The mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio happened within 13 hours of each other. Together they leave 29 people dead and between 50 to 60 people wounded.
The El Paso gunman left behind a manifesto proclaiming his allegiance to white supremacy, decrying the dangerous hordes of brown immigrants “flooding” across our southern border. I haven’t heard any details yet about the shooter in Ohio, his motives or political ideology.
At least, law enforcement has begun to describe these horrific incidents for what they are: domestic terrorism.
The FBI continues to warn that the vast majority of these incidents are committed by right-wing political extremists who are, without exception, white men. In most cases, their targets are people of color. Nowadays, anyone who looks like they might be Hispanic or Muslim is scrutinized without mercy.
Look at YouTube to watch the many videos posted there showing the white vigilantes who have deputized themselves to harass people of color. They call the police because they overheard someone speaking a different language, or saw a black person walking through the neighborhood and “looking suspicious while being black.”
No informed citizen with an ounce of common sense can deny the overt,
blatant, explicit encouragement that such anti-immigrant, white, racist extremism is receiving from the White House.
If you don’t understand or believe that previous sentence then, I am sorry, but you are lost.
You need to be converted.
Your conscience has been swallowed up by the swamp of moral relativism and outright evil that has taken hold of this country’s public life, especially within the comfortable parlors of political conservatism, Republicanism and establishment D.C. power brokers.
And, yes, that moral degeneration includes the Democrats as well as anyone else who remains silent while the newest wave of neo-Nazis, skin-heads, neo-fascists and every other stripe of authoritarian race-baiter feels that this moment in our nation’s history is their opportunity to resurrect the Confederate flag and wave a banner of white, racial superiority over the graves of innocent men, women and children whose skin-tone carries too much melanin.
But I reserve my strongest condemnation for conservative evangelicals who continue to endorse this president’s policies and turn a blind eye to the daily dose of hatred spewing forth from his puerile and filthy mouth.
He is the latest anti-Christ who has risen up to deceive the church; like a false prophet crying, “Peace, peace!” while he sows seeds of hatred, lies and racial division.
Everyone likes to imagine they would have been a hero in Hitler’s Germany. We all tell ourselves, “I would have resisted. I would have hidden Jews in MY attic. I would never have allowed the Nazi flag in MY church. The Fuehrer’s censors would have never have been allowed to edit MY sermons.”
We swear that we would have been a faithful Israelite, never to be counted among the idolaters that sent the nation into exile.
We would have been faithful disciples. Unlike Simon Peter, we would have spoken up in Jesus’ defense when the time came.
Well, folks now is the moment, another moment of truth.
Another opportunity for faithfulness to Christ is staring us in the face. The question is – what will we, what can we, do?
I have a few suggestions:
- Every church, and every member of every church, located in a town, village, city or unincorporated township with a population of dark-skinned immigrants needs to walk door-to-door through those neighborhoods, shaking hands and offering hugs, help and resources while welcoming those people of color into your community. Listen to their stories. Ask if there is anything you and/or your church community can do to help meet their needs. Then follow through, and do it. Make new friends. Have them over to your home; eat together and publicly testify to their humanity at every opportunity. Push for your church to become a more inter-racial community, if it isn’t already.
- Challenge all racist, white-nationalist types of conversation whenever, wherever you hear it – especially among Christians. Remind people that Jesus of Nazareth was a very brown-skinned, Palestinian Jew who had once been an immigrant himself seeking safety in a foreign land (Egypt). We worship a dark-skinned Savior. Avoid fights, but faithfully and boldly represent the universal love of God for all people everywhere.
- Remind people that there is a difference between illegal immigration and seeking asylum. Asylum-seeking is perfectly legal. In fact, I believe that America owes automatic asylum – even citizenship – to anyone fleeing a dangerous situation in a country that has been destabilized by U.S. intervention, whether military, political or economic. THAT, my friends, includes the whole of Central and South America. When the United States helps to destroy the social fabric of a nation by forcing it to adopt policies that serve American interests first, then we must take responsibility for the human fall-out. (Personally, I also believe that illegal immigration ought to be decriminalized. We would still have border guards patrolling the southern border humanely, seeking to care for the people they detain and send back, but what is the point of jailing these people as felons after their second capture? It serves no purpose but to enrich those who own America’s private, for-profit prison/detention system.)
- I haven’t touched on the many related issues such as the American gun lobby, gun ownership, etc. because I don’t want this post to become a book. We could also talk about the policy of separating children from their parents when detained at the border, and the fact that our government admits to having “lost track” of nearly 1,500 of these children. Imagine if they were your children…
- Urge your pastor to talk about these issues in the context of obedient Christian discipleship. It is obvious and easy to “pray for the victims” of a mass shooting. Perhaps, it is the pastoral thing to do. But think about it: what good did it do for patriotic, German pastors to offer nice pastoral prayers for those who were being arrested and tortured by Hitler’s SS guards, while remaining silent about the immoral policies being implemented by those unjust arrests? The church needs more than safe, pastoral prayers for victims. We need strong leadership and pointed Biblical teaching that identifies immorality and injustice in the public square; that gives direction to God’s counter-cultural ways of kingdom living in a nation wrestling with its own racist demons.
Right on.