As people compile lists of events and articles that impressed them in 2017 to share on social media, I happened to notice someone I follow on Twitter (and respect very much) tweeting a link yesterday to Kathryn Brightbill's essay this past August entitled "The Nashville Statement and the Moral Bankruptcy of Evangelicalism." I clicked and read the essay, and am very glad I did so.
As far as I'm concerned, it's one of the best things I've read in the past year about the hot mess white evangelicalism in the U.S. has made of itself — a mess that no amount of rebranding will unmess. Brightbill concludes flatly,
American Evangelicalism is morally bankrupt. That's really all there is to say. Faced with the most important moral issue of their generation they are following the same path of complicity and capitulation to fascism and white supremacy as the German Church did 75 years ago. American Evangelicalism is complicit with the rise of fascism and white nationalism because they cared more about Supreme Court justices than they did about Justice.
It is time for collective repentance and then collective action to undo what their complicity has wrought. Until then, American Evangelicalism is a deeply immoral enterprise that must be condemned and resisted at every point.
And she's right. It takes women and people of color to speak this kind of truth about white Christianity in the U.S. White men are not going to do so, for the most part.
This is an essay I intend to take into the new year with me. I hope that year will be, for all of you readers, a brighter one than 2017 has proven to be for many of us.
The graphic: Huffington Post's lead headline right after the tax "reform" bill was passed and the moral monstrosity went to Mar-a-Lago and was reported to be bragging there about how much that legislation was going to enrich his very richest friends — something else I plan to bring into 2018 and keep pondering.
No comments:
Post a Comment