Tag: Church & State

Republicans/Democrats — Two Different Shades of the Same Anti-Democratic, Corporate Masters

In anticipation of tomorrow’s national elections, Chris Hedges’ most recent post is appropriately titled “Destroyers of Democracy.”

If you know anything about Hedges, then you already have guessed that his critique of our electoral system and the political options given to us includes a condemnation of both political parties.

Democrats and the Republicans are equally corrupt.

Neither party has the needs or the interests of working people on their lists of political, social priorities.

Though their styles are different, both parties are equally authoritarian. Biden’s recent speech about the preservation of American democracy was nothing more than a blatant attempt at fear-mongering undecided voters into casting their ballots for the do-nothing shills that march in lock-step behind Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Shumer.

Don’t fall for it.

Though I will vote tomorrow, I have no expectation that my vote — nor your vote, nor anyone else’s who doesn’t make enough money to be listed among the Fortune 500 — will make any difference in the state of my country or its future.

Am I too gloomy? No. I am old, experienced and thus realistic.

Thankfully, I know that my true citizenship is in the kingdom of God. I know that God’s kingdom will one day make all things right, as they should be.

I eagerly anticipate that day and pray for its speedy arrival. With all the saints from the past, all Christians can pray, “Come Lord Jesus. Come!”

In the meantime, I do the best I can to live out a kingdom lifestyle pleasing to my Lord; to explain Jesus’ kingdom values to others; to work, agitate, and yes to vote in ways that may help to spread the benefits of Jesus’ kingdom values to others.

But I place no hope in any political party or its candidates.

I have no expectations that any candidate will remain true to his/her campaign promises — unless, of course, those promises offer more money, influence and power to the wealthy.

I am too old to naively imagine that our current, corrupt political system will ever change for the better — though I am certain it will continue to deteriorate and become worse.

Don’t listen to the mindless muttering of the feckless false prophets, the modern-day soothsayers of evangelical idolatry, men and women who have sold their souls to the godless architects of Republican political power.

You know their names…

These blind guides have betrayed the kingdom of God in exchange for a lukewarm bowl of tasteless political porridge.

Thus they have already earned their only reward:  a millisecond of Twitter fame that will one day condemn them as wasteful servants who failed to prepare for eternity.

Their anti-Christ foolishness seems to know no bounds while they feverishly expand the selfish boundaries of their own ministry domains filled to the brim with thoughtless flocks of misguided followers.

No. Instead, do this: Memorize the Sermon on the Mount.

Give great thought to how your political commitments ought to be molded by Jesus’ own ethical priorities and instructions.

Plant yourself on the side of the poor and the needy.

Speak up for the voiceless. Labor for those who lack the resources needed to improve their lives by themselves. Give yourself away to those who have nothing left to give back to you.

Remember that money is not speech, its power.

Remember that power ALWAYS corrupts.

Remember that every government lies.

All politicians, but especially winning politicians, are compromised by their largest donors.

No interest is as powerful as self-interest.

In this world, money will always rule the roost.

Remember the social commentary of Thucydides who lamented the fact that “The rich always do as they choose, while the poor suffer as they must.”

Then decide to spend your life working to overturn the status quo, for the rules of wealth and power are as true today as they were in the days of Thucydides.

Obediently following hard after Jesus is the only way to get this right.

Remember, the ends never justify the means. In fact, corrupted means only lead to corrupted ends. Sure, compromise may win you a seat at the table, but you’ll find yourself dining with the devil rather than serving with Jesus.

Our only hope is found in the Jesus prayer: Father in heaven, cause your kingdom to come and your will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. Amen

And now for an excerpt from Chris Hedges’ prophetic article:

With the U.S. midterm elections on Tuesday, Biden and other establishment politicians hope to paper over the rot and pain of the system they created with the same decorum they used to sell the country the con of neoliberalism.

The bipartisan project of dismantling U.S. democracy, which took place over the last few decades on behalf of corporations and the rich, has left only the outward shell of democracy.

The courts, legislative bodies, the executive branch and the media, including public broadcasting, are captive to corporate power. There is no institution left that can be considered authentically democratic. The corporate coup d’état is over. They won. Americans lost.

The wreckage of this neoliberal project is appalling: endless and futile wars to enrich a military-industrial-complex that bleeds the U.S. Treasury of half of all discretionary spending; deindustrialization that has turned U.S. cities into decayed ruins; the slashing and privatization of social programs, including education, utility services and health care — which saw over one million Americans account for one-fifth of global deaths from Covid, although the U.S. has 4 percent of the world’s population; draconian forms of social control embodied in militarized police, functioning as lethal armies of occupation in poor urban areas; the largest prison system in the world; a virtual tax boycott by the richest individuals and corporations; money-saturated elections that perpetuate our system of legalized bribery; and the most intrusive state surveillance of the citizenry in U.S. history. . .

. . . Biden, morally vacuous and of limited intelligence, is responsible for more suffering and death at home and abroad than Donald Trump. But the victims in the U.S. Punch-and-Judy media shows are rendered invisible. And that is why the victims despise the whole superstructure and want to tear it down.

These establishment politicians and their appointed  judges promulgated laws that permitted the top 1 percent to loot $54 trillion from the bottom 90 percent, from 1975 to 2022, at a rate of $2.5 trillion a year, according to a study by the RAND corporation. 

The fertile ground of our political, economic, cultural and social wreckage spawned an array of neo-fascists, con artists, racists, criminals, charlatans, conspiracy theorists, right-wing militias and demagogues that will soon take power. . .

To read the entire essay, click here.

Michelle Goldberg on The Decline of the Religious Right

“The Religious Right is in Decline, and It’s Taking America With It,” is the title of Michelle Goldberg’s recent article at The New York Times.

Michelle Goldberg, author and journalist

Ms. Goldberg has been following the Religious Right for some time. I recommend her insightful book, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism (2007) for more of her analysis on white evangelicalism in this country.

Her current article in the NYT underlines the central, animating principle of American evangelicalism in the 21st century: the preservation of Christian cultural supremacy and entitlement.

If you don’t believe me, try this exercise the next time you hear another white, Christian “culture warrior” decrying the latest political act of “anti-Christian” oppression. Ask yourself, “Can I imagine the apostle Paul complaining about this social/cultural disagreement as a threat to the Christian faith or the church?”

Where did Paul ever insist that Greco-Roman society must abandon its idolatry in order for the church to thrive?

When did he insist that Christian organizations were being persecuted unless they were granted tax exempt status?

How often does he announce that the surrounding pagans must change their ways and conform to Christian moral principles in order that Christians may live more comfortably?

The answers are obvious.

