Category Archives: Religion

The Original Sin

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These are the opening and closing paragraphs of a review in The New York Review of Books (the review is “Uncanny Planet” by Mark O’Connor; the book is Second Nature: Scenes from a World Remade by Nathaniel Rich):

In the opening lines of the Bible, having brought forth the world and everything in it, God makes his inaugural address to Adam and Eve. “Be fruitful, and multiply,” he tells them, “and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” God’s first, foundational decree explicitly casts the relationship between humanity and nature as one of separation and control. The whole sorry business with the serpent, the forbidden fruit, and the banishment doesn’t come about for another two chapters, but if you were in the mood for a little heretical revisionism you might argue, just for fun, that the true original sin can be located not in man’s first disobedience, but in God’s first command.

The attitude toward nature that He defines and sanctifies with those words is, after all, precisely the attitude that led human beings to exploit nature so ruthlessly, and for so long, that the planet is now in danger of becoming unlivable for vast numbers of its inhabitants, both human and nonhuman. Our adherence to this view of the world and our place within it, in other words, has amounted to its own kind of Fall. . . .

[The first line of Stewart Brand’s original Whole Earth Catalog — “We are as gods and we might as well get good at it” —] recalls Francis Bacon’s characterization of his scientific work, and by implication that of the scientific method itself, as rescuing humanity from its fallen state. Bacon saw science and technology as the means by which we could reclaim our former oneness with the divine. The “true ends of knowledge,” he wrote, were in

a restitution and reinvesting (in great part) of man to the sovereignty and power (for whensoever he shall be able to call creatures by their true names he shall again command them) which he had in his first state of creation.

The path of knowledge that led us out of Eden will, if we follow it long enough, eventually lead us back. . . . 

Though Rich’s book is hardly what you’d call a polemic, the stories in it gather toward an argument, which could be seen as a less nakedly utopian version of Bacon’s aims. There are over 7.5 billion of us on a rapidly warming planet; the seas are rising, the forests are burning, and every year hundreds of species go the way of the passenger pigeon. There is no reversing the Fall. There is no going back to whatever might be meant by “nature.” We must become “as gods,” not in order to return to a state of prelapsarian wholeness, but to move forward to some kind of livable future.

Some of Them Are Merely Religious Fanatics

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One of America’s leading villains is Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri. He’s well-educated and apparently smart. Nevertheless, he insists the election was stolen. That’s him giving a fist of solidarity to the seditionists before the riot.

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Katherine Stewart, who has studied the religious right for years, explains why he’s willing to tell big lies. In addition to his political ambition, he’s serving what he sees as a higher truth:

In today’s Republican Party, the path to power is to build up a lie in order to overturn democracy. At least that is what Senator Josh Hawley was telling us when he offered a clenched-fist salute to the pro-Trump mob before it ransacked the Capitol, and it is the same message he delivered on the floor of the Senate in the aftermath of the attack, when he doubled down on the lies about electoral fraud that incited the insurrection in the first place. How did we get to the point where one of the bright young stars of the Republican Party appears to be at war with both truth and democracy?

Mr. Hawley himself, as it happens, has been making the answer plain for some time. It’s just a matter of listening to what he has been saying.

In multiple speeches, an interview and a widely shared article for Christianity Today, Mr. Hawley has explained that the blame for society’s ills traces all the way back to Pelagius — a British-born monk who lived 17 centuries ago. In a 2019 commencement address at The King’s College, a small conservative Christian college devoted to “a biblical worldview,” Mr. Hawley denounced Pelagius for teaching that human beings have the freedom to choose how they live their lives and that grace comes to those who do good things, as opposed to those who believe the right doctrines.

The most eloquent summary of the Pelagian vision, Mr. Hawley went on to say, can be found in the Supreme Court’s 1992 opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Mr. Hawley specifically cited Justice Anthony Kennedy’s words: “At the heart of liberty,” Kennedy wrote, “is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” The fifth century church fathers were right to condemn this terrifying variety of heresy, Mr. Hawley argued: “Replacing it and repairing the harm it has caused is one of the challenges of our day.”

In other words, Mr. Hawley’s idea of freedom is the freedom to conform to what he and his preferred religious authorities know to be right. Mr. Hawley is not shy about making the point explicit. In a 2017 speech to the American Renewal Project, he declared — paraphrasing the Dutch Reformed theologian . . . Abraham Kuyper — “There is not one square inch of all creation over which Jesus Christ is not Lord.” Mr. Kuyper is perhaps best known for his claim that Christianity has sole legitimate authority over all aspects of human life.

“We are called to take that message into every sphere of life that we touch, including the political realm,” Mr. Hawley said. “That is our charge. To take the Lordship of Christ, that message, into the public realm, and to seek the obedience of the nations. Of our nation!”

Mr. Hawley has built his political career among people who believe that Shariah is just around the corner even as they attempt to secure privileges for their preferred religious groups to discriminate against those of whom they disapprove. Before he won election as a senator, he worked for Becket, a legal advocacy group that often coordinates with the right-wing legal juggernaut the Alliance Defending Freedom. He is a familiar presence on the Christian right media circuit.

The American Renewal Project, which hosted the event where Mr. Hawley delivered the speech I mentioned earlier, was founded by David Lane, a political organizer who has long worked behind the scenes to connect conservative pastors and Christian nationalist figures with politicians. The choice America faces, according to Mr. Lane, is “to be faithful to Jesus or to pagan secularism.”

The line of thought here is starkly binary and nihilistic. It says that human existence in an inevitably pluralistic, modern society committed to equality is inherently worthless. It comes with the idea that a right-minded elite of religiously pure individuals should aim to capture the levers of government, then use that power to rescue society from eternal darkness and reshape it in accord with a divinely-approved view of righteousness [“be faithful to Jesus or to pagan secularism”].

At the heart of Mr. Hawley’s condemnation of our terrifyingly Pelagian world lies a dark conclusion about the achievements of modern, liberal, pluralistic societies. When he was still attorney general, William Barr articulated this conclusion in a speech at the University of Notre Dame Law School, where he blamed “the growing ascendancy of secularism” for amplifying “virtually every measure of social pathology,” and maintained that “free government was only suitable and sustainable for a religious people.”

Christian nationalists’ acceptance of President Txxxx’s spectacular turpitude these past four years was a good measure of just how dire they think our situation is. Even a corrupt sociopath was better, in their eyes, than the horrifying freedom that religious moderates and liberals, along with the many Americans who don’t happen to be religious, offer the world.

That this neo-medieval vision is incompatible with constitutional democracy is clear. But in case you’re in doubt, consider where some of the most militant and coordinated support for Mr. Txxxx’s post-election assault on the American constitutional system has come from. The Conservative Action Project, . . . which serves as a networking organization for America’s religious and economic right-wing elite, made its position clear in a statement issued a week before the insurrection.

It called for members of the Senate to “contest the electoral votes” from Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and other states that were the focus of Republicans’ baseless allegations. Among the signatories was Cleta Mitchell, the lawyer who advised Mr. Trump and participated in the president’s call on Jan. 2 with Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state. . . .

Although many of the foot soldiers in the assault on the Capitol appear to have been white males aligned with white supremacist movements, it would be a mistake to overlook the powerful role of the rhetoric of religious nationalism in their ranks. At a rally in Washington on Jan. 5, on the eve of Electoral College certification, the right-wing pastor Greg Locke said that God is raising up “an army of patriots.” Another pastor, Brian Gibson, put it this way: “The church of the Lord Jesus Christ started America,” and added, “We’re going to take our nation back!”

In the aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection, a number of Christian nationalist leaders issued statements condemning violence — on both sides. How very kind of them. But few if any appear willing to acknowledge the instrumental role they played in perpetuating the fraudulent allegations of a stolen election that were at the root of the insurrection.

They seem, like Mr. Hawley himself, to live in a post-truth environment. And this gets to the core of the Hawley enigma. The brash young senator styles himself not just a deep thinker who ruminates about late-Roman era heretics, but a man of the people, a champion of “the great American middle” . . . and a foe of the “ruling elite” . . .

Yet Mr. Hawley isn’t against elites per se. He is all for an elite, provided that it is a religiously righteous elite. He is a graduate of Stanford University and Yale Law School and he clerked for John Roberts, the chief justice. Mr. Hawley, in other words, is a successful meritocrat of the Federalist Society variety. His greatest rival in that department is the Princeton debater Ted Cruz. They are rĂ©sumĂ© jockeys in a system that rewards those who do the best job of mobilizing fear and irrationalism. . . .

Over the past few days, following his participation in the failed efforts to overturn the election, Mr. Hawley’s career prospects may have dimmed. Two of his home state newspapers have called for his resignation; his political mentor, John C. Danforth, a former Republican senator from Missouri, has described his earlier support for Mr. Hawley as “the biggest mistake I’ve ever made”; and Simon & Schuster dropped his book. On the other hand, there is some reporting that suggests his complicity in efforts to overturn the election may have boosted his standing with Mr. Txxxx’s base. But the question that matters is not whether Mr. Hawley stays or goes, but whether he is simply replaced by the next wannabe demagogue . . . 

Make no mistake: Mr. Hawley is a symptom, not a cause. He is a product of the same underlying forces that brought us President Txxxx and the present crisis of American democracy. Unless we find a way to address these forces and the fundamental pathologies that drive them, then next month or next year we will be forced to contend with a new and perhaps more successful version of Mr. Hawley.

Unquote.

Some of them believe white people, especially men, own America. Others believe lying isn’t a sin if it helps their religion own America. It’s important to know your enemy, but I can’t think of any other encouraging words.

You Could Call It the Spirit of Christmas

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This is part of an interview Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times did with theologian and activist Jim Wallis:

WALLIS: How I “take Christmas” is defined in the famous prayer by the mother of Jesus — Mary’s Magnificat: “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.” Meaning: The coming of Jesus is intended to turn things upside down. The power of the Bethlehem narrative includes the inn having no room for Mary and Joseph, and the lowly shepherds being the first witnesses of the new baby as hope for the world born in a manger with his homeless parents. This is not the conquering messiah many were hoping for, but one from the bottom of society in a time of political unrest and massive inequality — sort of like now.

KRISTOF: What is it with the modern evangelical movement? Historically, evangelicals were people like William Wilberforce, fighting to abolish slavery. More recently, they included Jimmy Carter. But these days the big cause of many evangelicals has been a philandering politician who rips children from parents at the border.

WALLIS: The word “evangel” comes from Jesus’ opening pledge to bring “good news” to the poor and let the oppressed go free. Txxxx evangelicals have turned Jesus’ message upside down. That’s called heresy. And, in the United States, this has created a toxic melding between white evangelicals and the Republican Party. We’ve seen the conversion of too many white evangelicals to the narcissistic and nationalistic cult of Txxxx, where the operative word in the phrase “white evangelical” is not “evangelical” but “white.”

KRISTOF: I struggle with this. I’ve seen conservative evangelicals do heroic work, including Chuck Colson’s work in prisons, and George W. Bush’s leadership in fighting AIDS in Africa that saved 20 million lives. But some of the grossest immorality of my life came when evangelicals like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson smirked at AIDS and resisted tackling the disease because it was killing gay people. How do we understand a faith that can produce so much good and so much evil?

WALLIS: The religious right leaders you name hijacked the word “evangelical.” Result: White evangelicalism has destroyed the “evangel.” When “evangelical” strays from the radical love of Jesus into hateful partisan faith, we see the worst.

KRISTOF: Do you think about abandoning the term “evangelical” because it has too much baggage?

