Read on Twitter
Christian friends, please don’t play the “not real Christians” card here. Reckon w/how Christianity is used to justify this, justified slavery, the Inquisition, the Crusades, the Holocaust, colonialism. Take responsibility for your tradition’s harms & yr privilege today. 1/x https://twitter.com/terawhunter/status/1350813417247039494
I know it’s tempting to just want to cut back to the teachings of Jesus, to St. Francis, to Merton and Dr. King and James Cone and everyone else preaching about love and justice and care for one another.
I get it! I would love to ignore the bad stuff in my tradition and problematic and downright horrible stuff done by my co-religionists in the name of Judaism. But it’s not the way of honest reckoning and grappling. It’s not the way of facing true things.
AND denying the fact that these guys are also taking one of the (toxic) threads of Christian history makes it impossible to grapple with those threads, deal with them, address what’s here now.
And it’s a kind of gaslighting. “Oh, the Crusades? The Easter pogroms? The pro-Holocaust theology? The genocides & cultural genocides (are those different? Maybe not) of colonialism? Not Real Christians.” My ancestors murdered in the name of the Gospel would like a word.
I know there is wonderful, powerful, liberatory Christianity. I am a big fan of many of its teachers. I believe that the best and most holy of it acknowledges and grapples with the horrors perpetrated in Jesus’ name. In any case, white nationalist Christianity is a thing. Now.
Of course you can’t undo what has been done. But that doesn’t mean there cannot be real reckoning and repentance work around the past, and real accountability demands for the present. And the transformative work needed for tomorrow to be different.
This, yes, thank you. https://twitter.com/charliemachi/status/1350858949705297920
