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Merlin
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Posted: Mon Sep 21st, 2009 05:17 pm |
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Source: Frank Schaeffer, AlterNet.com
Former president Jimmy Carter went on the record to point out that he believes that racism is at the heart of the great deal of the extreme animosity being leveled at President Obama (NBC News September 15). Carter identified himself as a Southerner with an insider's understanding. There's something he didn't mention however: the special culpability of his own religion -- Evangelical Christianity -- for the anti-Obama hyperventilating and furious reaction to our first black president. And that reaction has less to do with race and more to do with the ugliest side of religion.
The fact is that if you're going to blame one group above all others for the willful ignorance and continuing ugliness of the response to President Obama the best candidate would be the evangelical/fundamentalist community. The angry part of the South Carter spoke of is racist because it's dominated by a certain type of "Christian" culture.
Since Carter is also an evangelical Christian (as well as a Southerner) he would have done well to use his evangelical insider status to point to not just racism but to scream bloody murder about a bigger problem today: the hijacking of Christianity as the source of the hate and anger directed against all things "other" by a vocal (and health care lobby-organized and funded) angry minority of voters who are poisoning the American body.
American Christianity Is At The Heart Of Our Worst Problems
Are the New Atheists leading us to enlightenment? The problem with the recent New Atheist attacks on Christianity is that they mirror the hostility of the evangelical/fundamentalist subculture toward the secular society that it so disdains. The real answer to the question; "Can Christianity be saved from the Christians?" is not going to be found coming from people like Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris et al. Instead that answer may be found in the life and work of Christians such as former president Jimmy Carter, President Obama, the late writer John Updike, and other public figures from Desmond Tutu to Nelson Mandela who's faith can be taken seriously because of the moral authority given them by their achievements outside the realm of theology.
The people running around calling Obama is "Hitler", the so-called "birthers" and all the rest can't be understood outside of the context of the hermetically sealed world-hating gated community known as Evangelical Christianity. As a former Evangelical and son of an Evangelical Religious Right leader, let me share a little of the insider perspective that I wish Carter had brought to the subject.
What Defines American Evangelicals These Days?
The key to understanding the Evangelicals is to understand the popularity of the Left Behind series of books about the "return of Christ" (and the whole host of other End Times "ministries" from the ever weirder Jack-the-Rapture-is-coming!-Van-Impe to the smoother but no less bizarre pages of Christianity Today magazine). This isn't some new or sudden interest in prophecy, but evidence of the deepening inferiority complex suffered by the evangelical/fundamentalist community.
Left Behind
The words "left behind" are ironically what the books are about, but not in the way their authors intended. The evangelical/fundamentalists, from their crudest egocentric celebrities to their "intellectuals" touring college campuses trying to make evangelicalism respectable, have indeed been left behind by modernity. They won't change their literalistic anti-science, anti-education, anti-everything superstitions, so now they nurse a deep grievance against "the world."
This has led to a profound fear of the "other." Jenkins and LaHaye (the Left Behind authors) provide the ultimate revenge fantasy for the culturally left behind against the "elite." The Left Behind franchise holds out hope for the self-disenfranchised that at last soon everyone will know "we" were right and "they" were wrong. They'll know because Spaceship Jesus will come back and whisk "us" away, leaving everyone else to ponder just how very lost they are because they refused to say the words, "I accept Jesus as my personal savior" and join our side while there was still time!
The bestselling status of the Left Behind novels proves that, not unlike Islamist terrorists who behead their enemies, many evangelical/ fundamentalist readers relish the prospect of God doing lots of messy killing for them as they watch in comfort from on high. They want revenge on all people not like them--forever.
Generations Of Indoctrination
We are several generations into the progeny of leaders such as James Dobson and his radio show Focus On The Family. These offspring extol the virtues of corporal punishment, patriarchy, applying biblical law to public governance and so forth. Millions of evangelicals have been raised in homes where they've been isolated from the wider culture, home schooled and/or sent to "Christian schools" where they have been indoctrinated to believe that the Federal Government is the enemy of all true believers, that the "End" is near, that secular society is their enemy as is art, learning and culture.
They now form a Fifth Column of the deliberately intellectually disenfranchised. They know they are out of the loop and hate the rest of us for their own self-imposed isolation. I'm afraid they will soon turn to violence.
Here Are The Alternatives To Change the Theologically-Induced Hate Landscape:
A) all sane Americans must become atheists or agnostics,
or...
B) those of us who are Christians must rescue Christianity from the willfully ignorant evangelicals and fundamentalists.
I favor the second alternative. First, having been raised in an evangelical/fundamentalist home I've long since moved beyond my background when it comes to my politics and my theology. That proves something; people can change their minds! I did.
But I believe more strongly than ever that we human beings are spiritual beings with or without the permission of those who take a purely rationalist approach to human existence. The better -- and I think only realistic option -- is to regard religion as an evolving process of human consciousness and work to reform rather than eliminate it
In my soon-to-be published book Patience With God: Faith For People Who Don't Like Religion (Or Atheism) I have very deliberately started a radical conversation through which I hope many of us can carve out a position that embraces religion while absolutely rejecting the type of insanity that has become synonymous with the word "Christian" in contemporary America.
Two "Threads" In Religion
As I argue in my new book the choice between the absolutist secular fundamentalism of the New Atheism and the authoritarianism of James Dobson's-type of "Christianity" is no choice at all. The better alternative is to understand that there are two main threads running all through almost all religions including Christianity:
1) an open, inclusive and questioning thread
and...
2) a closed and exclusionary thread.
The more open thread is not some modern phenomenon developed by "liberal thinking." As I explain in Patience With God this "thread" can be found in the earliest Christianity and Judaism.
If you look around and see good results from Christianity, say from the invention of modern hospitals, which have their roots in religious groups or the music of JS Bach, you're looking at the fruits of the best of the open tradition and thread. When you see a group of scared racist white people like Joe Wilson in Washington DC screaming "liar" or "Obama is a socialist" or "Obama wasn't born in America" you're seeing the madness of the other thread: fundamentalism that wants absolute certainty about everything, and forces its followers to live in a narrower and narrower field of existence.
Conclusion
Christianity is worth saving from the Christians for two reasons. First, because as moral and spiritual beings religion should feed our souls rather then strip out our humanity. Second, because whether we like it or not, religion is here to stay. Better to shape it rather than to simply denounce it.
I may be an idealist but I believe that if others will step forward and add to what I have tried to begin with my new book together we can give good answers to both the extremes of the New Atheists and to the hate of the Evangelical fundamentalists. Join me to build a better vision. We might actually be able to change the conversation in America about religion.
Is that important? Yes, like it or not religion will not go away. It motivates the worst in the American psyche and some of the best too. It is Joe Wilson's religion of hate but it also motivated Martin Luther King Jr.
Perhaps a generation from now the image of a typical Christian won't be a hate-monger like James Dobson but rather a lover of peace such as Bishop Desmond Tutu, or a literary giant like John Updike, and yes, a President Obama.
The only real answer to the hijacking of Christianity by the Religious Right, the longevity of religion-based racism, and the backward and inward looking movement we now call "American Christianity" is not to talk everyone out a having faith but rather to fight for the humane and ancient thread found within the Christian tradition. Blaming everything on race is too easy.
If you get the chance to read Patience With God please let me know what you think of it. I'm asking one big question in the book: Can Christianity be rescued from the Christians? You tell me.
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Carol2
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Posted: Mon Sep 21st, 2009 06:35 pm |
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Christians are a large group made up of all kinds of people. Yes, there are Christian "haters" and, on the other side of the spectrum, you have your extremely liberal, all-roads-lead-to-God types and then there's everything in between.
Christianity doesn't need to be "saved". There will always be believers out there. There is no way you're going to get everyone under the Christian umbrella to be cookie cutter clones of one another. Humans are a diverse breed.
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The righteous shall live by his faith (Habakkuk 2:4).
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Carol2
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Posted: Mon Sep 21st, 2009 06:37 pm |
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| Oh, and btw, I thought Carter's comment was extremely ignorant. That's the type of stuff that keeps racism alive.
____________________
The righteous shall live by his faith (Habakkuk 2:4).
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yoki
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Posted: Mon Sep 21st, 2009 07:26 pm |
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Carol2 wrote: Oh, and btw, I thought Carter's comment was extremely ignorant. That's the type of stuff that keeps racism alive.
Well, Carol, you might want to read Carter's autobiography. He struggled for decades with racisim in Georgia and the main constituents of that racisim were evangelical Christians. He and his family were ostracized for their efforts to quell the raciism. I was completely shocked to read what went on there, and this was within our lifetimes.
