier writings. If he has, he does not refer to it here.
As an interpretive method, this racialization of theology and Bible reading is really no different than the subjective, impressionistic, reader-response approach to Bible reading so common in the average neighborhood Bible study. Failing to understand the difference between a text’s meaning (understanding it accurately within its original contexts) and its significance (making a contemporary, practical application) everyone proceeds to share their personal impressions of the biblical text and “what it means to me” (which is actually a misstatement referring to what its significance is to me). After an evening of communal, subjective impressionism, everyone then goes home marveling at the Bible’s magical ability “to mean” so many different things to different people. Thus, Dr. de la Torre’s misuse of scripture illustrates how the current emphasis on “reading from the margins” is actually no different than evangelicalism’s habit of “reading from the white suburbs.” The only difference is the change in neighborhoods.
Though I am not familiar with the full body of professor de la Torre’s writings, Decolonizing Christianity certainly demonstrates that his voice needs to be received and taken seriously by everyone in the white church in this country.
I must differ, however, in diagnosing the root cause of the American church’s crippling illness. In my opinion, the most basic problem of white Christianity and its scandalous love affair with Donald Trump is not that it is the product of white, Eurocentric theology, whatever that may be, but that it is not the product of sincere, sacrificial allegiance to the crucified Palestinian Jew, Jesus of Nazareth.
And that is an unavoidable, lifelong challenge for everyone who calls him/herself a Christian.
. . . This isn’t about which party wins elections, but whether democracy itself survives. Some anti-democratic measures were deliberately built into a system that was designed to benefit rich white men: The Senate was created to boost small conservative states and serve as a check on the more democratic House of Representatives, while the Electoral College prevented the direct election of the president and enhanced the power of slave states through the three-fifths clause. But these features have metastasized to a degree the Founding Fathers could have never anticipated, and in ways that threaten the very notion of representative government.
In the past decade, the GOP has dropped any pretense of trying to appeal to a majority of Americans. Instead, recognizing that the structure of America’s political institutions diminishes the influence of urban areas, young Americans, and voters of color, it caters to a conservative white minority that is drastically overrepresented in the Electoral College, the Senate, and gerrymandered legislative districts. This strategy of white grievance reached a fever pitch when domestic terrorists emboldened by the president occupied the Capitol to prevent Congress from certifying Biden’s Electoral College victory. But that unprecedented attempt by Trump and his allies to overturn the election results is a mere prelude to a new era of minority rule, which not only will attempt to block the agenda of a president elected by an overwhelming majority but threatens the long-term health of American democracy. “The will of the people,” wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1801, “is the only legitimate foundation of any government.” And now that foundation is crumbling. . .
society, but especially in US evangelicalism.
Representatives, while the Electoral College prevented the direct election of the president and enhanced the power of slave states through the three-fifths clause. But these features have metastasized to a degree the Founding Fathers could have never anticipated, and in ways that threaten the very notion of representative government.
areas, young Americans, and voters of color, it caters to a conservative white minority that is drastically overrepresented in the Electoral College, the Senate, and gerrymandered legislative districts. This