Valuable Recent Commentary about Link Between White Supremacy and White Christianity in the U.S.

I'm sorry to have been away for so long. As I noted in a posting some weeks back, we have been dealing with health challenges, and we're hoping that a surgical procedure today will put them behind us. 

Has the Bible Ever Been Used to Assault and Oppress Vulnerable People? Let Me Share Some Important Information with You

This posting is a footnote to the main story today, the photo-op the man in the White House staged for himself while having troops tear-gas peaceful protesters legitimately gathered in a park — a photo-op designed to show him brandishing a bible he never reads in front of a church he never attends, to signal that he and other white males like him own the bible and the rest of us better adjust ourselves to that fact:

Has the bible ever been used as a tool of raw power to assault and oppress vulnerable people, you ask? Well, let me share some important information with you:

Bible as Weapon (Upholding Straight White Male Supremacy): Commentary on Yesterday's White House Stunt

We've reached the 'mad emperor' stage, and it's terrifying to behold | Richard Wolffe https://t.co/hSAx1wkhgZ

— The Guardian (@guardian) June 2, 2020

A Report from Trump Country on the United Methodist Split Over Whether to Welcome LGBTQ People or Not

This is a report from the ground, which is to say, from the white evangelical heartland of the U.S. that is solidly Trump country. It's a report of an encounter a cousin of mine had several days back at a bible-study group he attends, which is connected to a United Methodist church he no longer attends. He left that church — and, without a formal resignation, the United Methodist Church in general and any church in general — after the election of Donald Trump. As he says to me, "I told them that if I had wanted to join a Republican country club, I wouldn't have joined a church."

Ruth Krall, "The Good Samaritan: Pious Parable or Subversive Instruction?"

Vincent van Gogh, "The Good Samaritan," original in the Kroller-Muller Museum in Otterlo, The Netherlands, uploaded to Wikimedia Commons for online sharing.

I'm privileged to be able to offer readers another set of essays by Ruth Krall, entitled "Compassionate Peacemaking: Healing the World's Wounds One at a Time." Part one of this series, which has the series title "Bearing Witness," consists of four essays. The essay I'm publishing today is the first in the "Bearing Witness" series. It's entitled "The Good Samaritan: Pious Parable or Subversive Instruction?"

Ruth's essays bear witness to the struggle to repair the world at a time in which that struggle seems overwhelming to many of us — and, for this reason, the essays strike me as timely and important. For those who observe Christian liturgical seasons, they seem especially appropriate during this Advent time, when people of Christian faith meditate about darkness and light, in hope that light will prevail and darkness cannot overcome it. 

Ruth Krall, Moral Corruption in the Religious Commons (1)

Theodore Rombouts, (1597-1617), "Christ Driving the Money-Changers from the Temple" (i)

My house shall be called a house of prayer

But you have turned it into a hideout for thieves.
(Mathew 21: 13, Good News Translation)

This essay is the sixth in a series of essays Ruth Krall has generously offered us on Bilgrimage, under the series title "Recapitulation: Affinity Sexual Violence in a Religious Voice." This link will point you to links to each previous essay in the series. In her "Recapitulation" series, Ruth addresses what she sees as the he endemic nature of sexual abuse of followers in religious contexts and contexts offering spiritual guidance. From the outset, Ruth's latest essay on moral corruption in the religious commons announces its theme:

If it takes a village to raise a child, it also takes a village to repeatedly enable sexual abuse of that same child. This is so whether she lives inside secular society or he lives inside a deeply pious religious and worshipping community.

Ruth's essay "Moral Corruption in the Religious Commons" follows. Because the essay is rich and long, I'll be sharing it in several installments, of which this is the first:

Commentary: Political Fall-Out as Catholic Bishops Face Reckoning for Covering Abuse Crimes; German Catholic Discussion of Bible and Homosexuality

More commentary today that catches my attention, and is especially interesting when read side by side: 

Patricia Miller, "Is This Finally the Reckoning for the Catholic Church on Sexual Abuse?":

Internet Responds to POTUS' Personal Theologian Paula White & Her Clownish Theology of White Nationalism: "Do You Not Read Your Bible, Sis?"

.@Paula_White - who commits theological malpractice with nearly every word - advises the president of the United States.

Where did she get her theological education? She didn’t. Her highest degree is a high school diploma. https://t.co/s31RO8Ciws

— Rev. Dr. Chuck Currie (@RevChuckCurrie) July 11, 2018

Baptist theologian Fred Clark is superb today on precisely how the POTUS' personal theologian Paula White "beclowns herself" through her recent statement that Jesus — who was executed by the Romans via a sentence of capital punishment ordering his crucifixion, a punishment reserved in the Roman empire for the lowest order of criminals — never ran afoul of any laws, and "if he had broken the law then he would have been sinful and he would not have been our Messiah."Here's an excerpt from his commentary:

"The Same [Bible] Passage Sessions Cited Has Been Used to Justify Slavery and Nazism": Valuable Commentary on Sessions' and Huckabee-Sanders' Use of Romans 13

Dear Jeff Sessions, are you aware that the argument you made today from Romans 13 was a central argument of the German Christian (Pro-Nazi) movement over and against the Confessing Church? Im not saying you are a Nazi, but you’re interpreting the Bible like one.