Below is Ms. Goldberg’s article. She hits the nail on the head:

The presidency of George W. Bush may have been the high point of the modern Christian right’s influence in America. White evangelicals were the largest religious faction in the country. “They had a president who claimed to be one of their own, he had a testimony, talked in evangelical terms,” said Robert P. Jones, chief executive of the Public Religion Research Institute and author of the 2016 book “The End of White Christian America.”

Back then, much of the public sided with the religious right on the key culture war issue of gay marriage. “In 2004, if you had said, ‘We’re the majority, we oppose gay rights, we oppose marriage equality, and the majority of Americans is with us,’ that would have been true,” Jones told me. Youthful megachurches were thriving. It was common for conservatives to gloat that they were going to outbreed the left.

Activists imagined a glorious future. “Home-schoolers will be inordinately represented in the highest levels of leadership and power in the next generation,” Ned Ryun, a former Bush speechwriter, said at a 2005 Christian home-schooling convention. Ryun was the director of a group called Generation Joshua, which worked to get home-schooled kids into politics. The name came from the Old Testament. Moses had led the chosen people out of exile, but it was his successor, Joshua, who conquered the Holy Land.

But the evangelicals who thought they were about to take over America were destined for disappointment. On Thursday, P.R.R.I. released startling new polling data showing just how much ground the religious right has lost. P.R.R.I.’s 2020 Census of American Religion, based on a survey of nearly half a million people, shows a precipitous decline in the share of the population identifying as white evangelical, from 23 percent in 2006 to 14.5 percent last year. (As a category, “white evangelicals” isn’t a perfect proxy for the religious right, but the overlap is substantial.) In 2020, as in every year since 2013, the largest religious group in the United States was the religiously unaffiliated.

One of P.R.R.I.’s most surprising findings was that in 2020, there were more white mainline Protestants than white evangelicals. This doesn’t necessarily mean Christians are joining mainline congregations — the survey measures self-identification, not church affiliation. It is, nevertheless, a striking turnabout after years when mainline Protestantism was considered moribund and evangelical Christianity full of dynamism.

In addition to shrinking as a share of the population, white evangelicals were also the oldest religious group in the United States, with a median age of 56. “It’s not just that they are dying off, but it is that they’re losing younger members,” Jones told me. As the group has become older and smaller, Jones said, “a real visceral sense of loss of cultural dominance” has set in.

White evangelicals once saw themselves “as the owners of mainstream American culture and morality and values,” said Jones. Now they are just another subculture.

From this fact derives much of our country’s cultural conflict. It helps explain not just the rise of Donald Trump, but also the growth of QAnon and even the escalating conflagration over critical race theory. “It’s hard to overstate the strength of this feeling, among white evangelicals in particular, of America being a white Christian country,” said Jones. “This sense of ownership of America just runs so deep in white evangelical circles.” The feeling that it’s slipping away has created an atmosphere of rage, resentment and paranoia.

QAnon is essentially a millenarian movement, with Trump taking the place of Jesus. Adherents dream of the coming of what they call the storm, when the enemies of the MAGA movement will be rounded up and executed, and Trump restored to his rightful place of leadership.

“It’s not unlike a belief in the second coming of Christ,” said Jones. “That at some point God will reorder society and set things right. I think that when a community feels itself in crisis, it does become more susceptible to conspiracy theories and other things that tell them that what they’re experiencing is not ultimately what’s going to happen.”

The fight over critical race theory seems, on the surface, further from theological concerns. There are, obviously, plenty of people who aren’t evangelical who are anti-C.R.T., as well as evangelicals who oppose C.R.T. bans. But the idea that public schools are corrupting children by leading them away from a providential understanding of American history has deep roots in white evangelical culture. And it was the Christian right that pioneered the tactic of trying to take over school boards in response to teachings seen as morally objectionable, whether that meant sex education, “secular humanism” or evolution.

Jones points out that last year, after Trump issued an executive order targeting critical race theory, the presidents of all six seminaries of the Southern Baptist Convention came together to declare C.R.T. “incompatible” with the Baptist faith. Jones, whose latest book is “White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity,” could recall no precedent for such a joint statement.

As Jones notes, the Southern Baptist Convention was formed in 1845 after splitting with abolitionist Northern Baptists. He described it as a “remarkable arc”: a denomination founded on the defense of slavery “denouncing a critical read of history that might put a spotlight on that story.”

Then again, white evangelicals probably aren’t wrong to fear that their children are getting away from them. As their numbers have shrunk and as they’ve grown more at odds with younger Americans, said Jones, “that has led to this bigger sense of being under attack, a kind of visceral defensive posture, that we saw President Trump really leveraging.”

I was frightened by the religious right in its triumphant phase. But it turns out that the movement is just as dangerous in decline. Maybe more so. It didn’t take long for the cocky optimism of Generation Joshua to give way to the nihilism of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists. If they can’t own the country, they’re ready to defile it.

Thinking About (Christian) Nationalism

Following my invitation to participate in the upcoming NEME webinar, Two Chosen Peoples? Two Promised Lands?, focusing on the intersection of Christian and Jewish Nationalism in the United States and Israel, I have been expanding my horizons in the ocean of literature exploring the history and contours of modern nationalism.

You know, I always appreciate another reason to read a few more good books!

Some of you may recall that I touched on the subject of American nationalism, and the related issue of civil religion, in my book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America (Eerdmans 2018).

The more I learn about the history and developments of this mind-set called “nationalism,” the more convinced I become that it is hostile to the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ and inevitably corrosive to faithful citizenship in the kingdom of God.

Fortunately, more and more Christian leaders are speaking out to warn God’s people against the dangers of what I consider the worst form of nationalism, that is “Christian Nationalism.”

For example, check out the resources provided by the group Christians Against Christian Nationalism.

Christian nationalism insists that The Nation is bound together by a corporate commitment to the Christian religion, born of a Christian history and Christian culture. Being Christian people (however that is defined) becomes the centerpiece of national identity.

Christian nationalism goes hand in hand with a belief in the nation’s “chosenness.” The Christian nation is God’s unique, elect people with a special, divine calling to perform His will in this world.

Historically, such national callings have generally been implemented, at least in part, through warfare, colonialism, bloodshed, discrimination, and even ethnic cleansing.

Christian Nationalism creates a secularized ecclesiology [ecclesiology is the doctrine of the Church], offering a worldly, bogus doctrine of a “national church” for seriously misguided people.

It even creates alternative, secular liturgies, symbols, rituals, and vocabulary for national “devotion.” Nationalism becomes a religious exercise memorializing the nation’s holy history.

But disciples of Jesus Christ are called to find their personal identity in union with the peaceable, crucified Savior. Clinging to the idolatrous badge of identity provided by a warmongering nation-state is a betrayal of genuine Christian values.

“Christian Nations” (so called) can never embody anything other than the secularized fellowship of false identities carved out by the egotism of those who are distorted by their own peculiar ethic, regional, cultural, linguistic superiority complexes.

There ain’t nothin’ Christian about any of that.

Here is a short excerpt from a good book on nationalism entitled, National Identity (Penguin 1991) by Anthony D. Smith. (All emphases are mine):

The nation is called upon to provide a social bond between individuals and classes by providing repertoires of shared values, symbols and traditions. By the use of symbols – flags, coinage, anthems, uniforms, monuments and ceremonies – members are reminded of their common heritage and cultural kindship . . . The nation becomes a faith achievement group . . . Finally, a sense of national identity provides a powerful means of defining and locating individual selves in the world, through the prism of the collective personality and its distinctive culture. It is through a shared, unique culture that we are enabled to know ‘who we are’ in the contemporary world. By rediscovering that culture we ‘rediscover’ ourselves, the ‘authentic self’, or so it has appeared to many divided and disoriented individuals who have had to contend with the vast changes and uncertainties of the modern world. This process of self-definition and location is in many ways the key to national identity. . .

 Nationalism, the doctrine that makes the nation the object of every political endeavour and national identity the measure of every human value, has since the French Revolution challenged the whole idea of a single humanity, of a world community and its moral unity. Instead, nationalism offers a narrow, conflict-laden legitimation for political community, which inevitably pits culture-communities against each other and . . . can only drag humanity into a political Charybdis. [Charybdis was a whirlpool off the coast of Sicily. Greek mythology turned it into a sea monster.]

True followers of Jesus Christ find their eternal community in union with the Lord Jesus and, thus, other members of the Body of Christ. That Body is an international, multi-ethnic, trans-territorial community of the faithful.

The disciple’s personal identity is developed through obedience to the Lord Jesus, becoming more and more like him as we share in the fellowship of his suffering. Self-denial, humility, mercy, including service to those who are most unlike us, form the core bundle of Christ-like character traits marking those who follow Jesus.

There is no room for the perversions of Nationalism, much less “Christian Nationalism,” among God’s people on this earth.

Christian Nationalism and Political Conformity

Condemning Christian nationalism has become all the rage among certain members of the evangelical punditry. Even a few evangelical Republicans felt uncomfortable at the sight of Jesus flags and Christian paraphernalia on prominent display among the rioters who stormed Congress on January 6th.

In the immediate aftermath of those events, I saw a number of editorial condemnations on television and in print chastising any Christian’s involvement in violence or sedition. Each of them raised the same questions in my mind, for they all were morally tepid and intellectually shallow, ignoring the role those very media outlets had played in promoting president Trump’s “Big Lie” about a stolen election.

I wholeheartedly agree with the reminder that Christians should not commit acts of violence, especially when those actions lead to others being

FILE – In this Jan. 6, 2021 file photo, Trump supporters participate in a rally in Washington. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

killed and injured. However, I also found it very strange for right-wing, Christian, patriotic pundits, people who swear allegiance to a nation founded upon revolution, violence, and bloodshed, to suddenly clutch their pearls and faint at the sight of modern “patriots” doing what they believed needed to be done in order to save their nation and democracy.

I won’t even begin to address the hypocrisy on display when Religious-Right folks self-righteously condemn insurrection at home while heartily endorsing America’s many military coups and wars of aggression around the world! Apparently, Christians are only supposed to shun violence when the their fellow Americans become the enemy. Black and brown-skinned people around the world are always fair game.

All of this is very strange indeed unless we understand two crucial points:

First, these suddenly pacifistic, evangelical commentators were demonstrating how deeply embedded they are in the American, corporate establishment.

For all of their complaints about suffering as marginalized, Christian outsiders, none of them were willing to follow the logic of their messianic Trump-devotion to its logical conclusion. Why? Because they all had network executives telling them to toe a more establishment line or they would need to empty their desks and head for the unemployment line.

None of them were condemning police violence when BLM protesters were being assaulted by lines of militarized patrolmen wielding plexiglass shields and billy clubs.

Second, their exclusive focus on an anti-violence message exposed the consistent lack of self-awareness and intellectual rigor that characterizes so much of American evangelicalism today.

Of course, superficial critiques may be better than no critique at all, but if we only ever scratch the surface of a problem, then the underlying disease is allowed to deepen and spread. (On a side note, this was also my response to Mark Galli’s tepid critique of president Trump in his editorial at Christianity Today.” Only fellow evangelicals would interpret his words as shocking.)

Linking the errors of Christian nationalism to the dangers of patriotic violence (at home, mind you; violence abroad is always permissible for Christian America) is only the tip of the iceberg.

I recently began reading a book by the US historian, John W. Compton, entitled, The End of Empathy: Why White Protestants Stopped Loving Their Neighbors (Oxford, 2020). Compton first tells the story of how white Protestantism once led the way in condemning, addressing, and working to transform the many social, cultural, and political evils in this country.

Child labor laws, worker safety regulations, the 6-day work week, the 8-hour work day, a living wage, plus much more were policies all implemented in response to massive Christian political pressure during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

But all of that changed in late 1970s-early 1980s with Ronald Reagan’s presidency and the rise of his neo-liberal economic agenda. Nowadays, Christians concerned with things like social justice are regularly condemned for compromising the gospel. What happened?

I won’t answer that question here, but I will share a few thoughts from Compton’s introductory chapter where he begins to lay out his argument about the transformation that led to the wholesale conformity of American Christianity to the social/political/cultural status quo.

Concerning Christian political involvement:

Religious believers are on average much like similarly situated secular citizens when it comes to their behavior in the political realm. Like their secular neighbors, believers routinely base their political decisions on self-interest or ingrained prejudice rather than careful and disinterested study of sacred texts or deliberation about the will of a higher power. (4-5)

On the Christian vision for the church’s role in transforming society:

…from the mid-nineteenth century through the 1960s, most non-Southern Protestants not only professed to believe that Christian principles, properly understood, favored government efforts to aid the downtrodden; they were also embedded in religious networks that were capable…of focusing attention on specific social problems and incentivizing the faithful to take responsibility for correcting them.

On the current state of American evangelicalism:

In the new age of personal autonomy, the leaders of the Religious Right flourished by reshaping the Christian message to comport with the prejudices and material self-interest of their target demographic.

I will probably review this book here when I have finished digesting all that it has to say.

But in short, nowadays the average Christian doesn’t work at thinking, and thus acting, differently in the light of God’s word. We conform to the ways of those around us, ignore the illuminating study of the holy scriptures, and are afraid to stand alone on behalf of those less fortunate than ourselves.

For now, I will only note a deeper description of the dangers that accompany Christian nationalism. The heart of that danger is cooption, conformity to the national status quo — which explains a lot about American evangelicalism and the Religious-Right in this country.

Once Christians begin to imagine that their country is God’s country; that its national history is a story written by and for Christians like themselves, then it is a very tiny step to confuse national interests with Christian interests. National norms become Christian norms (think of laisse faire capitalism) and Christian norms become national norms (think of the fight over equal rights for gay citizens).

Granted, this confusion may require a reimagined past that describes our current state of affairs as a gross deviation from historic norms (think of  David Barton and Wallbuilders promoting a fictitious story of our “Christian” founding fathers and the Constitution’s adherence to the Bible). But modern diversions into sin cannot change America’s basic orientation as a “Christian nation” – at least, to the minds of Christian nationalists.

The identity between the one and the other is very simple for Christian nationalism and it goes far beyond a problem with violence. Christian values become America’s true, historic values. Thus, American true values are Christian values. This is where Christian nationalism becomes heretical.

Yet, this false identity between nation and church is ignored by pundits on the Religious-Right who now chastise Christian insurrectionists for colluding with violence.

The genuine danger for the church in this country is not that it would collude with violence but that it would continue to collude with American exceptionalism.

The greatest political danger facing evangelicalism today is our willingness to roll over and accept the economic and political status quo, embracing corporate, crony capitalism, labor exploitation, systemic racism, militarized policing, social Darwinism, and American exceptionalism as God’s preferred methods of directing a nation.

Where is the Christian voice of dissent to all these sins?

Where are the people who will not conform to their political surroundings and vote and think and act like their neighbors?

Where are the Christian activists willing to break away from the way things today are in order to pursue God’s vision of the way things ought to be tomorrow?

Chris Hedges on “The Collective Suicide of the Liberal Class”

As American democracy continues to circle the drain, the future of our body politic looks increasingly grim.

Chris Hedges

I had planned on writing a post about the long-term social effects of “Trumpism” and the president’s faux-legal efforts to overturn a democratic presidential election, but then I received Chris Hedges’ latest editorial in my inbox.

Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who wrote for many years for the New York Times.

Reflecting on his years as a foreign war correspondent, he also wrote an important book describing the addictive qualities of war-making entitled, War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. If you haven’t read it, you really should.

Hedges is one of my favorite journalists and political writers who offers a cogent analysis of America’s unhappy future in words far more eloquent than anything I would have written.

So, here is an excerpt of Hedges’ very insightful and very bleak forecast. Or you can read the entire article here:

Liberals who express dismay, or more bizarrely a fevered hope, about the corporatists and imperialists selected to fill the positions in the Biden administration are the court jesters of our political burlesque. They long ago sold their soul and abandoned their most basic principles to line up behind a bankrupt Democratic Party. They chant, with every election cycle, the mantra of the least worst and sit placidly on the sidelines as a Bill Clinton or a Barack Obama and the Democratic Party leadership betray every issue they claim to support.

The only thing that mattered to liberals in the presidential race, once again, was removing a Republican, this time Donald Trump, from office. This, the liberals achieved. But their Faustian bargain, in election after election, has shredded their credibility. They are ridiculed, not only among right-wing Trump supporters but by the hierarchy of the Democratic Party that has been captured by corporate power. No one can, or should, take liberals seriously. They stand for nothing. They fight for nothing. The cost is too onerous. And so, the liberals do what they always do, chatter endlessly about political and moral positions they refuse to make any sacrifices to achieve.          

Liberals, largely comprised of the professional managerial-class that dutifully recycles and shops for organic produce and is concentrated on the two coasts, have profited from the ravages of neoliberalism. They seek to endow it with a patina of civility. But their routine and public humiliation has ominous consequences. It not only exposes the liberal class as hollow and empty, it discredits the liberal democratic values they claim to uphold. Liberals should have abandoned the Democratic Party when Bill Clinton and political hacks such as Biden transformed the Democratic Party into the Republican Party and launched a war on traditional liberal values and left-wing populism. They should have defected by the millions to support Ralph Nader and other Green Party candidates. . . 

. . . The Biden administration resembles the ineffectual German government formed by Franz von Papen in 1932 that sought to recreate the ancien régime, a utopian conservatism that ensured Germany’s drift into fascism. Biden, bereft like von Papen of new ideas and programs, will eventually be forced to employ the brutal tools Biden as a senator was so prominent in creating to maintain social control – wholesale surveillance, a corrupt judicial system, the world’s largest prison system and police that have been transformed into lethal paramilitary units of internal occupation. Those that resist as social unrest mounts will be attacked as agents of a foreign power and censored, as many already are being censored, including through algorithms and deplatforming on social media. The most ardent and successful dissidents, such as Julian Assange, will be criminalized.

The shock troops of the state, already ideologically bonded with the neofascists on the right, will hunt down and wipe out an enfeebled and often phantom left, as we saw in the chilling state assassination by U.S. Marshals of the antifa activist Michael Reinoehl, who was unarmed and standing outside an apartment complex in Lacey, Washington, in September when he was shot multiple times. I witnessed this kind of routine state terror during the war in El Salvador. Reinoehl allegedly killed Aaron Danielson, a member of the far-right group Patriot Prayer during a pro-Trump rally in Portland, Oregon in August.

Compare the gunning down of Reinoehl by federal agents to the coddling of Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old accused of killing two protesters and injuring a third on August 25 in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Police officers, moments before the shooting, are seen on video thanking Rittenhouse and other armed right-wing militia member for coming to the city and handing them bottles of water. Rittenhouse is also seen in a video walking toward police with his hands up after his shooting spree as protesters yell that he had shot several people. Police, nevertheless, allow him to leave. Rittenhouse’s killings have been defended by the right, including Trump. Rittenhouse, who has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations for his legal fees, has been released on $2 million bail.

All the pieces are in place for our own descent into what I suspect will be a militarized Christianized fascism. Political dysfunction, a bankrupt and discredited liberal class, massive and growing social inequality, a grotesquely rich and tone-deaf oligarchic elite, the fragmentation of the public into warring tribes, widespread food insecurity and hunger, chronic underemployment and unemployment and misery, all exacerbated by the failure of the state to cope with the crisis of the pandemic, combine with the rot of civil and political life to create a familiar cocktail leading to authoritarianism and fascism.

Trump and the Republican Party, along with the shrill incendiary voices on right-wing media, play the role the antisemitic parties played in Europe during the late 19th and early 20th century. The infusion of anti-Semitism into the political debate in Europe destroyed the political decorum and civility that is vital to maintaining a democracy. Racist tropes and hate speech, as in Weimar Germany, now poison our political discourse. Ridicule and cruel taunts are hurled back and forth. Lies are interchangeable with fact. Those who oppose us are demonized as human embodiments of evil.

This poisonous discourse is only going to get worse, especially with millions of Trump supporters convinced the election was rigged and stolen. . .

. . .The constant barrage of vitriol and fabulist conspiracy theories will, I fear, embolden extremists to carry out political murder, not only of mainstream Democrats, Republicans Trump has accused of betrayal such as Georgia governor Brian Kemp and those targeted as part of the deep state, but also those at media outlets such as CNN or The New York Times that serve as propaganda arms of the Democratic Party. Once the Pandora’s box of violence is opened it is almost impossible to close. Martyrs on one side of the divide demand martyrs on the other side. Violence becomes the primary form of communication. And, as Sabastian Haffner wrote, “once the violence and readiness to kill that lies beneath the surface of human nature has been awakened and turned against other humans, and even made into a duty, it is a simple matter to change the target.”

This, I suspect, is what is coming. The blame lies not only with the goons and racists on the right, the corporatists who pillage the country and the corrupt ruling elite that does their bidding, but a feckless liberal class that found standing up for its beliefs too costly. The liberals will pay for their timidity and cowardice, but so will we. 

When the Powers-That-Be Decide Whose Religious Liberty is Worth Defending

Justice Amy Coney Barrett

The wildly different responses of the Republican party and the Religious Right to the religious convictions of Justice Amy Coney Barrett and the Rev. Raphael Warnock demonstrate the hypocrisy of our political debates over religious liberty.

When Senator Dianne Feinstein told Barrett that she was worried about how” loudly the dogma lives within” Judge Barrett, Republicans went bananas in deriding Feinstein’s “assault” on Barrett’s religious freedoms.

Barrett became the latest poster-child illustrating the supposed liberal hatred of Christianity and the Democratic party’s continuing attacks on religious liberty in America.

But now the tables have turned.

The Rev. Raphael Warnock is a Democratic senatorial candidate in Georgia,

Rev. Raphael Warnock

where he is waiting for the run-off election in early January. He has been the senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta since 2005.

Now, the Republicans are deriding Rev. Warnock as unfit for office because . . . wait for it . . . you guessed it: because the dogma lives too strongly within him.

Having gone through the pastor’s old sermons, the Republicans are calling him unfit for office. Listen to Warnock’s most offensive words:

Setting aside the abortion issue, the simple fact of the matter is that pastor Warnock is being condemned for proclaiming the words of Jesus. Jesus’ teaching is clear: no one can serve both the military and God, neither can anyone serve both God and money (Matt. 6:19-34).

The conservative hypocrisy in this backlash is so thick you could cut it with a knife.

CBN News continues to demonstrate that it is nothing more than a “Christianized,” civil religion cut-out of Fox News as it carries water for the Republican party.

The whole escapade is really quite disgusting.

I have very clearly demonstrated in my book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America, (Eerdmans, 2018), just how biblical Rev. Warnock is when he decries Christian involvement in the military. He represents an ancient Christian tradition.

And Jesus’ condemnation of excessive wealth is a signature trait of his teaching. Remember, “it is easier for a camel to pass through the needle’s eye than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:25).

In this respect — not forgetting that Warnock is an African-American running for office in the southern state of Georgia — those who condemn this southern, black pastor are imitating the godless leaders who condemned Jesus of Nazareth to hang on a cross.

We are seeing a vivid example of what happens when the truth of the gospel confronts sinful human beings.

It also exemplifies how difficult (if not impossible) it is for a faithful, Christian witness to flourish in the midnight garden of political power.

 

Religious Freedom or Christian Privilege?

Is American religious freedom under threat?

Many religious leaders are convinced that the answer to that question is YES. White evangelicals, for example, have been persuaded that president-elect Biden is a raging socialist who, by definition, is bent on eradicating Christianity from the public square.

Vice President Pence accuses all Democrats of religious intolerance suggesting that a Biden presidency will threaten our Christian liberties.

But, of course, in issuing these warnings Pence and others fail to mention that Joe Biden is a devout Roman Catholic and Kamala Harris grew up attending a Church of God in Oakland, CA. Her mother also took her to visit Hindu temples when she was a child and her husband is Jewish. There is no lack of religion or an appreciation of its free exercise on this ticket.

So, what’s going on?

It’s simple. The real issue here is the implicit redefinition of terms that has occurred through the court cases and propaganda campaigns led by the Religious Right. Nowadays, whenever a white evangelical complains about the loss of religious freedom in America today, he/she is actually complaining about challenges to longstanding traditions of Christian privilege.

The First Amendment to the US Constitution says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

For a Christian in America, the Bible and the First Amendment give direction for the free exercise of Christian faith. Christians are free to gather for worship, to talk and write about their faith, to possess and to study the Bible, and to perform whatever other activities or “sacraments” Christians are directed to perform by scripture.

To the best of my knowledge there are no laws anywhere in this country prohibiting any of these religious activities. Christianity has not been outlawed. Group gatherings are not prohibited (those who think that church buildings housing many people in a confined space are the only legitimate place to worship fail to understand the New Testament; John McArthur ought to be ashamed of himself).

So what’s the problem?

The real issue is that Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, generally don’t want to play by the same rules as everyone else when they step into public space. The traditions of western Christendom have handed the Christian church many benefits that live on in our society today.

The popular face of these benefits appears in the preferential treatment Christian individuals and organizations receive in shaping the public square (i.e. Christian iconography in public buildings) and gaining access to the public purse (i.e. generous tax exemptions). Christian business owners also benefit when their for-profit businesses are given special consideration, exempting them from regulations applied to others.

The development of religious schools, hospitals, adoption agencies, and other public services is a wonderful thing. I am happy they exist, but let’s not get confused. None of them are required for the church to be the church. Neither is it clear why Christian entrepreneurs deserve special considerations not provided to others.

Our Lord’s Great Commission does not say, “Go into all the world and make disciples of all nations. Build institutions, service organizations, and businesses wherever you can enjoy tax benefits and profit by special treatment excusing you from the standards required of others.”

As far as I am aware, the persistent warnings about the imminent loss of religious freedom in this country are typically complaints about a perceived loss or reduction of a Christian privilege.

The US Supreme Court ruled in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. that the white evangelical owners of Hobby Lobby should be exempted from providing health insurance coverage to their female employees for certain contraceptives. The owners of Hobby Lobby objected to those particular drugs on the basis of their religious conscience.

The court ruled in their favor, agreeing that the Christian owners could not be asked to violate their religious convictions by being required to include the full range of contraceptive options in their health insurance coverage for female employees (Note: although Viagra for men is always covered).

The recent case of the Little Sisters of the Poor Saints Peter and Paul Home v.

Sister Loraine McGuire with Little Sisters of the Poor speaks to the media after Zubik v. Burwell, an appeal brought by Christian groups demanding full exemption from the requirement to provide insurance covering contraception under the Affordable Care Act, was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington March 23, 2016. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

Pennsylvania is very similar. The Roman Catholic spiritual order of the Little Sisters objects to all contraception, which of course is their right.

They, therefore, also asked for an exemption so that they would not be required to provide that particular piece of health insurance coverage to their employees.  The Little Sisters also won their case on the basis of defending religious freedom.

