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American Christianity’s White-Supremacy Problem

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  • siam
    replied
    Originally posted by Hypatia_Alexandria View Post
    That American Christianity is so deeply linked with white supremacy will no doubt affront many but the evidence has been presented and while many white Christians will publicly apologise for the history of slavery, condemn segregation, and reject the views and admissions of openly white supremacists, it is alarming that among many white Christians those underlying racist/supremacist tendencies still exist.

    https://www.newyorker.com/books/unde...remacy-problem

    ...Christian who is sincerely concerned about the way the moral teachings of Jesus of Nazareth have been corrupted by white supremacy.
    "...American Christianity is so deeply linked with white supremacy..."---Could it be, historic "Christian supremacy" fosters/encourages other types of supremacy such as American exceptionalism, white supremacy,...etc...? From the very birth of Christianity, an us/them attitude was built into the religion with concepts of Deicide (the whole of the Jews past and present were held responsible) Original sin (the whole of humanity---with the exception of Christians---were held responsible for Adams sin) This type of manichean duality of us=good/them=bad seems to be the inherited paradigm of understanding the world, even among those today who are no longer Christian....
    ...Even American Democracy needed a bogeyman of Communism/Marxism in order to validate itself.

    Human nature is inclined towards tribalism because identity formation relies on degrees of exclusivity of relationships/ties to others. (Family, Community, Nation, Humanity...) Therefore tribalism is not necessarily an exclusively Christian problem.
    But if a paradigm is inherently built on supremacist "morality"---for example, Hinduism has a class structure called cast system which confers privileges to the superior caste and allows (morally) for the exploitation of the inferior class.----then one needs to disown/discard such paradigm?---I don't see how it can be reformed.....?......is plugging/integrating some of the inferior class into the class/power structure of the superiors, really going to solve the core problem of the supremacist based ideology? I have doubts because a paradigm/world-view informs all aspects of life from politics, economics, law, social interactions...etc (Intersectionality)

    Leave a comment:


  • Gondwanaland
    replied
    Originally posted by Hypatia_Alexandria View Post
    That American Christianity is so deeply linked with white supremacy will no doubt affront many but the evidence has been presented and while many white Christians will publicly apologise for the history of slavery,
    WHy should they have to apologize for something they were not involved in?

    Have you apologized for the Nazis? That happened a hell of a lot closer to current day than slavery in the US.

    Do people coming to the US from Africa have to apologize for the history of Africans selling other africans into slavery?

    Do Muslims have to apologize to white people for the history of Islamic enslavement of whites?


    condemn segregation,
    Oh we're condemning segregation now? Last I checked that (Segregation) is the new working policy of the far left. Over in Britain they're building a blacks only university IIRC. Here in the US on universities, they are setting up 'no whites' zones/rooms.

    Did that all suddenly change?
    Last edited by Gondwanaland; 09-06-2020, 08:25 PM.

    Leave a comment:


  • Reepicheep
    replied
    Originally posted by Hypatia_Alexandria View Post
    In his book Jones notes that the origin of the schism between Baptists in the South and their fellows in the North was precipitated over the request from Baptists in Alabama that would permit slave owners to act as missionaries. That group, led by Basil Manly, wrote a letter in 1844 to the Triennial Convention over this issue and received a blunt reply that stated under no circumstances could slave owners be appointed as missionaries. That rejection led, in 1845, to Manly and his fellows forming their own organisation, the Southern Baptist Convention [SBC]
    The good news is that, just over three years ago, the Southern Baptist Convention voted to denounce white supremacy and the alt-right movement. Baby steps, baby steps...

    https://www.wglt.org/post/southern-b...-past#stream/0

    Southern Baptist Pastor Confronts His Own, Church's Racial Past
    June 22, 2017

    The Southern Baptist Convention, one of the largest denominations in the country, voted recently to denounce white supremacy and the alt-right movement, but not without controversy.

    Initially, church leaders tried to table the resolution, which was proposed by a prominent African American pastor. The vote proceeded, however, following a backlash from members who condemned the alt-right movement as a "growing menace" to society and recalled the Southern Baptists' painful history of promoting and sustaining slavery.

    "Any 'church' that cannot denounce white supremacy without hesitancy and equivocation is a dead, Jesus-denying assembly," tweeted one African American Southern Baptist minister...

    Leave a comment:


  • American Christianity’s White-Supremacy Problem

    That American Christianity is so deeply linked with white supremacy will no doubt affront many but the evidence has been presented and while many white Christians will publicly apologise for the history of slavery, condemn segregation, and reject the views and admissions of openly white supremacists, it is alarming that among many white Christians those underlying racist/supremacist tendencies still exist.

    https://www.newyorker.com/books/unde...remacy-problem

    Early on in “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,” the first of three autobiographies Douglass wrote over his lifetime, he recounts what happened—or, perhaps more accurately, what didn’t happen—after his master, Thomas Auld, became a Christian believer at a Methodist camp meeting. Douglass had harbored the hope that Auld’s conversion, in August, 1832, might lead him to emancipate his slaves, or at least “make him more kind and humane.” Instead, Douglass writes, “If it had any effect on his character, it made him more cruel and hateful in all his ways.” Auld was ostentatious about his piety—praying “morning, noon, and night,” participating in revivals, and opening his home to travelling preachers—but he used his faith as license to inflict pain and suffering upon his slaves. “I have seen him tie up a lame young woman, and whip her with a heavy cowskin upon her naked shoulders, causing the warm red blood to drip; and, in justification of the bloody deed, he would quote this passage of Scripture—‘He that knoweth his master’s will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes,’
    [...]

