Martin Luther King, Jr., Ronald Reagan, and the Conservative Sleight-of-Hand

(This is Martin Luther King, Jr., with my mentor, D. Elton Trueblood, in Stout Meetinghouse on the campus of Earlham College.)

A recent conversation led me to do some thinking about the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.  I have come to the conclusion that it is in a deliberately disingenuous manner that conservatives invoke Dr. King's legacy to support causes which the great Baptist preacher and prophet would have himself opposed.  Vivek Ramaswamy and Mike Pence have both name-checked Dr. King recently to advocate policies which King himself would have denounced as unjust, if not evil.  I happen to live in Mike Pence's hometown, and am aware that he and his brother, Congressman Greg Pence, both have made statements which they either knew, or should have known, were not true.

I asked Greg Pence, on his Facebook page, why he voted to overturn the 2020 election, which would have rewarded the very criminals who sought to kill his own brother.  I said to him, "If you are willing to sell-out your own brother, how do we, as your own constituents, have any assurance you will not sell us out as well?"  For the record, Rep. Pence never got back to me on that!

A friend recently pushed back on me, which should always be welcomed, when I said the idea of a colorblind society was heinous.  The exchange made me think about where the phrase colorblind society came from.  I looked into that, and I found the phrase came, not from Dr. King himself, but from Ronald Reagan.

I personally think Reagan was an enemy of morality.  No moral person would cut the tax rate of billionaires from 70% to 28% and then try to make up the lost revenue by taxing people's Social Security benefits!  Not to mention the "Iran/Contra affair."  For all his talk of law and order, Reagan was a corrupt and lawless man.  I believe the difference between him and Donald Trump is almost negligible.  Reagan had an affable personality which covered him like a  white sheet.  Members of the KKK do not even use white sheets any more.  I believe Donald Trump is Reagan without the sheet, figuratively speaking.  It was not by accident that Reagan began his presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi.

Dr. King never used the phrase colorblind society.  What he said is that he wanted a society where people are judged by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin.  Ronald Reagan misappropriated and distorted King's message when he said we should be a "colorblind society."  Colorblindness negates an important part of who people are. It says to people of color, "we do not want to see you for who you are."  The idea of a colorblind society wounds many people of color.  You can read about what that phrase says to them here.

Colorblindness is a disability.  It makes absolutely no sense to use a disability as a metaphor for what one desires a society to be.  And for those of us in the disability community, that is a completely separate cause of offense.  No one holds other disabilities up as a paradigm for a societal ideal.  The idea of society as colorblind is as reprehensible as saying you want a society where there are no wheelchair ramps.  It is also quite curious to me that, those who argue for the ideal of a colorblind society are quite heated over transgender issues and use rather lame excuses for that like unfair competition in sports.  They want a colorblind society but not a  genderblind society.  That is telling.

I am suggesting here that anybody who would use the phrase colorblind society has either been hoodwinked into believing conservatives care about racial justice, or they are a party to the effort to do the hoodwinking.  Those who use the phrase and try to pass it off as King's idea have sought to undermine the very policies he gave his life for by pretending to use his own words.  They are not his words.  I have found no instance where Dr. King used the phrase colorblind society.  The dismantling of the Voting Rights Act and Affirmative Action in his name is damnable to say the least.  I believe he would forcefully denounce how conservatives have co-opted him,  Martin Luther King III discusses that here.

Christopher Petrella and Justin Gomer wrote in the Boston Review about how conservatives have completely distorted King's words.  You can read that here, but I love one paragraph from their piece.

"The inaccurate conflation of King’s activism with the ideology of colorblindness—in which ignoring race is positioned as the only way to end racism—began in earnest during the Reagan administration. Reagan, who thought little of King, ultimately used the creation of a national holiday honoring King as a way to co-opt his legacy, enabling Reagan ironically to oppose key civil rights laws in the name of aligning himself with King’s supposedly colorblind dream. In so doing, Reagan became one of the most successful proselytes of what sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva terms “colorblind racism,” and Reagan’s frequent citation of King marked the beatification of King not as a champion of racial justice but of colorblind ideology."

I think the phrase colorblind racism is a powerful one, and it seems to me to be part of the raison d'être of  modern conservatism.

There is simply no way on God's green earth Dr. King would have supported the way conservatives co-opt his memory to undo his legacy.  It is disgusting to even entertain that thought.  What King wanted was not a colorblind society, he wanted  a society where your color did not consign you to injustice.  In no way would he have supported the dismantling of things like Affirmative Action.  He wanted us to see color.  We cannot hold people accountable for racial injustice if we are blind to color.  Conservatives know that, and they know they already have the upper hand.  A colorblind society keeps them in the driver's seat. Appeals to a colorblind society are a moral and political sleight-of-hand.

We do not need a colorblind society.  That makes some persons invisible.  We need to see and celebrate color, and celebrate it equally.  Colorblindness does not require anything of the white person, but it requires the person of color to not be who they are.  Perish the thought of a colorblind society.

Two Different Kinds of Suffering

I am no fan of attorney Jenna Ellis.  I have written to her before and told her that her claim to be a Christian is completely undermined by her work for and support of Donald Trump.  I do not think a follower of Jesus Christ can support Trump at all.  I wrote about that here.   Ms. Ellis posted her mugshot from her arrest in Georgia yesterday with these comments.

Personally, I do not consider Christianity and conservatism compatible.  As far as I can tell, Christianity and conservatism, if they were depicted on a Venn diagram, are two circles which do not even touch, let alone overlap. Conservatism has repudiated everything Jesus taught, especially in the Sermon on the Mount.  I think Ms. Ellis is a pseudo-Christian at best.

But let's say I am totally wrong about her.  The fact remains she did not get arrested for doing anything a Christian should do.  She talks about a weaponized government and yet she got arrested for trying to weaponize government.

1 Peter chapter 4 (I almost always quote from NRSV) describes two ways people can get into suffering.

12 Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. 13 But rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ’s sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed. 14 If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the spirit of glory, which is the Spirit of God, is resting on you. 15 But let none of you suffer as a murderer, a thief, a criminal, or even as a mischief maker. 16 Yet if any of you suffers as a Christian, do not consider it a disgrace, but glorify God because you bear this name. 

