Sri Lanka, the Spiral of Violence, and Global Turn to Strongmen Messianic Solutions: The Temptation of This Moment

I grieve — so very much — the carnage we've just seen enacted in Sri Lanka, on the day many Christians consider the holiest day of the liturgical calendar. I grieve above all the enormous loss of life, the manifestation of gross religious hatred we see on full display in this event, and the way in which it's very clear that this latest act of religious hatred is immediately rooted in the atrocious act of religious (and white supremacist) hatred we saw recently in New Zealand. As Dom Hélder Câmara reminded us over and over, violence spawns more violence in an endless chain of reaction until someone finally has the courage and compassion to break that chain.

Fantasies of Some American Christians about "Good" Violence as Precursor of Second Coming: Theological Root Not to Overlook in Gun-Control Debate

What can churches do for protection? @robertjeffress weighs in pic.twitter.com/IxxgScBI3f

— FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) November 6, 2017

Because of our historical amnesia and religious illiteracy — both of them aided and abetted by our media — many Americans know little about powerful strands in American Christian thought, especially among white evangelicals, that feed our national fantasies about guns and violence. When Western Christianity made its fateful turn with Constantine, conflating church and state in many troubling ways and resulting in the church's blessing of state violence, it turned decisively away from the pacifist theology of such early Christian thinkers as Tertullian, who taught (On Idolatry) that wearing the belt of a soldier was incompatible with following Jesus, who had instructed his followers that those who take the sword will die by the sword. 

Eclipse Pulls the Veil from Some of the Darkest, Looniest (Yes, an Eclipse Joke) Corners of American Christianity

Monday's eclipse pulled the veil away from some of the darkest, looniest (yes, an eclipse joke) corners of American Christianity — which we're discovering in the Trump era are really mainstream U.S. white Christianity, after all. An astonishing number of our fellow citizens buy into this toxic nonsense.

Lots of Commentary on Trump and White Evangelicals: "If This Poison Isn't Worse Than Racism, Then It Certainly Runs a Close Second"

The linked commentary gets at an important point. Huckabee Sanders is able to gaslight us so easily b/c she grew up w/ #ChristianAltFacts https://t.co/AnLXngT7d0

— Christopher Stroop (@C_Stroop) August 4, 2017

So much good critical analysis of the role white evangelicals are playing in the Trump regime is coming out at once, it's hard to keep up with it. These are items I've spotted just today, which I'd like to share with you — and I'd also like to suggest that this analysis complements the analysis I just posted about "pro-life" American Catholics who are more-Catholic-than-Catholic (but who often reflect evangelical theological positions more than Catholic ones):

Emerging All Over Again in American Culture — Biblical Literalism (but Strictly Limited Literalism Ignoring Constant Command to Welcome Strangers)

Emerging all over again in the wake of the nameless one's pseudo electoral "victory": biblical literalism. It just never seems to go away in American culture. It's peculiarly American, and not really found in Christianity outside the U.S. except insofar as Americans have exported it.

Looking Back at 2015 on Christmas Day: "The Light Around Us Remains, We Take Our Mercies As We Get Them"

More Christmas gifts I've unwrapped this morning, that I now want to give to you, my friends and fellow pilgrims around the world:

Video with Bible Verses Mistaken for Quran Goes Viral: Why Are So Many Christians Blisfully Unaware of Christian Legacy of Oppression and Violence?

As Steve Benen notes, the video at the head of the posting, in which two young men in the Netherlands read verses from a Bible disguised as the Quran to people on the street, and then ask for their reaction, has gone viral. Steve Benen writes,

Theological Roots of Bitter Battle of Some Christians Against LGBT Rights: The Bible Can't Be Wrong (We Can't Be Wrong, and Heterosexual Men Rule)

Here's a set of interlocking observations that, to my mind, share a common theme: 1) a comment an Episcopal priest made to me yesterday about why some streams of Christianity are so adamant today in their opposition to LGBT rights; 2) Diarmaid MacCulloch on the same topic and how it's all about shoring up the supremacy of heterosexual males; 3) David Marr's commentary on why the Australian Catholic bishops are bitterly opposed to legalization of same-sex marriage; and 4) Fred Clark's account of the baffling determination of some U.S. white evangelicals to continue, generation after generation, choosing the wrong side of the moral arc of history in battles for human rights:

Quote for Day: In Wake of Duggar Scandal and Conservative Christian Reaction to Caitlyn Jenner, It's Become Clear That Abuse Is a Feature, Not a Bug, of Christian Fundamentalism

Christopher Stroop at Religion Dispatches:

Duggar Saga: End-of-Week Wrap Up (with 10 Links to Valuable Commentary)

As this work week ends, I thought I'd update you on the ever-unfolding Duggar family saga, and provide you with some links to commentary on this story that, in my view, is well worth reading:

A Reader Writes: If Karl Barth Was Addressing Fundamentalism in Europe, How Is It Possible to Say that Notions of Biblical Inerrancy Are Grounded in Defense of Slavery?

In response to my posting last week about Fred Clark's response to Emma Green on the connection between the Southern evangelical defense of slavery and the doctrine of biblical inerrancy, Larry Motuz writes, 

Rev. Gay Clark Jennings on Churches' Role In, and Against, Homophobia in Africa

Rev. Gay Clark Jennings

Rev. Gay Clark Jennings, president of the Episcopal Church’s lay and clergy House of Deputies, on the role of Western Christians in bequeathing to African Christians a legacy of biblical fundamentalism that is now yielding bitter crops of homophobia:

More on Theological Roots of Tea Party: Amanda Marcotte on White Fundamentalists and End-Times Rhetoric about Obamacare

More good material about a topic I've been discussing throughout the government shutdown: the theological roots from which the behavior of the radical Republican fringe (which now controls the GOP) springs: at Alternet, Amanda Marcotte argues that it's impossible to understand the willingness of tea partiers to burn the government and the economy down to score political points without looking at the theology driving tea party beliefs.

Attacking Marriage Equality: Catholics Choosing Fundamentalist Biblical Proof-Texting

It fascinates me to note how much the conversation about marriage equality among reactionary Catholics has shifted from a defense of the procreative norm as a basis for denying same-sex couples the right of marriage, to an overt and rather brutal biblical proof-texting approach more consonant with American fundamentalist groups.  This shift is on full display in Frank Gibbons's response (#47) to Patricia Bergeron (#42) in this America blog thread responding to John Coleman about the Barnesville, Minnesota, story I discussed yesterday.

Quote for Day: Jay Michaelson on Queer Discernment and the Huck Finn Moment

Quote for today: Jay Michaelson writing at Religion Dispatches about tshuvah, the call to repentance during Yom Kippur, and the dangerous heteronomous ethics with which we end up when we absolutize biblical texts and refuse to respect the process of interpretation that requires us to wrestle with texts if we're ever to fathom their authentic meaning or to make that meaning significant for our own lives:

Stephen Colbert on Media Retractions of Jihadist Meme re: Norway Shootings: Cooler Heads Covering Their Asses

Stephen Colbert was right on target Monday with his scathing send-up of the shameful, irresponsible way in which the American mainstream media immediately blamed the Norwegian terror attacks on Muslims (this segment begins at about the 3:40 mark on the program to which I've just linked). 

More Commentary on Anders Breivik: Max Blumenthal, Alex Pareene, and Chris Hedges

More valuable commentary on the atrocities in Norway:

Michael Lind and Julie Ingersoll on Triple Fundamentalisms Now Dominating the American Right

As the workday ends (in my part of the world), I don't want to miss the opportunity to make mention of a recent essay of Michael Lind at Salon, whose thesis Julie Ingersoll summarizes today at Religion Dispatches.*  It's about the three fundamentalisms now dominating the thinking of the American right.  Lind notes, as I did when I summarized Ross Douthat's response to marriage equality in New York recently, that American conservatism has long since lost sight of its traditional roots and is now controlled by a set of rigid lock-step ideological positions entirely antithetical to traditional conservatism.  In particular, American conservatism has abandoned its Burkean roots, and is driven by a miscellany of reflex fundamentalist responses to contemporary culture that align biblical fundamentalism with constitutional  and market fundamentalism.

Promising New Popular Discussions of Bible and Its Cultural Use: Jay Michaelson and Laura Miller

Some years back, I remember Oprah interviewing several doughty defenders of the bible on her talk show.  Though it's entirely possible my memory has burnished this or that detail and so the story I'm about to recount is not exact in all particulars, this particular interview (along with the primary points it made, about which I trust my memory) has stuck in my mind for a number of reasons.  The bible's valiant defenders were all strapping men (who also happened to be African-American).  Oprah exhibited admirable feistiness in standing up to these oh-so-certain, oh-so-smug big men who overtowered her, several of them, by a foot or so.

Kevin McKenna on the Defensive Posture of Shrill Catholic Evangelicals and Pious Ecclesiastics: The Scottish Case

I wrote recently about how misplaced, on the whole, the defensive posture being encouraged in the Catholic church today from on high appears to be.  In the posting to which I've just linked, I was referring to Austen Ivereigh's view of things, from a British perspective.