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Ronson
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Posted: Mon Sep 21st, 2009 07:29 pm |
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| Just because Carter was raised and lived in a backward part of the country doesn't mean everyone did. Even Obama blew off this racism charge. It is a tool to silence criticism. Right-wingers like to call their opponents "unpatriotic" when they disagree with conservative policy. Liberals like to use the race card. Nothing ever changes.
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yoki
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Posted: Mon Sep 21st, 2009 07:49 pm |
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Ronson wrote: Just because Carter was raised and lived in a backward part of the country doesn't mean everyone did. Even Obama blew off this racism charge. It is a tool to silence criticism. Right-wingers like to call their opponents "unpatriotic" when they disagree with conservative policy. Liberals like to use the race card. Nothing ever changes.
Ronson, there were organizations for whites only, which advocated the separate but equal status for blacks and whites - in other words, good ole American apartheid. But these organizations were not small, they were huge, and most of their membership was composed of white evangelical Christians and they used their various churches to help propagate their position. It was not just a backwater country thing, it was widespread throughout the south.
The fact is, the evangelical Christian faith in and of itself is based upon religious/spiritual bigotry. That is its foundation - exclusivity - "anyone who does not believe what I do and the way I do is going to be punished by god forever". The bigotted mind sees things in black and white, right and wrong, and insists that it is on the right side. The expression of bigotry comes in various different ways, but it is not a big leap to take it from religion to race. The mentalities are exactly the same.
Why do you think the Bible belt had also been the historical stronghold for racism in the US? Just a coincidence?
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Carol2
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Posted: Mon Sep 21st, 2009 08:09 pm |
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yoki wrote: Carol2 wrote: Oh, and btw, I thought Carter's comment was extremely ignorant. That's the type of stuff that keeps racism alive.
Well, Carol, you might want to read Carter's autobiography. He struggled for decades with racisim in Georgia and the main constituents of that racisim were evangelical Christians. He and his family were ostracized for their efforts to quell the raciism. I was completely shocked to read what went on there, and this was within our lifetimes.
As Ronson pointed out, backwoods Georgia (or the deep south in general) is not a good representation of the American mindset as a whole.
Ironically enough, though I haven't read his autobiography, I am in the middle of reading a book about Carter's presidency called What the Heck Are You Up To, Mr. President?. I picked it up about a week before his ill fated comment about racism, so the timing was a bit ironic. It's not an autobiography so no mention of racism in this book. It's more about the narcissism of the "me generation", the oil crisis of '79, and stuff like that.
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The righteous shall live by his faith (Habakkuk 2:4).
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Merlin
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Posted: Mon Sep 21st, 2009 08:15 pm |
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carol, did you read the posted article? The author isn't accusing "all" christians of anything. He specifically stated that the "us against the world" mindset of the evangelical christian is responsible for the hate-rhetoric being displayed all over the country--not just the south-- against Obama.
The first time I witnessed evangelical racism in actin was when my pastor asked me, "did your parents put you in christian school so you wouldn't have to go to school with niggers?"
Christianity was highjacked by Falwells and Andersons and needs to be taken back away from the rightwing evangelicals.
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yoki
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Posted: Mon Sep 21st, 2009 08:16 pm |
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Carol2 wrote: yoki wrote: Carol2 wrote: Oh, and btw, I thought Carter's comment was extremely ignorant. That's the type of stuff that keeps racism alive.
Well, Carol, you might want to read Carter's autobiography. He struggled for decades with racisim in Georgia and the main constituents of that racisim were evangelical Christians. He and his family were ostracized for their efforts to quell the raciism. I was completely shocked to read what went on there, and this was within our lifetimes.
As Ronson pointed out, backwoods Georgia (or the deep south in general) is not a good representation of the American mindset as a whole.
Ironically enough, though I haven't read his autobiography, I am in the middle of reading a book about Carter's presidency called What the Heck Are You Up To, Mr. President?. I picked it up about a week before his ill fated comment about racism, so the timing was a bit ironic. It's not an autobiography so no mention of racism in this book. It's more about the narcissism of the "me generation", the oil crisis of '79, and stuff like that.