Evangelicals and Catholics alike rallied around both cases, warned of government attacks on religious freedom, and cheered both decisions as victories for religious liberty in America.

Yet, to my mind the definitional over-reach on display in both cases is startling.

No one was forcing either the owners of Hobby Lobby or the Little Sisters to take any of these contraceptives themselves. Their own religious liberty was not under threat. They not being told how they could or could not worship, pray, gather together, or circumscribe their personal behavior.

Rather, in both cases the Christians wanted permission to enforce their beliefs onto others. They did not want to pay for a full coverage health plan that allowed others access to personal options that they (the employers) did not approve of.

Neither case was about religious freedom, not really.

Both cases fought for the maintenance of Christian privilege in the public square. They both exhibit the modern vestiges of western Christendom and the hold it continues to exercise over Roman Catholic and evangelical thinking in this country.

Both cases were about control and the ability of “religious organizations” to maintain that control through the smoke and mirrors of bogus complaints about government assaults on the freedom of religion.

George Floyd + Breonna Taylor = A Long Overdue Righteous Revolution

On March 13 Breonna Taylor was murdered by Louisville Metro Police officers while sleeping in her bed.

Police had obtained a “no knock” warrant to search her apartment on the basis of a lie fabricated by the police officers. Three policemen broke down Ms. Taylor’s front door with their weapons draw and entered her home.

Eleven witnesses on the scene all testify that the police never identified themselves.

Taylor’s boyfriend was awoken imagining that dangerous criminals had broken into the apartment. He was correct in this assumption. Except these criminals all wore a police badge, which apparently gives any cop the right to do whatever he/she pleases to any African American, without consequences.

Grabbing his registered handgun, Ms. Taylor’s boyfriend fired once to let the intruders know that he was armed. The police fired their weapons 20 or more times into the darkness. Five to eight (reports vary) of those bullets penetrated Breonna’s body, killing her.

Ms. Taylor was an EMT who worked as an emergency room technician. She had no criminal record. A search of her apartment revealed none of the things the police were looking for.

Today, the 3 officers responsible for Taylor’s death were all found not guilty of murder.

One officer was convicted of “wanton endangerment” because his shots penetrated into the surrounding apartments.

Since no one (fortunately) in these other apartments was injured, we are left to conclude that property damage is a more heinous crime in Louisville, Kentucky than murder. Especially when the murder victim is a young black woman.

Once again, Louisville has proven that black lives do not matter in America. But, heck, we will happily let others die, especially if they are people of color, as long as the police will protect our property.

Another obvious lesson from this injustice is the need for all second amendment, militia types to sit down and be quiet. Repeatedly, we have listened to these “patriots” warn about the imminent dangers of heavily armed government officials breaking into the homes of innocent Americans.

Well, Ms. Taylor’s tragedy is the literal enactment of every gun loving, militia member’s worst nightmare. So, where are they? Why aren’t they marching through the streets of Louisville condemning government oppression with their long rifles at the ready, locked and loaded?

I’ll tell you.

They are sitting at home on their fat butts saying and doing nothing because Breonna Taylor was black. All they are truly interested in is “defending” their vision of a white America.

I fear that the majority of evangelical church leaders will also remain silent over the grotesque injustice of this entire affair. If they do eventually speak up, I predict that it will only be to chime in with Fox News propaganda to condemn the “looters,” and “rioters” who are “destroying property.”

Where have these church people been? In which hole in the ground have they buried their useless heads?

The wanton hypocrisy of such “spiritual leadership” knows no bounds.

Can anyone honestly wonder why we see African Americans – at least, those who are caught on film – running from the police or resisting arrest? The reasons are obvious. In far too many cases, the police are the enemy.

I would behave in exactly the same way if I were a black man in America today. AND SO WOULD YOU, MY DEAR READER. Admit it.

Jesus commands his people “to love your neighbor as yourself.” Love requires empathy.

Godly empathy requires carrying (or at least sharing) the other person’s burden — the burden of their oppression; the burden of unrelieved injustice measured out to them; the burden of grief, lament, and loss; the burden of struggling for righteousness, yes RIGHTEOUSNESS, on this earth.

This was the message of the Old Testament prophets. This was Jesus’ message, too.

Any so-called spiritual “leader” who does not already understand this point needs to resign now, for you do NOT understand what it means to live as a citizen of God’s kingdom.

Neither do you grasp Jesus’ ethical teaching.

I don’t know about you, but my next task is to check out the airfare to Louisville. I hope I’ll see you there, too.

It is long, long past time for God’s people to mercilessly attack the walls of American racism and injustice.

It’s long past time for a truly righteous revolution.

Don’t Believe Network News About Portland

One of my daughters lived in Portland, OR for many years.

She keeps in touch with many of her friends in the area, a good number of whom have been out in the streets protesting. Some of them have been arrested. All of them tell the same story.

You can read much of this for yourself on Facebook. Just check out the hashtags #WallOfMoms, #WallOfVets, #WallOfDads.

The story goes like this:

Mixed groups of demonstrators have been in the streets regularly ever since George Floyd’s murder and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement across the country.

The demonstrations have been overwhelmingly peaceful. When unknown agitators destroyed property, group leaders told them to stop and to go away. They were damaging the cause.

Then Federal troops appeared on the scene and began arresting people for no apparent reason, putting them into unmarked vehicles, and locking them up without charges. Some have been kept jailed in undisclosed locations for several days, while family and friends wondered where they were.

These unconstitutional actions by the Feds energized more citizens to march in the streets. Yes, a small group of agitators ramped up their property destruction. But both black and white organizers regularly tried to stop their activities, and were typically unsuccessful.

It is not surprising that this small minority of agitators garner most of the headlines and nearly all of the time on the TV networks, making it look as if Portland is in chaos. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The Feds have escalated the confrontations unnecessarily, with their rubber bullets, tear gas, pepper spray, unnecessary aggression and violence against protesters.

It is totally unnecessary.

This is when the Wall of Moms was created, intentionally putting themselves between the demonstrators and the Feds. At this point, a

This protester-mom, was standing, linking arms with fellow demonstrators, when a Federal agent shot her in the face with a rubber bullet

portion of the protests became focused around the Federal courthouse, because that was were the Federal agents were concentrated.

Now the focus of the demonstrations became bifurcated.

The movement’s leaders worked to maintain their focus on Black Lives Matter and police brutality. You don’t have to watch many Facebook videos and pictures to see and hear large crowds chanting “Black Lives Matter.”

But, with the unsolicited intervention of Federal agents, another section of the movement gave their attention to demonstrating against the “police state” activities of Trump’s anti-demonstration forces. The increase in violence is due entirely to the brutal behavior of these Federal marshals and Border Patrol agents.

Yes, a minority of people get out of hand. After the Feds erected a fence in front of the courthouse, a few people focused their anger there and began to build fires under the fence. Again, the organizers consistently tried to stop this from happening.

But, get real! Have you seen the fires? They hardly pose a real threat to anyone, especially to the courthouse!

As the Feds continued to attack both the BLM demonstrators and the Wall of

The bruises on this mom’s body were made by the many rubber bullets fired at her by Federal “police.” Obviously, the Feds don’t hesitate to shoot a woman at close range when her back is turned

Moms, two additional sectors of society began spontaneously to appear: military veterans and dads.

Many veterans, understandably upset at what they were seeing, began to show up in support of the protesters and the moms. A number of videos show how brutally they too have been treated by the Federal agents, beaten with clubs for simply trying to speak to the officers.

Then dads appeared with leaf blowers to fend off the clouds of tear gas being fired by the Feds at unarmed civilians.

Naturally, conservative outlets such as Fox hate all anti-establishment movements, especially when they call for racial justice and condemn police violence.

By definition, conservatives support the establishment.

That is what conservatism means. It’s who they are. Their reporting is pure propaganda, tailored to anger their like-minded viewers, and to condemn the protesters.

Also, remember the old journalistic motto: “if it bleeds it leads.” All the news networks succumb to this principle. They would rather show us the few violent clashes than the masses protesting peacefully. It’s the way news/journalism has always worked in this country.

So, if you want to get angry, then get angry at our government. Get angry at “law enforcement” run amuck, attacking fellow citizens who are exercising their constitutional rights to free speech and freedom of assembly.

Get angry at our president for intentionally making a difficult situation worse, as he manipulates civil unrest for his own personal, political advantage.

Trump is using the predictable FASCIST strategy of generating violence so that he can run on a “law and order” platform in November. You can count on it. This is how he hopes to win reelection.

Don’t fall for it.

We are already well underway to authoritarianism.

White Evangelicals Must Think More Deeply and Engage More Practically

Grayson Gilbert, a regular blogger at Patheos, has written another white evangelical “analysis” of the protests sparked by the death of George Floyd. He repeats the shallow message of evangelical individualism that I recently criticized here.

As I read more and more examples of this gospel of American individualism (and become increasingly aggravated by their frequency and continuity) posted on Facebook, blogs, and chat boards, I decided to offer a more detailed critique of this white, evangelical gospel, using Mr. Gilbert’s piece to illustrate my points.

Below is an excerpt from his Patheos post to give you an idea of what he says. Or you can read the entire post here, but please come back to digest my criticisms and reflect on what the church needs to do differently.

Unfortunately, Mr. Gilbert expresses many of the theological and practical failures endemic to white evangelicalism in this country.

As a result, he also sadly illustrates why white evangelicalism has so little to offer in the way of practical solutions to many of America’s deepest problems.

A good deal of my thinking on these subjects is also explained in my book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America. I wish Mr. Gilbert and others would read it. I certainly encourage you to do so, if you haven’t already.

Here is the excerpt:

“…This leads me to perhaps the most important point that I can make: if you want to see what needs to change, take a look in the mirror. It is not a system that needs to repent or be overthrown by human hands. It is not a single people group. It is not a minority or a majority ethnicity that needs to repent. It’s everyone. Every tongue, tribe, and nation is called to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. Every individual on the face of the planet needs to bow before their Maker in repentance and call upon Christ as Lord for the forgiveness of their sins and the simple reason for this is that every man is a sinner.

“Until sin is seen for what it truly is and actually dealt with at the cross; until repentance and sanctification ensues, nothing will change in the heart of men at large. They will do what they do best: sin. Yet on that Final Day, God will do what no man can do: bring about complete and utter justice that is consistent with His covenant. If you’re not in Christ, you don’t want that kind of justice because it’s not good news for you. You want the gospel. And yet many professing Christians seem to think the gospel is incapable of doing anything at all to solve the issue, mainly, because they want results now…”

  • Do more research. Mr. Gilbert appears to limit his news exposure to watching the Fox network. He needs to think more deeply about how he is being manipulated by the corporate media, as I mention here.

Yes, looting, property destruction, and violence have occurred in many places. But Gilbert doesn’t seem to be aware of the many protest leaders who have condemned the looting, condemned the instigators exploiting their demonstrations, and turned out with volunteers to clean up and repair the damage done.

Like so many others, Gilbert paints with a crude, broad brush when he condemns the whole for the sins of a few. This is a standard tactic used by demagogues whose knee-jerk reaction is to defend the status quo rather than to honestly confront the social sickness that needs to be cut out of America’s body politic. I also recently wrote about this issue here.

Over the past several days, I have watched many videos showing (a) the police assaulting peaceful, unarmed demonstrators without provocation, sometimes causing serious injury; and (b) massive, peaceful demonstrations with no apparent mayhem anywhere.

To speak only about the looting while ignoring the core message animating the thousands upon thousands of black, brown, and white citizens marching peacefully through our streets, demanding social justice, is reprehensible.

In this way, Mr. Gilbert displays an obtuse disregard for the black experience in America.

Such willful ignorance typifies the majority of white evangelicals that I know. (Check out John Fea’s survey of Twitter comments from leading, evangelical Trump supporters for more examples of this ignorance parading itself as leadership).

  • Become self-critical. Gilbert is utterly unaware of his personal investment in defending the political powers-that-be. In effect, he writes as a stooge for the establishment status quo. But this is not surprising. It is what a majority of white evangelicals normally do.

The first step in healing this particular blindness requires grasping what it means to be a Christian disciple who lives as a citizen of God’s kingdom first, last, and always. (Again, check out my book!) No Christian’s primary allegiance is ever to American law and order.

Our allegiance is to Jesus Christ. And he does NOT teach us to obey the laws of wickedness.

The second step in overcoming such blindness requires an honest reappraisal of oneself. Mr. Gilbert talks about the need to confess our sins if we want society to change. I agree. Let’s all “look in the mirror,” as he suggests, and confess our need for Jesus and his salvation each and every day.

But that is where Mr. Gilbert abandons us, implying that once you’ve come to Christ, your problems with sin are over. Here is where his theological individualism becomes a trap.

As Mr. Gilbert elaborates his interest in sin and confession, he quickly shifts the responsibility for such confession onto the protesters. When, in fact – in this historical moment – confessing our collective failure to confront systemic racism and the habitual police brutality suffered by our African-American brothers and sisters is what white evangelicals ought to be doing.

Pointing fingers at the looters is an immoral, arrogant evasion of the real issue. As Jesus says, “Take the log out of your own eye before picking at the splinter in your neighbor’s.”

Remember, it was the slave masters who condemned slave revolts. It was the white, evangelical elders and deacons who accused their slaves of ingratitude for failing to appreciate the benefits of the white, Christian slave-owner’s “benevolence.”

How is Mr. Gilbert any different?

