A POTENT STEW: RACISM, SLAVERY AND BAD RELIGION

               

There is a movement afoot in this country- a movement that is so vile and evil that, just a few years ago, I would have accused anyone who reported it of being a conspiracy theorist.  That movement is to justify slavery as a first step, I believe, toward re-instituting it.

The most troubling aspect of this neo-slavery movement is that its proponents are not (ostensibly) Klansmen or Neo –Nazis.  They are pillars of the community, businessmen and women; talk show hosts with millions of followers, and at least one presidential candidate, Michelle Bachman.

Consider that the Texas Board of Education just a year ago tried to eliminate the word “slavery” from the slave trade in textbooks and rename it the “Atlantic triangular trade.”  There were a lot of other silly lies this Board wanted instituted in the textbooks as well, such as the large role Christianity played in the actions of the founding fathers (Most of the were Deists).   There is a strange but NOT funny irony in Texas folks denying slavery, considering all the propaganda with which we’ve been assaulted purporting how brave Texans died for freedom.  The part the propaganda leaves out is that the freedom for which they died was the freedom to own slaves!

Then there is the pledge, signed by presidential candidate, Michelle Bachman, yes, the very same Michelle Bachman who said Obama had failed Black people.  Part of that pledge stated that a black child born in slavery had a better chance of having two parents than one born today.  This same Woman Who Would BE President kept on her list of “must read” books, a tome that asserted that Black people were blessed to have been enslaved and that race relations were excellent during slavery!  (I couldn’t make this up if I tried)

 And what blog on ignorant racism would be complete without a reference to Glenn Beck who has added his own creative interpretation of slavery.  Beck has, astonishingly, asserted that Blacks in America had the option of resettling in Liberia or staying here, and that things couldn’t have been that bad during slavery or else all those Black folks would not have opted to stay!

It is difficult to get one’s head around the enormity of the lies these people are perpetrating.  Ever since Barak Obama became president, these people have discarded any parameters on the lying and have gone off the deep end proclaiming Obama to be an anti-imperialist Kenyan, a Muslim, a racist, and basically anything  else they could think of.

Yet what might be most troubling about all this outlandish lying (other than the fact that the media treats these people with respect) lies in the fact that they all have at least one thing in common: they are all allegedly devout Christians.  All three of the major religions, Christianity, Judaism and Islam, have produced movements and individuals who have stood for peace, kindness, justice and all that sane people hold dear.  They have also provided the rationale for chattel slavery, genocide and oppression.

So why are some religious people so loving while others, while praying to the same God, so hateful and violent?  The answer lies in whether the religion is based in any kind of spirituality.  More and more people are coming to understand that while religion and spirituality can and often do intersect, they are not the same thing.  Religion is basically a belief in a specific dogma.  Christians believe that God, in the form of His Son, sacrificed Himself for the redemption of our sins.  Jews believe in the God of the Old Testament.  And Muslims believe that Mohammed was the true prophet of God, whose proper name is Allah.  Spirituality can be found within the teachings of all three of these religions, although it is not tied to any particular dogma.

Religionists without spirituality are arrogant and judgmental.  They seek to remain separate from others to whom they feel superior.  They cannot learn from history because they are constantly rewriting it.   They ignore Scriptures that condemn their arrogance, like Luke 18:11.   They often presume to speak for God, attributing natural disasters to God’s wrath at those whom they disdain.  Remember Pat Robertson gleefully explaining the earthquake in Haiti as God’s retribution for the Haitians making a deal with the Devil during their revolution?  Michelle Bachman just stated that Hurricane Irene was God telling Washington to cut spending. (She later claimed to have been joking).

Several years ago, at the request of some alienated and isolated African American students, I delivered a lecture on spirituality at a conservative Christian College just outside Chicago.   I began- I thought innocuously- by stating that the first law of spirituality is that we all have more in common than that which separates us and that we should understand that for the majority of people their particular religion is an accident of birth; people born in Islamic countries tend to be Muslims and people born in Christian countries tend to be Christians.  The reaction could not have been stronger had I tried to kill them.   Little did I realize that by saying we are all the same, I was attacking the very foundation of all they held dear: their status as God’s Chosen People.

We are now faced with a new and invigorated army of slavery advocates.  I cannot overstate how evil it is for people to try to justify one of-if not the greatest- moral stains on the soul of the planet.  They can look themselves in the mirror and go to church every week because, rather than serve God; they are served by a God (of their own invention) Whose sole purpose is to feed their greed and insecurities.  Many members of my generation feel that they have marched and protested enough.  They just want to live comfortably.  Quite understandable.  But these neo-slavery advocates demand vigilance.  

If I could sum up the antidote to these fools, I’d quote a personal hero of mine, the ridiculously profound African American theologian, Howard Thurman, who once said, “I always look for my own scent when I meet another man.”