So we read there are two kinds of suffering here.  (1) Suffering for being a follower of Jesus Christ.  (2) Suffering because you did something criminal.  Jenna Ellis is suffering for reason (2), not reason (1).  There can be no doubt about it.  A follower of Jesus would not go before a legislative body and knowingly make false statements.

Jenna Ellis DID NOT GET INDICTED BECAUSE SHE IS A CHRISTIAN.  I admit I have a difficult time considering those who share her political views to be Christian.  But let's say I am wrong. Let's say she is a Christian. THE FACT REMAINS that she got indicted for racketeering, the racket being to steal the votes of the voters in Georgia.  So she got indicted as a thief!!  Again, Jenna Ellis DID NOT GET INDICTED BECAUSE SHE IS A CHRISTIAN.

I think it is incumbent on everyone who is concerned that Christians live out the values Jesus taught TO CALL THIS OUT.

A Holy Conjunction and the Call to Live with Tensions

Today I am remembering my mentor, Elton Trueblood, and how he emphasized the holy conjunction "AND." "I will pray in the Spirit AND with my mind." "Love the Lord your God with your heart, soul, AND mind." After the resurrection, the disciples remembered the Scriptures AND the words Jesus had spoken to them.

Jesus is fully divine AND fully human.

Elton talked about the clear head AND the warm heart. He said the Christian life is a life of devotion AND a life of service.

The Gospel is both forgiveness for our sins AND a call to social justice.

One of the times this holy conjunction comes into play is when we think about how the Scriptures point us toward the kingdom of God in the eschaton and yet we live in that kingdom now. Already...AND not yet.

And I lament that American Christianity has seemed to lose sight of this holy conjunction and how the Gospel calls us to live exactly with such tensions.

I can think of several examples. I have a fellow ethicist, also Catholic, who told me one time, prior to the overturn of Roe v. Wade, that if a hypothetical young girl was raped and impregnated by a family member, she would incarcerate the girl until she had the baby to make sure she gave birth.

I am not making this one up! This lady is a Ph.D. medical ethicist in Texas. I put this hypothetical question to her, and then last year the exact scenario happened in the state of Indiana, where I live. The only difference was the young girl was 10 instead of 14. She came to Indiana to have an abortion because she could not get one in Ohio. Conservatives in both states expressed their outrage and wanted the doctor jailed. Some politician in Ohio said she was not even raped and then the guy who did it was convicted of this rape!

Living with tensions is not easy. But I believe it is important. I believe in both personal responsibility and social responsibility. I have tried to practice both, in both my professional and personal lives. It is not easy at all. But it is necessary because life is full of contingency, relativity, and nuance.

I am not an ethical relativist. I do believe in absolutes, but I do not think it is healthy to see everything as absolute. It is also not healthy to see everything as relative. I do not believe it is ever morally right to take a human life. I also think anyone who tells you they know when life begins is overestimating their own knowledge. I explained why here.

People face terrible complexities, contingencies and uncertainties. So grace is vital, and locking up a young pregnant lady for being pregnant against her will, forcing her to give birth against her will, is like raping her a second time. It is reprehensible to me that a professional ethicist would even think about that.

I have told this story a few times. But in the past few days I have thought about it in terms of the idea of "the holy conjunction." In light of that I want to make a proposal.

I think it is possible to be pro-life AND pro-choice. I think it is not one bit incoherent to find abortion to be hideous and awful, AND still believe it should be legal, and that no one but the woman should make the decision about when a pregnancy should be terminated. It seems to me to be decidedly anti-life to take her agency away from her, even if we oppose abortion, precisely because we do not know when life begins, and we do not know how the pregnancy is or will be affecting her physically or emotionally.

I believe it is possible to believe in free enterprise AND believe in limits on how much wealth and income one can have. I think it is possible to believe in personal responsibility AND believe there is a basic minimum income level below which we will let no one fall. I believe it is possible to believe there are people who should not have guns AND believe there are guns no private citizen should have.

I believe it is possible to believe in freedom of conscience AND believe their are times when someone's individual convictions are outweighed by the common good.

We do not have to sacrifice our convictions on either side of the AND, as long as we approach one another with grace. I think my own Catholic faith does this well sometimes and fails at other times. Canon law can turn Catholics into Pharisees.

But as I said, this is not easy. Living out the holy conjunction AND is fraught with difficulties. It reminds me of what GK Chesterton said about Christianity itself. He said, "Christianity has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found difficult and not tried!"

We are called to live in this tension but so often we resist it.

"Irresistible Grace" is Incompatible with Divine Love

Irresistible grace is incompatible with divine love. The bottom line is "irresistible" and "grace" do not belong together. It is as oxymoronic as:

Voluntary force

Hateful love

Cruel kindness

Grace is gift. Irresistible is force. God, if God is love, is not going to force anyone into belief. God did not create us with moral agency just to turn around and strip us of it. Jesus fed Judas when he knew Judas had sold him out. Jesus let the rich young man walk away.

The angel Gabriel did not say, "Hey there, Mary, guess what? You are now pregnant!" Gabriel said Jesus would be conceived by the Holy Spirit IN FUTURE TENSE, not in past tense like we do in the creed, because it had not yet happened at the annunciation. We do not know exactly when it did happen, but it seems to me to make sense that if Gabriel was sent by God, and the tradition was that Gabriel was one of the angels who stands perpetually in God's presence, that Gabe had some idea of what was going down. He at least knew enough in the account of the Annunciation (Luke 1:26-38) to use past tense in verses 26-30, (for example in verse 30, "You HAVE found favor with God") and future tense in verses 31-37 ("You WILL conceive...You WILL name him Jesus...The Holy Spirit WILL come upon you..." I think it is reasonable to assume the conception did not occur until after his announcement, and her acceptance of this assignment. Mary consented, she was not forced.

Our "YES" means nothing if we are not able to say "NO." Grace, which comes from love, is not irresistible, it is not forced.

While I am at it, let me add that I think if Jesus' own birth announcement took place in this way, God is not pleased with forced birth. Mary was a teenage girl at this point. If God did not force her to give birth, God is not honored when "Christians" in this country force women to give birth.

"Not here, not now. No."

 I am going to make a confession here. I am not always in the most charitable of moods. I saw a couple of interviews today with the common theme of relating respectfully with one another in spite of our differences. I have always tried to do that, but I did get, at one point, to the place where I could not do that with anybody in the group where I had my religious trauma, not because I held everybody in the group guilty or responsible. No, it was because it was just so damned painful and at times I withdrew from people just so I would not pour my own pain on them. Sometimes I still do this. I have "unfriended" people I like before because I distrust my ability to refrain from obnoxiousness.

