Robert P. Jones's White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity — Excerpts Worth Noting

As I did recently with Sarah Posner's new book Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump, I'd like to share with you some excerpts from Robert P. Jones's book White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity (NY: Simon & Schuster, 2020), which I recently read. This book is very important, as Jones's Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) issues a report today entitled, "Summer Unrest over Racial Injustice Moves the Country, But Not Republicans or White Evangelicals." This reports summarizes recent PRRI polling findings which show that, even as other white Americans are gradually coming to see and admit the depths of racial injustice everywhere in American society, Republicans and white evangelicals — who are to a great extent one and the same — refuse to budge. These groups continue to want to claim that white citizens are the real victims of injustice.

"Responding with the Biggest Ever Anti-Immigrant Raid to the First Ever Anti-Latino, Anti-Immigrant Gun Massacre in This Country: This Will Be History"

Regardless of whatever they say and whatever comes out of the president's mouth, this IS the story of how our government responded to an anti-immigrant massacre committed by someone who quoted the words of the president's re-election campaign about needing to stop an immigrant invasion .... That is how this will look in history. 

The administration responding with the biggest ever anti-immigrant raid to the first ever anti-Latino, anti-immigrant gun massacre in this country: this will be history. This will go down in history as what our government did. 

~ Rachel Maddow

Judge Carlton Reeves on Parallel Between Mississippi White Christians' Rejection of Black Civil Rights in 1960s and Rejection of LGBTQ Rights Today

Claude Summers notes that, as he knocked down Mississippi's "religious freedom" law, Judge Carlton Reeves drew the obvious historical parallel between the religiously fueled attack of many Mississippi Christians on LGBTQ rights today, and how many (white) Mississippi Christians used religion to attack the Civil Rights movement in the 20th century:

Jason Sokol on White Southern Resistance to Civil Rights Movement: "Some White Southerners Perceived the Civil Rights Movement as a Threat to Their Very Notion of Freedom" — Implications for "Religious Freedom" Discussion

In his book There Goes My Everything: White Southerners in the Age of Civil Rights, 1945-1975 (NY: Knopf, 2006), Jason Sokol writes about the response of white Southerners to the Civil Rights movement of that period:

Whites were so deeply influenced by a racial caste system that few could imagine a world in which blacks and whites would share power. They thought in terms of white supremacy or black supremacy: if blacks gained rights, whites would correspondingly "wear the yoke" (p. 80, citing Albany [Georgia] Herald, August 19, 1962, p. 18; and interview with James McBride Dabbs, by Dallas Blanchard, Southern Oral History Program).

Commonweal Editor Matthew Sitman on Mississippi and North Carolina Anti-LGBTQ Legislation: "Freedom for Me But Not for Thee"

Commonweal associate editor Matthew Sitman on the "freedom for me but not for thee" approach to religious freedom of the new anti-LGBTQ legislation in Mississippi and North Carolina:

The Confederate Flag: With One Great-Grandfather Who Was a CSA Soldier and Three Others Who Had Brothers in the CSA, I Could Not Be Happier to See It Come Down

To repeat myself: one of my great-grandfathers was a Confederate soldier in Alabama, and my other three great-grandfathers in Louisiana and Arkansas all had brothers who served in the Confederate army. And I could not be happier to see the racist Confederate battle flag taken down from public buildings and now recognized for what it always was and remains — a symbol of white supremacy.

The Supremes and Gay Marriage: Mike Huckabee Talks Nullification, Ben Carson Wants Congress to Intervene, Jim Bakker Shouts Hallelujah

On same day #SCOTUS granted marriage cases, @HRC Mississippi flagged this hateful graffiti in downtown Jackson. pic.twitter.com/tPMs99DY14
— Chad Griffin (@ChadHGriffin) January 16, 2015

Pigs Seen Flying: Mississippi Judge Knocks Down Ban on Same-Sex Marriage (Arkansas, Too)

Josh Marshall spotted flocks of pigs flying over Mississippi yesterday. I didn't see them in my neighboring state of Arkansas (and,  unless I'm mistaken, a collective of swine isn't called a flock, but a herd — as in Luke 8:32-3, when the KJV of the gospels tells us that Jesus sends a legion of demons into a herd of Gadarene swine. Or it appears that one may speak of a "gang of hogs," a term I've just met in an 1801 estate sale in North Carolina, in which an ancestor of mine bought a "gang of hogs" from the estate of his deceased relative. We know things like what to call collectives of pigs in places like Mississippi and Arkansas and North Carolina. But I digress.)

Anti-Gay Movement and Jim Crow: Historian Carolyn Dupont on Role of Religion in Movement to Resist Civil Rights of African Americans in Mississippi

A tactic frequently used by those who resist seeing the current call for religiously grounded discrimination against gays as akin to the resistance of white Southerners to the rights of black people is to deny that there was any religious component to the refusal of white Southerners to respect the rights of African Americans during the Civil Rights struggle. An important new book by historian Carolyn Dupont challenges this argument.

Stephen Colbert Gets It Right about North Carolina

Stephen Colbert gets it right about North Carolina.  As someone who grew up in its neighbor state to the south and who knows the culture of the Carolinas well.  North Carolina's governor Bev Perdue (who courageously opposed Amendment 1, knowing as she spoke out against it that it would pass by a large majority), is now saying she's embarrassed that her state has earned the reputation of another Mississippi.