I agree Carol, backwater Georgia is not a good representation of the American mindset as a whole. But what happened there was simply part of a very widespread racist movement.
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Merlin
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Posted: Mon Sep 21st, 2009 08:17 pm |
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the race card
source: AlterNet.com
The warm months of 1969 came to be known as the "summer of love." Surely the past months of 2009 will go down in history as the "summer of hate" -- with fearsome crowds of thuggish, and almost entirely white, conservatives railing against Barack Obama's stimulus package and proposals for health care reform and "cap-and-trade" climate legislation.
At least, those are the ostensible targets.
But the overheated rhetoric masks a more fundamental complaint about the perceived loss of white America's tribal power in an era with the first African American president.
At this summer's "tea parties," town hall meetings and the recent march on Washington organized by Fox News talker Glenn Beck, signs with Obama portrayed as an African witch doctor, complete with a bone through his nose, and signs claiming Obama is the rightful president only of Kenya and other thinly disguised racial markers have been commonplace.
Clearly, these demonstrations of inchoate rage are about more than public policy. Former President Jimmy Carter stepped into the fray this week, stating the obvious: "intensely demonstrated animosity" toward Obama, the 39th president said, is "based on the fact that he is a black man." This elicited a torrent of angry denunciations from right-wing media.
While Carter might have overstated the degree to which the anger is motivated by racial animus -- saying it was behind "an overwhelming portion" of the criticisms lobbed at Obama -- it's clear not only from the street protests, but also from the rhetoric employed by the conservative media elite that racism is indeed alive in "post-racial America," and is certainly ratcheting up the temperature of the country's discourse.
We took a tour of that discourse and present 10 recent examples of the kind of racially charged barbs that played a part in Carter's statement.
1. Oh no! Evil monkeys stole our balls!
You know who really had their act together? British colonists in India. But oppressing a country of hundreds of millions for more than a century was not without its dangers. For instance, sometimes monkeys descended on the Brits' golf courses and stole their balls.
And that it is how former House Whip Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., chose to illustrate the challenges facing conservatives in the Obama era. Friday, AlterNet's Adele Stan reported Blunt's words to the conservative Values Summit:
"... Something they didn't anticipate was monkeys came running out of the jungle, and they grabbed the golf balls ... and they might throw the golf ball back at you. ... So for this golf course, and this golf course and this golf course only, they passed a rule, and the rule was, you have to play the ball where the monkey throws it."
The crowd roared with laughter.
He went on to say that he recently saw a bumper sticker he liked that read: "Don't let Obama find out what comes after a trillion."
2. Rush Limbaugh, worried about future of favorite cookie, blows off steam by making racist joke about Obama
In a July broadcast, Rush Limbaugh voiced his displeasure -- nay, outrage -- about food-safety advocates potentially "going after" Oreo cookies. Added the great wit: "Might have to put that off until Obama's out of office, but they'll eventually go after Oreos."
Get it?
3. When you weren't looking, Obama snuck reparations into the health care bill
This is why we have to be vigilant. According to Beck and Limbaugh, Obama is using health reform to force reparations for slavery from white America. Beck: "Everything getting pushed through Congress -- including this health care bill -- is transforming America. And it's all driven by President Obama's thinking on one idea: reparations. ... He believes in all the 'universal' programs because they ‘disproportionately affect' people of color" (All of whom Obama knows personally, cause … you know … ).
Not one to be outdone, Limbaugh cast a wider net, saying: "Obama's entire program is reparations!"
4. Addendum: When you weren't looking, Obama snuck affirmative action in the health care bill
Obama's plan to make African Americans the white man's evil overlords doesn't end with secret reparations: Apparently, the health care bill is also being used to smuggle in affirmative action. "The medical schools will get more federal dollars if they have proven … that they are putting minorities ahead" according to Beck.
5. Obama responsible for school bullying
Last week, a Drudge headline screamed: "White Student Beaten on School Bus; Crowd Cheers."
Drudge is presumably aware that this isn't the first time school children have engaged in fisticuffs. But in highlighting the item as breaking "news," the site was clearly trying to tap into the bizarre race paranoia sweeping Wing-Nut Nation. It did not take long for Limbaugh to make Drudge's implicit race bating explicit:
"In Obama's America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, 'Yay, right on, right on, right on, right on,' " said Limbaugh, in a very accurate approximation of how black kids talk, of course.