At this point in my life, relating with people on the other end of the political spectrum does not feel safe for me. There is a scene in the movie WE ARE MARSHALL, which took place basically in my backyard, which describes how I feel.

There is a place in the movie where this dialogue takes place:

Later, in a scene between Jack and assistant coach, Red Dawson (Matthew Fox), the former team’s only remaining coach who had switched out with someone else just prior to the crash. Jack tries to change Red’s mind about quitting the team.

Just before the plane crash, Red had earlier recalled Coach Tolley’s final words to his team that had just lost on the field. He said, “Winning is everything.” In a scene that took place in a church, where Jack found Red, Jack says, “He was right, you know.” Red asks, “Who was right?” Jack says …

Your boy Tolley. Winning is everything and nothing else matters. I mean, I’ve said that so many times myself I’ve lost count. You know? And it doesn’t matter what sport, and it doesn’t matter what country, any coach who is worth a darn in this business believes those words. Fact. And then I came here. For the first time in my life, hell, maybe for the first time in the history of sports, suddenly, it’s just not true anymore. At least not here, not now. No. You see, Red, it doesn’t matter if we win or if we lose. It’s not even about how we play the game. What matters is that we play the game. That we take the field, that we suit up on Saturdays, and we keep this program alive. We play the game, Red, and I’m telling you, one day, not today, not tomorrow, not this season, probably not next season either, but one day, you and I are gonna wake up and suddenly we’re gonna be like every other team in every other sport where winning is everything and nothing else matters. And when that days comes, well, that’s when we’ll honor them.

https://www.williswired.com/2007/11/03/marshall/

That is how I feel now. People who knew me as a Quaker pastor often told me they respected me because I was always willing to sit and talk with people on all sides of any issues. I was called upon at times to try to broker peace and reconciliation between Quaker folks on different sides of issues.

But as I think about the possibility of a second Trump presidency, I am finding I have no interest in such brokering. To me it is like being a divorced person having to negotiate how much unsupervised visitation time the other parent gets with your child who they abused. It feels like saying to the Nazis, "Six million is too much but we can split the difference and let you kill three million."

I know some people will find that offensive. But I do believe we are in that kind of territory and everyone is endangered if this crowd gets anything they want. It breaks my heart to say that. IT BREAKS MY HEART FAR, FAR MORE that my friends and colleagues are not saying it enough. (My dear brother Rev. Rob Schenck is.) I do not think most professional religious types realize the danger we are in. OR they fear the people in the pews more than they desire to avoid displeasing God.

Find common ground? "Not here, not now. No."

For years this country has said we do not negotiate with terrorists. But calls for centrism, as I see it, commit us to negotiating with terrorists. I hope I am wrong.

As much as I oppose most tax cuts, you can compromise there. If one side wants the top rate at 40%, and the other wants 30%, you can meet in the middle at 35%. There are areas where compromise is a sign of maturity. But there are areas where not compromising is a sign of morality.

You cannot find common ground with racism.

You cannot find common ground with misogyny.

You cannot find common ground with ableism.

You cannot find common ground with people who are anti-LGBT+.

You cannot find common ground with those who do not want religiously pluralistic society.

I think there are two things we must do, no matter what:

BE NON-VIOLENT because that is what Christ-followers do.

BE NON-COMPROMISING OR NON-NEGOTIATING because the well-being of everyone depends on refusing to compromise with those who dehumanize or denigrate others.

And this is painful!

Told Through the Eyes of the Winners

In 1998, I left the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, and the Church of the Nazarene where I had been a staff member, to assume the pastorate of Motor and Ackworth Friends Churches near Indianola, Iowa. We stayed there 4.5 years.  These two Quaker meetings loved and encouraged us as I learned how to be a pastor.  Motor was the church where my mentor D. Elton Trueblood spent his childhood years, and we went there because of his recommendation.

Southern Seminary very graciously permitted me to take the remaining three courses I needed (for a MA degree--but I had enough hours for an M. Div., the problem was Southern had a stingy registrar who only took 8 of my 27 hours from Earlham School of Religion) at the University of Iowa.  Iowa was, as far as  I knew, the only state university with a School of Religion.  I transferred the credits back to Southern Seminary and graduated there in 1991,  even though I was recorded, Quaker speak for ordination, in 1990.

I took a church history course at Iowa.  My professor was a Catholic. Of course, I had no clue I would someday be Catholic myself.  The course was one of those where you could take it for undergraduate or graduate credit, and if you took it for graduate credit you had to  do extra work, but the lectures were the same.   I was the only graduate student in the class.

The extra assignments involved reading and writing response papers to a couple of books. One of them was Walter Bauer's Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity.     

Bauer's thesis was that history is told through the eyes of the winners.  If the views which the early church declared heresies had prevailed, we would now call them orthodoxy and the views we now consider orthodox would be heresy.  I imagine that is basically right but I also wrote in my paper that I do think the Holy Spirit guided the church to get it right.

But for 30+ years, his basic thesis has rolled around in my head and I have come to believe he is correct and that ought to give American Christians pause about a couple of things.

FIRST, I think this thesis should give us pause about how we read Scripture.  I figured out in seminary that the Bible was not 100% scientifically or historically accurate. As I have written, it cannot be because the first two chapters of Genesis actually contradict one another.  But as an old man now I also think the Bible contains some moral points of error.  And the reason for that is that history is told through the eyes of the winners.

I do not believe God wanted anyone killed, ever.  I do not believe God wanted blood sacrifice--not even Jesus' blood.  The Psalmist tells us 

For you have no delight in sacrifice;
    if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased.
17 The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit;
    a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. (Psalm 51:16-17 NRSV)

God is not a wrathful being demanding blood, but the father standing at the end of the road, waiting for the prodigal to come home.  The father in the story embraces and welcomes and forgives the prodigal before they slaughter the fattened  calf.

I do not think God wanted women to be under the authority of men, ever.  And I do not think God EVER FAVORED ONE NATION MORE THAN ANOTHER.  God promised to make a great nation of Ishmael as well as Israel.  Our scriptures tell the story through the eyes of only one side of the family.  There is simply no way they can present the total truth.  One of the best books I ever read was the womanist theology of Delores Williams and her book, Sisters in the Wilderness which speaks theologically to black women and their plight, using the story of Hagar, the mother of Ishmael, and God's providential care for Hagar and Ishmael as a case study in how the majority view is not necessarily the whole truth.

Because the Hebrew and Christian scriptures come from only one side of the family, I think we should not necessary conclude that the holy books of our Islamic relatives are based on falsities.  I have had students get irate with me when I told them, "Yes, Islamic people DO worship the same God Christians and Jews do."  We might not like it, but it is a fact.  Realizing that we only have our familial version of the story, even if we never seek out the other side of the story, ought to give us pause when we think we have the whole truth.

SECOND, I think this awareness that history is told only through the eyes of the winners should compel us to cry out against what Gov. Ron Desantis and those working with him in Florida are doing to how history is taught.  I think every Christian thinker should denounce the so-called PragerU. PragerU is a website owned by a guy named Dennis Prager, who produces five-minute videos which tell American history in such a way that it is extremely skewed to the right.  The idea that slavery had beneficial aspects is part of the worldview which Prager articulates.

I think before anyone even entertains the idea that slaves benefitted from slavery, or that the story of Rosa Parks and the bus boycotts can be told without reference to race, we should ask them, through their writings and through their descendants.  History which is told in a way which is beneficial to majorities, whether ethnic, religious, gender or otherwise, cannot be accepted as accurate.  It would be like saying the Holocaust was good for the Jews, homosexuals and others.  It is despicable to even entertain such ideas.

Because history is told through the eyes of the winners,   Americans, Christians,  and American Christians specifically, should be profoundly skeptical of the truth of their world view.  I have a saying at the top of my Facebook page which I think could be placed here.

TRUTH IS FOUND IN THE  VOICES OF THE MARGINALIZED.

"IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I AM COMING AFTER YOU!"

 "IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I AM COMING AFTER YOU!"

These are the words of the 45th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, this week on his social media site which he calls Truth Social. I find it humorous that a man who told 32,000 documented lies in four years' time calls his website Truth Social. Mr. Trump's words this week should haunt anyone of good conscience. I have maintained for seven years now that someone cannot support him and make any credible claim to be a follower of Jesus Christ at the same time. I renew my objection and will explain why later in this piece. But at this point I want to say I do not think anyone can be morally justified in supporting him. January 6, 2021 should have made it clear to the world, but this post makes it doubly clear.

Mr. Trump and those who are working for him are already working on plans to dismantle civil service in government as we know it and make all workers in the executive branch make a promise of loyalty to him personally and to his goals. That means the person at your local Social Security Office, or the Department of Agriculture, or any other agency of the Federal government will have to in essence pledge allegiance to the president in order to keep their jobs. In the past, only top leadership at these agencies has been political, and the lower level employees have been civil servants, who did their job with no reference to their own political preferences. They have had the protection of unionization and collective bargaining, which Trump intends to remove, making them at-will employees instead of civil servants. The plans for this are already being laid and can be Googled at:

PROJECT 2025

What this means is that Mr. Trump will transform every person in the executive branch from a professional who serves the public to a pawn who serves the President. This is disturbing enough.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly said that his indictments are politically motivated (they are not) and that he is innocent (he is not) and that President Biden is pursuing political prosecutions like happens in a Banana Republic. It is not true. Mr. Biden has not played any part in any of these indictments and has not even commented on them. I think past history would give credence to the idea that Mr. Trump follows the old line of Hermann Göring, namely to accuse the other guy of what you are doing. I believe a big part of PROJECT 2025 will be politically based prosecutions and the settling of personal scores. In Mr. Trump's case, however, he has not (as of yet) committed any crimes against Mr. Biden. Mr. Trump's crimes are crimes against the American People. PROJECT 2025 will bring more such crimes, I believe, if they are given a chance.

I said above I think it is impossible to follow Jesus Christ and support Donald Trump at the same time. I do think that. I believe Mr. Trump has an antichrist spirit. His fruit is the exact opposite of that of a follower of Jesus. I will get to that, but first, I want to suggest that not even a person who makes no profession of faith at all should support Mr. Trump. The reason is simple. Anyone who says

 "IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I AM COMING AFTER YOU!"

has completely disqualified herself or himself from being the leader of a civil society. We know both from the January 6 committee, and from the most recent indictment of Mr. Trump, he already has shown a willingness and a desire to use the US Department of Justice--which belongs to US--as his personal law firm, to be his personal fixers, to pull the levers of the justice system solely for his own ends. Again, like Göring, when he has called it the Injustice Department, Mr. Trump is giving us a tell as to what he will make it. By saying,  "IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I AM COMING AFTER YOU!", he is promising a second Trump administration will be one based on political vindictiveness. He promised "retribution." I am saying here and now no moral person can support that.

But his words,  "IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I AM COMING AFTER YOU!" also reinforce what I have said about how no Christ-follower can support Mr. Trump.

I have used this analogy to explain why no Jesus-follower can support Mr. Trump. We have family in the Kansas City area. To go visit them, from Columbus, Indiana, we drive about 45 minutes north to Indianapolis and take Interstate 70 to Kansas City. St. Louis is about half way. The closer we get to Kansas City, the farther we are from Indianapolis. The closer we are to Indianapolis, the farther we are from Kansas City. Jesus and Mr. Trump are like that. It is inevitable that, the closer one is to one, the farther one is from the other. The values of Jesus and the values of Trump are so totally contradictory to one another that one cannot be pursuing both at the same time. The closer one is to Trump, the farther one is from Jesus, and the closer one is to Jesus, the farther one is from Trump. I think this is true of more than their personal behavior and morals. I think this was true, even in the last administration. I cannot think of a single Trump policy which can be reconciled with the teaching and example of Jesus. It is simply not logically possible.

But nowhere is that more clear than when one contrasts the non-violent message of Jesus with  "IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I AM COMING AFTER YOU!"

I was pleased to be asked to write this for the blog of the Cobb Institute.

I was pleased to be asked to write this for the blog of the Cobb Institute.

https://cobb.institute/blog/process-in-praxis/a-work-in-process-seeing-possibilities-instead-of-roadblocks/?p=20720&fbclid=IwAR0nWQl8oC-ZKZ-2hvU-zQPPxJkRnPfUWGwC8sKsf9_3MbCQ2C37UwdzBWQ

American Christians Do Not Get Any "Home Field Advantage."

The action of the Israeli parliament overnight has me very disturbed.  I think it is almost a guarantee of injustice any time the courts of a country are under the control of the head of state.  Here in this country I have the same fear if Donald Trump is ever president again.  Of course, I happen to think people like Mr. Trump, Mr. Netanyahu, and Osama bin Laden are cut from the same cloth. Any type of nationalism seems morally heinous to me.  I do not think there is a bit of difference between Christian nationalism, Jewish nationalism, and Islamic nationalism,  If you put any religious group's name in front of the word Republic, I think that is a recipe for violence and moral trouble.  

Many American Christians think we have some sort of "home field advantage."  It cannot happen here, we think.  We think that somehow we are better.  People want to say our Constitution will protect us from something like that happening here.  I do not believe it.

American Christians for the past two decades have had a fear of Islamic terrorism, seemingly blind to Christian terrorism.  I do not see any moral difference between a tragedy like 9/11, and incidents where Christians have blown up abortion clinics.  In fact, the only difference between 9/11 and 1/6, morally, to me seems to which square on a calendar they occupy.

We  think we are better than we are.  I heard Lynne Cheney say one time that the US Constitution was the most important document ever written.  I thought at the time that was blasphemous.  And the Constitution itself is, in my view, flawed beyond repair.  I think the Constitution was the seed-ground for the institutional racism we are now grappling with.  When the disease permeates the cure people appeal to, getting better cannot happen.

Any Constitution which says that certain people are only 3/5 human is not the product of moral people. The people that were oppressed by those who led this country from the beginning were created in the image of God just as much as they were. 

A republic is not a moral thing. You cannot have a republic without some mechanism for minority rule. I have taught Plato and his idea of a republic was that a society be governed by an educated ruling elite. Minority rule is baked into the cake. Evidently the people who do not want a so-called tyranny of the majority are just fine with a tyranny of the minority.

So they set up a system where the minority has more power than the majority. That is unjust. That is morally wrong. I'm not saying minorities should not have rights and that the rights should not be protected. I'm saying that no time ever should a minority be able to impose its will on a majority.

At this point let me say too that there are times when a majority is wrong. So there should be some protection for minorities. But you have to frame it in terms of protecting rights. It is not about imposing anything. If you believe abortion is wrong, if you believe same-sex marriage is wrong, then don't do those things. But permitting them legally is not anyone imposing anything on you. If you prohibit them you are the one imposing your view on others. I remember when she was running for president, Elizabeth Warren had a guy at a Town Hall say he believed marriage was for one woman and one man. I loved her response. "Good for you. All you have to do is make sure you are only married to one woman."

I have said this before, and people don't like it. But it is nonetheless true. The founders of this country were not good people. They were evil people. If they had been good, there would have never been slavery. If they had been good, indigenous people would have never been forced off their land. If they had been good we would have had a system of one person, one vote. And women and people of color would have had the right to vote from the very beginning.

And let me add, you cannot say that this stuff takes time. The idea that we are working toward equality is a heinous idea. If you accept the idea that it just took time for gender and racial equality, that is hideous. Dr. King chastised the white Christian ministers who tried to say they were with him but these things take time. That is not an acceptable answer. If you think these things take time then you believe there is some ontological reason why white men who owned property deserved to go to the front of the line. Saying this takes time is a form of white supremacy.

There is no "home field advantage."  American Christians pretend there is one.  But that is patent nonsense.

Let's admit it once for all time.  There is no moral difference which allows our country to claim a moral high ground.  We cannot chide China for denying the rights of women, while our runaway Court is doing the same thing here.  We cannot say the Nazis were wrong to put Jews in concentration camps when, at the same time, we were doing the same thing to people of Asian heritage here. We cannot complain about how Uganda treats the LGBTQ community when people want to take freedoms from that community here.

We cannot say the racism of Nazism was wrong when our own founding document treated people of color here as 3/5 human.  We cannot say we are better than the people who have forced minorities into ghettos when we do that here.  There is not really any moral difference between the way people are forced into small spaces in Gaza and what we did here with indigenous people.  

I do not think we can say we are better than Nazi Germany or pre-apartheid South Africa when we have the same racist foundations here.  The imaginary "home field advantage" has lulled Americans into thinking we are exceptional.  But American exceptionalism is an idolatrous heresy.  History shows there is not significant difference between us/US and the most oppressive of regimes.

Pearl Harbor was tragic.  But 80 times as many people died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Can a moral person really claim one American life is as valuable as 80 Japanese lives?  The Holocaust was demonic and damnable, but we forget that the westward expansion of this country led to the death of millions of indigenous persons here--I have read it is estimated to be 100 million.  I think this is the national form of a log in our own eye versus a speck in someone else's eye.

One time they asked Hitler where he got his ideas and he said from the United States and how they treated the indigenous people and the slaves. We are deceived if we think our society is any more morally just than Germany in the 1930s or South Africa before the end of apartheid. The United States is no better than that, and while I'm at it, neither is Israel.

There is no "home field advantage."

Why Critical Race Theory Matters

I was astounded the other day to see that in some states, of which Florida is the preeminent example, there is an attempt to totally whitewash history--pun intended--and eliminate discussion of race.

The specific example which appalled me was a comment from someone in the DeSantis administration in Florida who suggested Florida school children be taught about the Montgomery bus boycott without any mention of race. That is impossible to do! The entire reason for the boycott had to do with race! I thought--what on earth are they thinking?

In the first place, Critical Race Theory (CRT), which conservatives are legislating not be taught in K-12 schools, is already NOT TAUGHT in K-12 schools.  It is taught in law schools, and in some theological schools.  I remember the first time I learned about it was as a seminarian studying Christian Social Ethics under Dr. Wilmer Cooper at the Earlham School of Religion in 1983. 

In general, my impression is that those who think CRT is being taught to schoolchildren do not really even understand what CRT is.  They complain that they don't want white children to feel a lot of guilt.  I happen to think that is short-sighted.  I think white guilt is an essential component to correcting the injustice which is a direct result of the white supremacy which is this country's rai·son d'ê·tre.

Critical Race Theory is a theory of how racial differences have consciously and even subconsciously effected law and society.  The idea is that racism is so "baked into the cake" that it is there even when people do not have a conscious awareness of being racist personally.  It deals with things like disparities in education, healthcare, employment, wealth, and housing policies.  It is about things like redlining, and what happened in Tulsa 100 years ago.  It is about things like the Montgomery bus boycott--and the policies of the bus company which caused it.