— frsimmons (@frsimmons) June 15, 2018

Tara Isabella Burton, "The racist history of the Bible verse the White House uses to justify separating families": 

"The Bible Is Trending Because It Was Just Used to Justify Ripping Babies from Their Mothers’ Arms and Putting Them in Interment Camps"

Because it needs to be documented: think of how documentation now allows us to see Catholic religious leaders in Germany and Austria, Catholic priests and nuns, raising their hands in Nazi salutes, blessing the Nazi state. We should never let ourselves forget what's possible: the bible, religion, can be used to justify almost any heinous practice under the sun, if people are willing to stoop to that use of the bible and religion:

Quote for Day: Michael Gerson on Selective Biblical Inerrancy of Christian Republicans

Michael Gerson, "Trump Exposes the Hypocrisy of Christian Republicans":

Baptist Pastor-Theologian Molly T. Marshall: "Biblical Inerrancy Was a Mere Tool for the Preservation of Patriarchal Power and White Male Privilege

Molly T. Marshall, "The peril of selective inerrancy":

I contend that biblical inerrancy was a mere tool for the preservation of patriarchal power and white male privilege.

Week's-End Commentary: "The Judgment of God Has Come"; "The American Gospel Is Garbage. Something Toxic and Perilous Is Going on in Our Churches. Save Your Soul"

Phillip Bump, "The group least likely to think the U.S. has a responsibility to accept refugees? Evangelicals":

Pew's new research includes a fascinating detail: No group agrees less with the idea that the United States has a responsibility to accept refugees than white evangelical Protestants.

This Week's Triptych: One Panel, High Times in Jerusalem; Opposite Panel, People Shot Down Like Dogs; In the Middle, White Evangelicals Jubilating

Left: #Jerusalem
Right: #Gaza

(Photos taken at the same time this afternoon) pic.twitter.com/8ZerjxRq3A

— Patrick Galey (@patrickgaley) May 14, 2018

A man who would not know religion or faith if they bowled him down is permitting a dwindling minority of American citizens — white evangelicals — to drive policy that affects the entire world. He's permitting that dwindling minority to impose its peculiar, eccentric biblical ideas on the entire world, destabilizing the world and causing bloodshed because it believes that such destabilizing is a precursor to the second coming of the Prince of Peace.

"In Every Case, 'Wives Submit to Your Husbands' Appears in the Same Context As 'Slaves Obey Your Masters'": A Twitter Conversation for You

In every case, "wives submit to your husbands" appears in the same context as "slaves obey your masters." And yet I'm constantly told we need to consider context & culture with the latter but not the former...

— Rachel Held Evans (@rachelheldevans) May 9, 2018

I don't mean to shortchange this blog, but I sometimes find that, instead of making statements here, I'm using Twitter instead to engage in at-the-moment conversations about the kinds of issues that interest us at this site. 

Fred Clark on Gerson and Ladd: "Helpful Corrective to Gerson's Longer, Larger Piece Because Ladd Centers the Defining Facts of Slavery, Jim Crow, and Civil Rights"

Yesterday, when I posted Twitter (and other) responses to Michael Gerson's recent essay on white evangelicals and Trump, I pointed you to an essay by Chris Ladd on the cruelty of white evangelicalism, about which Rachel Held Evans had tweeted, nothing that Ladd's essay fills in some of the missing pieces on evangelicalism and race that Gerson's essay had left out. I also told you that Ladd had published his essay as a blog post initially at the Forbes site, then Forbes removed it, apparently without explanation — and it would be interesting to know why Forbes took that step. Chris Ladd then reposted the essay at another site.

I Learn to Read and Am Given a Bible-Story Book: A Southern Baptist Boy in 1950s Arkansas Learns the Facts of Life

I am six years old. I have just learned to read. It is 1956. Television has come on the scene. But we read, tell each other stories, rather than watch it. T.v. is too new to hold much interest for us. Books are more reliable for entertainment and education.

More Moore (Roy, That Is): Why White Evangelicals Can't Quit Their Man, and the Horrors Posed by "the Alabamization of This Country"

8 in 10 white evangelicals & 6 in 10 white Catholics & Mormons elected Donald Trump, claiming "pro-life" motivation.

I will not forget.

— Bill Lindsey (@wdlindsy) November 6, 2017

Steve Benen, "Roy Moore's survival strategy comes into focus":

More Commentary on Why Roy Moore's Evangelical Supporters Won't Abandon Him (Hint: Look at How They Reponded to Trump's Boasts About Sexual Assault of Women)

Alabama voters may send a serial child molester to the United States Senate simply because he claims to be a Christian and is not a Democrat. What a shameful, shameful time.

— Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) November 14, 2017

As I said yesterday, the stories and commentary keep coming out, so I feel obliged to keep blogging about these matters, especially when they're so germane to the kind of discussions I've tried to stir on this blog site since I started it. What's happening with the Roy Moore story points us back to the choice of 8 in 10 — 8 in 10! — white evangelicals and some 6 in 10 — 6 in 10! — white Catholics and Mormons to place the moral monstrosity now occupying the White House there last November. We want to keep forgetting that fact, conveniently so, and the way in which that choice betrayed the most fundamental principles of morality for which these ostensibly "pro-life" voters claimed to stand, as long as those principles could be applied exclusively to Democratic presidents like Mr. Clinton.

New Accuser Comes Forward to Say Roy Moore Assaulted Her When She Was a Teen, 53 Pastors Sign Letter Supporting Moore

The stories keep coming along, and I think it's important to keep blogging about them: