Predictably, the religious right is shocked — shocked I say! — at Obama’s recitation of the many sins committed by Christianity over the centuries. And it has nothing to do with politics! It just happens that one of the more recent sins, slavery, was egged on precisely by the very confederacy that now makes up an inordinate amount of right-wing opposition to progressive policies and is whining about this. Can someone please assume the martyr position?
Crooks and Liars — Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Sunday declared that all slavery in the world had been eradicated thanks to the Christian faith.
At the National Prayer Breakfast last week, conservatives accused President Barack Obama of comparing Christianity to the Islamic terrorist group ISIS when he observed that many religions had been used to justify violence throughout history.“So we’re responsible for the Crusades a thousand years ago?” Carlson complained. “Who’s ‘us’ anyway? And by the way, who ended slavery and Jim Crow? Christians. The Rev. Martin Luther King. Christians.” “Christianity is the reason we don’t have slavery in the world today,” he added. “I mean, talk about ahistorical.”
Yes, many abolitionists were motivated in part by their faith. Which is a perfectly fair point to make — and in fact that’s the whole point Obama was making. That there were and are powerful, moderate factions within Christianity, that one of these factions prevailed in the US over southern extremists and sympathizers — who went on to drag the entire nation into a bloody, horrible Civil War in their fruitless quest to preserve slavery, but that’s a story for another day. And that maybe, we can all hope, similar moderate factions will prevail in Islam, preferably with even less senseless slaughter and misery than the Inquisition and Crusades and the antebellum south and whatever else I’m missing. Although imo, hoping Islam will pull that off with even less bloodshed is quite a lot to hope for at this point. But I guess putting those comments in context would screw up a perfectly good chance to fan the flames of Obama hatred, and we can’t have that.
The fact is, slavery was an honorable trade in the ancient near east back when the Bible was written. There’s little in the Bible explicitly condoning slavery, but there’s plenty that seems to just assume it exists and nothing should be done about it beyond calling for a little humane treatment. The Old Testament sure sounds comfortable with the idea, and that fact didn’t escape the notice of some southern preachers back in the say who justified slavery right from the pulpit.
It’s apparently a well-known fact in conservative circles that none of the southern slave owners called themselves Christians or used the Bible to justify owning slaves. None. In fact, they were all closet Muslims! So were the Crusaders. And, um, everybody we don’t like.
But those bad history people sure weren’t Jews! Christians and Jews get along just great, and I’m pretty sure they always have. Right? Right?
@ ^ brucegee1962 : Well no, not really :
Source : http://remember.org/History.root.classical.html
Plus there’s this long list of historical low lights here : http://www.religioustolerance.org/jud_pers2.htm
In addition to this:
http://www.ushmm.org/research/the-center-for-advanced-holocaust-studies/programs-ethics-religion-the-holocaust/articles-and-resources/christian-persecution-of-jews-over-the-centuries
among many other articles , books and more on the whole awful history of inhumanity to other people.
Hmm .. see :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDgCnoCMf9k
and Leviticus 25:44-46.
I wonder if that will give Carlson any insight into how a lot of Muslims feel because they’d say very similar complaints about a lot that’s said against them :
““So we’re responsible for the all modern terrorism? Who’s ‘us’ anyway? And by the way, who are also mostly the victims of and mostly fighting against Islamic terrorism? Moderate Muslims.”
I personally think that if you use a voluntary label to describe yourself which is popularly known to have committed historical atrocities you have at the very least volunteered yourself to be reponsible for agreeing or disagreeing with the historical things people did with that label. I don’t think you need to defend historical viewoints but you should be able to at least talk about them enough to say whether you’re pro or con on the ideas. Bringing up these atrocities yourself just so you can act the martyr has several problems not the least of which is to make light of them and the issue you’re ducking by bringing them up.
@ lanir : Huh? Who are you talking to here? Is that supposed to be addressing Stephen “DarkSyde” Andrew blog post or my comment(s) in response? Really not sure who and what you are talking about there.