Because CRT looks at systemic racism, white folks should welcome it.  Rather than deny that systemic racism exists--which I think basically everyone knows is not true anyway--a realization that the problem is systemic and not personal should motivate people to do two things:

1. Realize that they do not have to feel bad, because they are living as beneficiaries of a racist system they did not create, and
2. Work to dismantle the racist system of which they are beneficiaries, even though they did not create it.

This is why the recent Supreme Court decision on affirmative action is so disturbing.  Affirmative Action strikes a blow at the real problem, which is systemic in nature and not personal.

I get really upset when people try to say we need to turn to Jesus (which we do) and have Jesus change our hearts (which we need) with the view that the problem is what is in the human heart. That view is naïve, and inaccurate.  Racism in the heart is not the problem.  Not even close.

When it comes to bigotry, systemic bigotry is always the real battlefield. The guy down the street from you with a beer belly, wearing sleeveless white T-shirts and using offensive slurs for some groups of people is not the real problem here.  He is a problem, I am not saying he is not.  But he is not, nor are all the people like him, the root cause of inequality and injustice.  

The policies which make it more difficult for people of color, or the LGBTQ community, or any other class of minority or disadvantaged persons have a more difficult time in education, economic well-being, and so on, are FAR GREATER A PROBLEM than the Archie Bunker type of guy who lives near you, or is your uncle or something like that.   It is far easier to take that guy as some crazy old coot and write him off, than it is to "make something of yourself" while you are not afforded the same economic or educational opportunities as some other groups.  It is the POLICIES, the systemic racism, doing harm.  The heart stuff is far less problematic because, like I said, some crazy bigot is not the cause of the major harm.

If people understood CRT, they would welcome it, I think.  I think people should welcome it no matter who they are because it properly places the focus on where the real harm is occurring.  This is not about emotions, it is about justice.  CRT should be something white people welcome because, if they understood it, they would know the problem here is not a heart thing, it is a legal thing. And laws should be easier to change than people's hearts.

The people who say the problem is in the human heart are right about one thing...there is a HUGE problem in their hearts.  They LIKE systemic racism and the privileges appertaining thereto.  I know this because many of the same people espouse REPLACEMENT THEORY.  For them, the goal of some insidious groups which, racists they are, the identify explicitly (one of the most often cited is "the Jews") are trying to bring in so many non-white minorities as to make this country a majority minority country in which the political power of white persons is severely eroded. I do not think this is anything more than a conspiracy theory.  But the people who oppose CRT are all for it.  One can oppose CRT and be totally down with REPLACEMENT THEORY, and evidently the irony of the hypocrisy of this is lost on them.

Anniversary Blessings and Haunting Memories

 

Today is the 38th anniversary of my wife Gay and myself.  We were married on July 14, 1985 at the Caldwell Chapel of Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, with Rev. Gordon Lilly officiating, while I was a student at the Southern Baptist Seminary across the street.  I knew of other Southern Seminary students who went across Lexington Road to get married because Southern's Chapel was maybe four or five times as big as the one at "Prez." I took a course over there, in Historical Theology, while at Southern.

I have written about this experience on Facebook, but I wanted to write about it here this year.  It was almost a miracle that I ever was married, because at the time I was  in what I now call a cult group, Revival for Our Day under the leadership of Rev. Loran Helm.  Rev. Helm claimed to be an apostle.  I came to believe over time he was a false apostle, and I actually now even question whether he really served Jesus Christ at all.  While claiming to love everyone in the world just as Jesus does, he exhibited toward me, and I think toward others, a meanness and hatefulness and judgementalism which were the exact opposite of what he claimed.

Rev. Helm thought we should always rely on God's direct guidance and never on human knowledge.  His scriptural exegesis was awful.  And there never was any kind of liturgy or order of worship in his meetings.  He would literally ask God to reveal to him, step-by-step, what should be next in the service, Scripture, preaching, prayer, testimony, music, offering.  He said we cannot do it according to our own ideas.  Every moment in a worship service has to be God's direct leading. Looking back, I believe liturgy is what God ordained and what pleases God most.  I think Helm did the very thing he accused others of.  He took his own ideas for the mind of God.  He was a dangerous man.

He wrote a book entitled A Voice in the Wilderness.  I wrote  about the spiritual abuse I went through at his hands and in this group, which were meted out by him, and by his right-hand man, who happened to be my pastor, Oliver C. Hogue.  My book about my time in this group is available on Amazon.  The title, playing off his book title, is The Wilderness I Left Behind.

What this guy would do is tell people what "God's will" for them was.  This was in spite of his saying, in his book, a spiritual person never tells people what to do.  But he would tell people where "the Holy Spirit" has revealed they were to go college, what career to pursue, who to marry, (sometimes people broke up with someone they had been dating, and married someone else in a few days time, just because they were told the Lord had revealed to the leadership that this was God's will.)  The divorce rate in this group was astronomical!  

I have been with this guy when he ran his fingers over a vending machine, asking God to reveal to him what soft-drink he should drink that day.  I have been with him when he would look at someone in the congregation and say, "God has called you to preach the Gospel."  And they would be in a ministry role within a  few days sometimes, with no formal preparation at all.  This approach left a string of physical, emotional, and spiritual carnage.  He destroyed some persons' lives.

I knew I was called to ministry before I met this guy and got involved in the group.  But he and my pastor both said they did not believe I was.  I was told that because of my cerebral palsy I was not suitable for marriage.  When Gay and I got married he was so offended he had no use for me after that.  He had actually forbidden me to marry without his personal approval.  When the Lord made it apparent to me that I was to marry Gay, I was not going to give him a veto.  I was not going to even consult him.   He got an invitation to our wedding and he was offended that I was getting married.  He called another minister to ask about the situation but did not have the decency--he was not man enough--to call me.  I think if he had called, and had told me not to do this, I would have by then told him where he could shove that idea.

So here we are, 38 years later.  I earned two seminary degrees, served as pastor of five congregations in three states, was a college professor and dean, a Christian publishing executive editor, and an author.  We own our own home and my credit rating is in the 98th percentile nationally.   God has blessed is with two wonderful children, who have been a physician and  a college professor.  (In fact she was a professor at the place where Loran Helm graduated.  God has a sense of humor.)