    Yet, a hundred twenty-five years after Douglass’s death, the American church is still struggling to eradicate the legacy of the slaveholding religion he loathed. In a 2019 nationwide survey, eighty-six per cent of white evangelical Protestants and seventy per cent of both white mainline Protestants and white Catholics said that the “Confederate flag is more a symbol of Southern pride than of racism”; nearly two-thirds of white Christians over all said that killings of African-American men by the police are isolated incidents rather than part of a broader pattern of mistreatment; and more than six in ten white Christians disagreed with the statement that “generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class.” In his new book, “White Too Long” (Simon & Schuster), Robert P. Jones, the head of the Public Religion Research Institute, a nonpartisan polling and research organization, marshals this and other data to lay out a startling case that “the more racist attitudes a person holds, the more likely he or she is to identify as a white Christian.” The correlation is just as pronounced among white evangelical Protestants as it is among white mainline Protestants and white Catholics—and stands in stark contrast to the attitudes of religiously unaffiliated whites. Jones’s findings make for some wrenching inferences. “If you were recruiting for a white supremacist cause on a Sunday morning, you’d likely have more success hanging out in the parking lot of an average white Christian church—evangelical Protestant, mainline Protestant, or Catholic—than approaching whites sitting out services at the local coffee shop,” he writes.


    In his book Jones notes that the origin of the schism between Baptists in the South and their fellows in the North was precipitated over the request from Baptists in Alabama that would permit slave owners to act as missionaries. That group, led by Basil Manly, wrote a letter in 1844 to the Triennial Convention over this issue and received a blunt reply that stated under no circumstances could slave owners be appointed as missionaries. That rejection led, in 1845, to Manly and his fellows forming their own organisation, the Southern Baptist Convention [SBC] While Jones emphasises that the Baptist denominational division was not unique in American Christianity, and that virtually all the dominant white Protestant denominations were split over the issue of slavery; he does note that the SBC’s support for the south during the Civil War did little to impact adversely on it and, as he notes, it not only survived but flourished:

    Its powerful role as a religious institution that sacralized white supremacy allowed the Southern Baptist Convention to spread its roots during the nineteenth century to dominate southern culture. And by the mid-twentieth century, the SBC ultimately evolved into the single largest Christian denomination in the country, setting the tone for American Christianity overall, and Christianity’s influence on public life.”.

    Jones also points out that while the North had clashed with the South over slavery that did not translate into advocating for black equality and again writes” this tacit shared commitment to white superiority and black inferiority, was a central bridge that fostered the rather swift reconciliation between southern and northern whites overall, and southern and northern white Christians specifically.

    The New Yorker article continues:

    In some sense, Trump’s Presidency has merely given modern form to racist attitudes that have long festered in American Christianity. In his book “The Color of Compromise” (Zondervan), published last year, the historian Jemar Tisby traces the revivalist origins of evangelicalism in America, and notes how the movement’s emphasis on individual conversion and piety constrained its social vision. The evangelist George Whitefield, who was instrumental in the Great Awakening, in the early eighteenth century, condemned the cruelty of slaveowners but campaigned for slavery’s legalization in the colony of Georgia. The theologian Jonathan Edwards pressed for the evangelization of the enslaved but owned several slaves; he believed the practice could be countenanced as long as they were treated humanely. “Within this evangelical framework, one could adopt an evangelical expression of Christianity yet remain uncompelled to confront institutional injustice,” Tisby writes.

    In the early nineteenth century, the Second Great Awakening, which brought with it a moral fervor to perfect human society, helped spark abolitionism and other reform movements. Even outspoken critics of slavery, however, remained committed to the entrenched racial hierarchy. Charles Finney, an influential revivalist preacher and abolitionist, barred slaveholders from taking communion in his churches, but he opposed the intermingling of races and prohibited Black congregants from holding church office.[...]

    Jones’s research, along with additional work conducted by Emerson and another sociologist, Jason Shelton, examining attitudes on race of Black and white Protestants, suggest that white mainline Christians have been afflicted by similar blinders, even as their churches have traditionally placed greater emphasis on social concerns. The Roman Catholic Church in the United States has its own ugly history of promoting slavery and resisting integration. When Black people fleeing discrimination in the South streamed into Northern cities during the Great Migration, many white Catholics, in particular, fought to keep them out of their neighborhoods and parishes. “White Christian churches, both Protestant and Catholic, have served as institutional spaces for the preservation and transmission of white supremacist attitudes,” Jones writes.


    Certainly Jones’ new book is food for thought for any Christian who is sincerely concerned about the way the moral teachings of Jesus of Nazareth have been corrupted by white supremacy.

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