  • Confusing the world with the church and the church with the world. Gilbert’s very confused discussion of Micah 6:8 slyly insinuates the common evangelical shibboleth of imagining that America is God’s covenant nation.

But there is one covenant now – the New Covenant — established by Christ with his church. Applying covenant language to anyone else (like the crowds of demonstrators) is not only bad theology, it allows Gilbert to deflect attention away from the real problems of racism and police violence.

Gilbert’s cultural misappropriation of God’s covenant with Israel is the unspoken presumption at the root of white American privilege, not only at home but throughout the world. America habitually abuses, exploits, bombs, invades, occupies, and kills people of color without compunction on an international scale.

Slaughtering illiterate brown people around the world is an American right. Or so we are told.

That is the operative assumption underlying US foreign policy. We shouldn’t be surprised, then, to see increasingly militarized police departments executing similar, draconian values at home.

Gilbert illustrates how bad theology, combined with a lack of critical thinking (I cannot help but notice that he received his master’s degree from Moody Seminary, a Mecca for American fundamentalism), leads to bad public practice and anemic discipleship.

Such tunnel vision can only see “unruly” protesters in need of reproach, blinding the evangelical critic to the all-pervasive American violence unleashed at home and abroad through our infamous military-police-industrial complex.

Yes, I realize that this is too large a mouth-full for any one instance of protest to address, but Gilbert’s narrow individualism, together with his failure to engage the world as a citizen of God’s kingdom, blinds him to the cultural and political issues at stake.

Don’t follow in his footsteps.

  • You can’t tell God’s people to endorse their government’s injustices. Gilbert trots out the predictable evangelical calls for “law and order” by telling his Christian readers that they must “obey the authorities instituted by God.” (Cue the national anthem and America the Beautiful).

Here Gilbert uses another classic, demagogic argument slung about like a blunt ax by unthoughtful people making religious arguments in defense of deeply entrenched injustice.

Such demagogic rationales – based in flawed interpretation, by the way – are intended to demonize the anti-establishment “enemy” while pacifying God’s “law abiding” church-folk into a drowsy acceptance of the unacceptable. THIS is the true opiate of the masses, as Karl Marx would say.

But, of course, in this instance of obedience to the powers-that-be, what Gilbert and his Christian cronies judge to be acceptable and unacceptable has more to do with the color of one’s skin than it does with whether or not anyone is obeying the law.

It is the classic argument drawn from white privilege. Think about it. When was the last time we saw a video of an unarmed white person being choked to death by the police on a public street in broad daylight while politely pleading for relief?

This is the point being raised by the popular upheaval we are witnessing in our streets. Unjust actors, whether they are cops, lawyers, judges, criminal justice systems, or entire governments, are unjust because they do NOT “protect the innocent while punishing the guilty.”

THAT is the problem my evangelical friends fail to grasp.

[By the way, I exegete these New Testament passages in my book, I Pledge Allegiance, and show (conclusively, in my mind) that allegiance to God’s kingdom requires that Christians not obey governments that impose injustice on its citizens.]

I struggle to understand how people like Mr. Gilbert can continually fail to apprehend this dynamic. When citizens protest against unjust policing and systemic injustice in high places, God’s kingdom citizens should be leading the way as the most vocal critics of the status quo and most vehement defenders of the oppressed.

Misapplying scripture, as Mr. Gilbert does, in order to condemn demonstrations against injustice and oppression is merely a continuation of the scriptural arguments deployed by Christian slave- owners defending their ownership and abuse of other human beings.

  • A failure of empathy and critical thinking. Historically, evangelical foreign missions have been in the forefront of finding creative ways to meet human needs. While I don’t entirely agree with the old saying, “You can’t share the gospel with a starving person,” (personally, I think that this way of thinking was a major shortcoming of Mother Teresa’s), it does contain a kernel of truth.

Western missionaries have made major contributions to developing countries everywhere. Often, the earliest literacy programs, schools, health-care initiatives, hospitals, irrigation systems, and more have been developed by evangelical missionaries whose compassion and empathy inspired them to do much, much more than simply “preach the gospel” to the lost.

So, why does Christian compassion and creativity wither and die on the vine when discussing social disruption at home?

No, I am NOT suggesting that evangelicals need to suit up and put on a colonial savior-complex by resurrecting a domestic version of “the white man’s burden.” But I am struck by the absence of both empathy and critical thinking among my white, evangelical brothers and sisters.

Frankly, we need to sit down, shut up, and listen.

We need to hear the stories of our black brothers and sisters. We need to believe them and take them seriously. We need to ask ourselves, “How would I feel if I were in their shoes?” Then, before offering our thoughts on solutions, we need to ask what they think should be done. And we need to listen some more.

We need to ask the Lord Jesus to forgive us for our persistent indifference to the pain and struggle of African-Americans in this country – pain and struggle often inflicted by a system that criminalizes black people for the color of their skin.

I have never been nervous about the threat of being arresting for the crime of “driving while black.” And neither has Mr. Gilbert. Neither of us knows what that is like.

My mother always told me that the policeman was my friend; that he was there to help me.

African-American mothers must educate their children in how to avoid antagonizing a policeman so they won’t get shot.

That is the American reality, a reality that white evangelicals like Mr. Gilbert appear to know nothing about. And they don’t seem to want to know. But if they really don’t know anything about this version of our racial reality, it can only be because they have plugged their ears and closed their eyes to the plight of their fellow human beings.

Such inexcusable ignorance is testament to the strangulation of sympathy within America’s white evangelical churches. And it is inexcusable.

As I have said before, citizenship in God’s kingdom not only requires that we share the gospel of Jesus Christ as widely as possible, it also requires us to think as deeply as possible about how we can contribute to making this world a better place for everyone, equally.

If our missionaries can build schools for boys and girls in countries that frown on educating little girls, then why can’t we also think, plan, and act in ways that will make our society more just, more fair, and less dangerous for its non-white citizens?

Yes, racism is a sin. And sin is rooted in the human heart. Sin can only be uprooted through the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ. But suggesting, as Mr. Gilbert does, that mass evangelism is the only solution to racial injustice is the lazy pietist’s way of shirking responsibility.

Sure, people may come to Jesus one at a time, and Christian individuals certainly ought to work for truth and justice wherever they find themselves, but changing systemic evil demands systemic solutions. On this front, too many white evangelicals appear to take pride in their ineptitude.

God’s people are called to be “salt and light” to the surrounding society, to exemplify the righteousness, mercy, justice, and equality of God’s kingdom come. We do this, first, among ourselves, as living, breathing examples of God’s new, multi-racial creation here and now.

Then we simultaneously engage our society, working practically to create a reflection, the semblance, an approximation of God’s kingdom in the broken society we now live in.

But that, my friends, is the cross-cultural component of Christian discipleship that white, individualistic, American evangelicalism rarely seems to grasp.