Gay and I have a wonderful marriage.  Not easy, but wonderful.  I am not easy to live with, having cerebral palsy and  Parkinson's disease and diabetes and an INTJ personality at the same time.  I am not always in a good frame of mind, and not always in good humor, but Gay has been a rock.  She has loved me and supported me and stuck with me when many would not have.  Loran told me he did not know of a woman godly enough and holy enough and loving enough to love me, and he was right--because he did not know Gay.  But he had no business telling me that stuff.  I believe the way he treated me--alone--is enough to prove he was a  liar.  He did not love everyone the way Jesus did.  Jesus would never had said such things to me.

And even though he died 17 years ago, he still has a devoted cult following.   That is so painful for me to realize.  I wish everyone who knew him would denounce him.  He is as much an abuser as any Catholic priest ever was, even if he did not commit sexual abuse.  If his memory is washed away that would suit me fine.

 

Good Evangelicalism vs Toxic Evangelicalism

 I am a former evangelical.  I no longer wear that identity, after having become Roman Catholic 12 years ago.  But prior to that I spent decades as an evangelical Quaker pastor.

This post is a follow up to my previous post, Why Every Christian Should Repudiate Biblical Inerrancy.  These thoughts gelled pretty quickly as I responded to a Patheos blog piece by my good friend, Rev. Rob Schenck.

Rob was addressing how evangelicals have become, in my words, "truth-challenged."  His opening sentence to his piece said, "American evangelicals have a problem with the truth."  I think I might go farther than Rob does.  I think American evangelicals have repudiated the very idea of truth.  

When Kellyanne Conway made her infamous "alternative facts" comment shortly after the Trump inauguration in 2017, I was mortified.  Ms. Conway was known in evangelical circles and in the pro-life movement as a leader and spokesperson.  With a background in philosophy, and an awareness of the importance of the law of non-contradiction, which is the principle that two contradictory statements can both be false but they cannot both be true, I considered the statement about "alternative facts" to be the most offensive and dangerous statement I had ever heard.  I wrote this at that time:

This alternate reality did not begin with the inauguration of a new President.  It did not begin with his campaign in the summer of 2015.  It has been with us for a while, as the popularity of radio personalities like Alex Jones attests.  I believe the reason we ended up with a post-fact President is that we have been becoming, for some time now, a post fact society…where “I have my truth and you have your truth.”  That statement is blasphemous to me, I think it rapes the word truth, and renders it practically useless.  Francis Schaeffer, a philosopher with whom I mostly disagree, said one thing which I think any thinking person should agree with—we need to be able to talk in terms of what he calls “true” truth!

I think there is a direct connection between evangelicals being "truth-challenged," and therefore being willing to live in a world of "alternative facts" and the very definition of evangelicalism.  In one decade of my life, I saw that definition dramatically change.  I want to contrast what I will call "Evangelicalism One" with what I will call "Evangelicalism Two."  Because of the two seminaries I attended, I had a front-row seat to see this shift which made good evangelicalism into toxic evangelicalism.

I learned what "Evangelicalism One" was as I was a student at Earlham School of Religion.  ESR was not explicitly evangelical but there were some evangelical students.  I was under the tutelage of the Quaker philosopher D. Elton Trueblood, who was as he put it, an evangelical because of the fact that his faith was Christ-centered.  In the sense of evangelicalism he offered, through the ministry of Yokefellows International, in which I was quite involved, you could be an evangelical no matter what your faith tradition, whether you were involved in a liturgical church (even Roman Catholicism), or a more free-church tradition, or even an unprogrammed Quaker meeting.  This kind of evangelicalism was grounded in the good news--the evangel--of Jesus Christ.  Anyone who was centered on Christ was an evangelical.  It could be someone like Francis Schaeffer, D. James Kennedy (who spoke at one of our annual conferences), James Dobson, or even someone like Karl Barth or William Sloane Coffin.  

Then I transferred to the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville.  Elton told me he thought I was going to the best seminary in the world.  It was wonderful.  But a few months in, a storm began brewing as Southern Baptists began their civil war over the inerrancy of the Bible.  Last week I explained why an inerrant Bible is an immoral idea which every Christian should repudiate. 

As  time went on, the inerrantists got the upper hand and complete control of the seminary and the convention.  This led to what I will call "Evangelicalism Two."  No longer would it be enough to profess faith in Christ.  Now you had to believe in Christ AND the inerrancy of the Bible or you were not even considered Christian. 

The big problem is, as I said last week, placing your faith in a book instead of in the person and work of Jesus Christ is  a  house of cards.  I have heard people say you have to be able to take the whole Bible literally or you cannot trust any of it.  I think that is balderdash.  As we made our way through the COVID epidemic, conservative, evangelical Christians were largely anti-vaccine and anti-mask.  My good friend I mention above, Rev. Rob Schenck took a great deal of abuse from his fellow evangelicals for encouraging people to mask and to be vaccinated.  Rob was right though, the command of our Lord to love our neighbor as ourselves required us to get vaccinated unless there was a physical health condition which indicated vaccination could harm the recipient.  

No religious objection to the vaccine could be justified. This is not like conscientious objection to war. The conscientious objector to war is trying to follow Jesus' teachings and love her neighbor as herself. The anti-vaxxer or anti-masker is trying to love himself at the expense of his neighbor.  Anti-vaxxers wanted to let people turn their bodies into weapons of mass destruction, and anti-maskers wanted to let them indiscriminately point those weapons at whoever they came in contact with.

I think the root of this resistance to science in Evangelicalism Two is a direct consequence of things like the Scopes monkey trials.  In the name of biblical literalism, a seed of distrust of science was planted, and the response of Evangelicalism Two to the pandemic is part of the fruit of that seed.

I have seen people I once respected move from Evangelicalism One to 
Evangelicalism Two, and it is one of the most heartbreaking things I have ever witnessed.

I love Evangelicalism One.  I do not think Evangelicalism Two can be redeemed.  I think it has put itself beyond the reach of even the grace of God.  I think the only way for those in Evangelicalism Two to find redemption is to realize their prodigality and get up from the pig-pen and return home.

Why Every Christian Should Repudiate Biblical Inerrancy

I was a student at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in the mid-1980s as the Southern Baptist Convention had its war over the inerrancy of the Bible.  People at the school who knew me, generally thought of me as someone who had friends, and talked with people on both sides.  I tried hard to do that, even though I saw clearly that what the conservatives were doing was wrong.  I think it was wrong academically and also wrong morally.