6. Limbaugh comes up with a solution to America's complex race issues: Separate but equal!
Then, Limbaugh used the incident to essentially propose a return to the doctrine of "separate but equal," saying, "I mean, that's the lesson we're being taught here today. Kid shouldn't have been on the bus anyway. We need segregated buses -- it was invading space and stuff. This is Obama's America."
Or, you know, the black kids could just sit in the back of the bus.
7. Our president is angry?
Obama comes across as a pretty even-keeled, pleasant person. But maybe it's all an act, meant to mask his true nature, which, according to Limbaugh, is that of a really common racist archetype: the angry black man.
"[T]hey're finally hearing me. 'He's an angry black guy.' I do believe that about the president. I do believe he's angry. I think his wife is angry."
Surprisingly, Limbaugh did not add that Michelle Obama was also good at nursing other people's kids or preparing pancakes.
8. Birther conspiracy
A while back, a bunch of people felt kinda weird publicly saying that Obama shouldn't be president because he's black. They came up with this enterprising solution: latch onto an insane conspiracy theory claiming that the president is illegitimate because he's not a natural-born citizen of the U.S.
One of those people was Lou Dobbs, who managed to destroy the last shreds of his reputation and dignity by pushing the birther conspiracy onto prime time on CNN.
9. Half-white president hates whites?
Carter's remarks that many of the attacks against the president are fueled by racism really, really hurt conservatives' feelings. Beck, for example, sniffed (but didn't break into wild sobbing, as he often does) that it was wrong to accuse someone of racism without hard evidence. This lesson in etiquette is one Beck must have learned recently, because less than two months ago, the shock-jock accused Obama of being a racist with a "deep-seated hatred for white people … and white culture."
Beck did not elaborate on what he meant by "white culture."
10. General tea-baggery
Conservatives are trying to sell town hall disruptions and the various forms of tea-bagging going on as legitimate protests against the Democrats' agenda. While that's certainly true of many people who show up at these events, it's hard not to be a little wary of the real reason some people take part, when we see signs like this:Attachment: race1.jpg (Downloaded 24 times) Last edited on Mon Sep 21st, 2009 08:24 pm by Merlin
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Merlin
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Posted: Mon Sep 21st, 2009 08:24 pm |
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| and this, making the rounds of the GOP anti-healthcare reform members of Congress: Attachment: race2.jpg (Downloaded 24 times) Last edited on Tue Sep 22nd, 2009 02:42 am by Merlin
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Merlin
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Posted: Mon Sep 21st, 2009 08:25 pm |
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and this
Attachment: race3.jpg (Downloaded 23 times)
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Merlin
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Posted: Mon Sep 21st, 2009 08:25 pm |
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and this
Attachment: race4.jpg (Downloaded 23 times)
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Merlin
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Posted: Mon Sep 21st, 2009 08:26 pm |
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| and this Attachment: race6.jpg (Downloaded 24 times)
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Merlin
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Posted: Mon Sep 21st, 2009 08:26 pm |
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| and this Attachment: race8.jpg (Downloaded 24 times) Last edited on Mon Sep 21st, 2009 08:26 pm by Merlin
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Merlin
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Posted: Mon Sep 21st, 2009 08:27 pm |
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| and this Attachment: race9.jpg (Downloaded 23 times)
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Merlin
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Posted: Mon Sep 21st, 2009 08:27 pm |
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| and this Attachment: race10.jpg (Downloaded 23 times)
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Merlin
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Posted: Mon Sep 21st, 2009 08:28 pm |
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| and this Attachment: race11.jpg (Downloaded 23 times)
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Merlin
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Posted: Mon Sep 21st, 2009 08:28 pm |
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| and this Attachment: race12.jpg (Downloaded 23 times)
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met
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Posted: Mon Sep 21st, 2009 08:32 pm |
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Merlin wrote:
Christianity was highjacked by Falwells and Andersons and needs to be taken back away from the rightwing evangelicals.
it could happen... you'd be amazed how "liberal" the theology schools in Vancouver have suddenly become since, oh, the invasion of iraq in 2003 or so ... and hardly anybody around here ever describes themselves as a "evangelical" anymore either
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“Hum tum ek kamre meins band ho, aur chaabi kho jaaye”
-from Bobby
o Dir. Raj Kapoor. 1973. R.K. Films Ltd.
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