The current president of the seminary, R. Albert Mohler, was a student when I was there, and was on the moderate side of things.  He became a conservative when he saw that as his path to the seminary presidency.  I do not trust Al or have any respect for him whatsoever.  I think he sold his soul.  As one of our classmates said about him in a documentary, "Al Mohler is not a fundamentalist.  Al Mohler is an opportunist."  

The seminary went through a profound and dramatic change, and not for the better.  I am retiring from teaching philosophy of religion and ethics at a community college in just about three weeks.  I remember my supervisor came to me one time with a transcript for a potential adjunct faculty member and said, "See, this guy went to the same school you did.  What do you think?"  I said, "No, he did not go to the same school I did.  Same name, same campus, but a vastly different school."

In 1985, when I transferred to the seminary after leaving Earlham School of  Religion, a Quaker Seminary in Indiana, my mentor, D. Elton Trueblood told me he thought I was going to perhaps the best seminary in the world.  I make a joke of this fact, I grew up Baptist, went to a Quaker seminary, transferred to a Baptist seminary, and became a Quaker pastor.  The seminary, after I was there, went from being a world-class theological seminary to being a third-rate indoctrination mill.  I do not think it is any better now than Luther Rice Seminary.  I told my supervisor, when he showed me the file of the potential adjunct I mentioned above, that when I was there, the seminary was like Yale or Harvard, and now it is like Liberty University.  It makes me grieve.

I grew up with a belief in biblical inerrancy, and part of the reason I took a year and a half off, and then transferred seminaries, is because learning to read scripture and interpret it, and realizing it is not inerrant, precipitated a real crisis of faith for me.   It was without doubt the darkest and most painful time of my life.  But I needed to go through this in order to see how flimsy my own faith was, and what I needed to do about it. It was one of the best things which ever happened to me.

When the topic of Scripture comes up in my Philosophy of Religion class, I do not permit Scripture quoting, at all, in student written work, because I realize that just because something is in the Bible, that does not insure its truth or accuracy.  In fact we know there are historical inaccuracies in the Bible. One cannot get past the second page of the Bible without realizing this, as we see in this chart:

Now this was painful for me to realize.  It called my entire faith into question, which is part of why, for any of my readers who may have known me at Earlham School of Religion, I left.  It took me many months to figure out that I had placed my faith in a book, in a written word, instead of Christ, the Word of God.  A faith based on a book is a house of cards.  Pastors and teachers and churches have done a disservice to congregants by presenting this kind of faith.  It is like the song we made fun of this kind of faith with, on the other side of this experience. "My hope is built on nothing less than Scofield's notes and Moody Press."  That is sad but true, it is the kind of faith I grew up with, and it does not withhold intellectual scrutiny well.  So churches set many of their youth up for disillusionment and that is lamentable.

Like I said, I don't even permit Scripture quotes when I teach Philosophy of Religion, because instead of looking at the philosophical arguments for God's existence, we could get into a spitting contest about whose verse trumps whose.  Does my passage from the Book of Mormon trump your Old Testament quote?  That cannot be answered philosophically because if you have book A which claims to be the Word of God, to the exclusion of other books, and book B, which makes the same claim, there is no intellectually credible way to adjudicate that dispute.  The only way it can be done is by presupposing one's own view is right.  I think presuppositional apologetics is a moral and intellectual disaster.  That might be a future topic for this blog.  But saying something is true because the Bible says so is like this:

People often ask me why I am so passionate about this?  There are two reasons.

First, I do not want to contribute to people needlessly hanging on to a false idea of what the Bible is, longer than they need to.  I love the Bible as much as anyone I know, and have spent as much time in it as anyone I know.  I began reading Scripture intensively in 1974, and basically have not missed a day of Bible reading since, except maybe 2 or 3 days where I was really sick. I  figure I am closing in on 18,000 days of Bible reading.  But it was so freeing to get past what I had been taught so that I could see/hear what God was saying, with more comprehension.  I wish that for others.

Second, I think this is a moral issue.  I do not think the Bible only has historical inaccuracies, but moral ones too.  I think there are times when they thought they knew what God was saying to them, I mean the biblical authors, but just like us, sometimes they got it right and sometimes they got it wrong. I think Jesus saw this clearly.  In the Sermon on the Mount he says over and over, "You have heard that it was said...but now I say to you..."  He knew much of what they thought God had revealed to them did not reflect the heart of God, and he had to set the record straight.  I was taught in my fundamentalist, literalist upbringing that the Sermon on the Mount did not apply to Christians, it only applied to Jews who would live in Israel in a future millennium.  Well, there is no millennium, and this way of handling the Sermon on the Mount amounts to giving people a pass to be unloving.

I do not think God ever commanded anyone to kill anyone.  I do not think God ever wanted anyone plundered.  I do not think God ever intended women to be subordinate to men in anything.  I do not think God ever forced anyone to do anything against their will. I do not think God ever approved of the awful treatment all through history LGBTQ+ people have received.  I think God made some of us that way, just like God made some of us with blue or brown eyes. I do not think God ever favored one nation above another.  None of these are consistent with God being a God of love.  

When I was a Quaker pastor in Iowa, in 1998, I interviewed with a group  of United Methodist district superintendents about becoming a Methodist pastor.  One of the superintendents, an impeccably dressed, handsome, dignified African-American man, took me to the story of Noah's sons and asked me what I thought about people using Genesis to justify the way his people had been treated--did the "curse of Ham" justify racism?  I told him, first of all, I do not take that Genesis story literally.  Secondly, St. Paul says Jesus, in his death, delivered us from the curse of the law--I think Jesus came to deliver us from all curses.  He told me he liked my answer.

Biblical literalism leads straight to moral injustices like racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, nationalism, ableism.  All of these and more have been "justified" with the selective use of Scripture by people who do not know how to handle Scripture. The founder of the Quakers, George Fox, tells a story of preaching somewhere and the church members were so upset at his message they took a huge pulpit Bible and hit him in the face with it until he bled.  People still hit each other over the head with the Bible. Giving some people the Bible to weaponize is as dangerous as giving a toddler a hand grenade with the pin pulled.

People who put their faith in a book, instead of the one who the book is supposed to point us to, end up with a poor knowledge of both the book and the Word.