WALLIS: I understand why so many have moved to “post-evangelical” or “adjacent evangelical” as the old term has become so tainted by right-wing politics and hypocrisy. Many of us call ourselves “followers of Jesus” who want to return to the original definition of a gospel that is good news to the poor. And we believe that any gospel that isn’t good news for the poor is simply not the gospel of Jesus Christ. Period. . . .

KRISTOF: But if faith drives your work on behalf of the poor, why does the same Scripture seem to lead others to cut funds for the homeless?

WALLIS: Because they aren’t reading those Scriptures with over 2000 verses in the Bible about the poor and oppressed! Those white evangelicals have cut all those texts out and their Bible is full of holes.

KRISTOF: For many evangelicals, the paramount political issue is abortion, which Jesus never directly mentions. What’s your take?

WALLIS: Abortion is used by the political right as a distraction from all the other issues that would entail a consistent ethic wherever human life and dignity are affected. Everyone in the “pro-life” and “pro-choice” polarizations should want to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies and abortions — and there are clear policies to do that, especially in support of low-income women

A Starting Point for the Rationalists

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I hear the president is on tape from months ago saying how dangerous the virus is, but that he didn’t want the public to know the facts (and protect themselves?). An impeachable offense, you say, if only his time wasn’t running out? He is also reported to have said that joining the military and possibly being killed or wounded is dumb. It’s the kind of thing losers do. And California has its worst wildfire in history as the globe keeps on warming. But I’m on a news vacation until November, so enough of that.

In May, I wrote about a philosopher, Michael Della Rocca, who argued in an interview that we should adopt monism, which I described as:

. . . the view that reality is somehow one thing; the universe doesn’t consist of many things (such as electrons and gluons, or apples and oranges). Neither does it consist of only a couple of things (like mind and matter).

I didn’t like his argument, which is why the post was called “Punished by a Philosopher”.

One of the things Prof. Della Rocca said was that the Principle of Sufficient Reason is crucial to understanding “rationalist” philosophers like Spinoza and Leibniz, and presumably Descartes, their predecessor:

Rationalism can mean lots of different things to different people, but for me the Principle of Sufficient Reason (the PSR) is central to rationalism. The PSR is the principle according to which there are no brute facts that obtain or no things that exist without an explanation. That is, each thing or each fact has an explanation. The PSR is the guiding force of Leibniz’s and Spinoza’s work. . . 

I was reminded of Prof. Della Rocca’s interview when I read an interview with another philosopher at the same site. John Carriero is also an expert on the rationalist philosophers. He doesn’t think the Principle of Sufficient Reason is as fundamental as Della Rocca does:

You ask about the secondary literature. I think scholars have become increasingly sensitive to the role that the First Principle Theory is playing in early modern rationalism. I think there sometimes remains a tendency, perhaps out of a principle of charity, to try to work around the First Principle Theory and extract something that feels less alien.

For example, sometimes scholars are more comfortable working with a (what seems to me ungrounded) “principle of sufficient reason”—or some other disembodied form of “rationality”—than thinking in terms of a really existing First Principle that is ultimate the universe’s intelligibility. Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz do hold that reality is deeply intelligible, but that’s because reality originates in a First Principle with certain features, and, for them, the intelligibility of the universe bottoms out in the First Principle’s essence. 

I don’t think Prof. Carriero denies that the rationalist philosophers endorsed the Principle of Sufficient Reason. Unlike Della Rocca, however, he just thinks philosophers like Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz believed there was something more fundamental. He calls it their (or a) “First Principle”.

I’m not 100% certain that I understand what this First Principle is supposed to be. But somebody named Uma who posts on the internet may have part of the explanation:

Aristotle defined a first principle as “the first basis from which a thing is known”.

A First Principle is a basic, essential, foundational truth that is “known by nature.” It is not an assumption or deduction based on another theory or supposition. A key element of First Principle thinking is that just because something is “known by nature” or true in the universe does not mean it has ever been articulated and described by humans.

Here’s what Corriera says about the rationalists’ First Principle in response to the interviewer (Richard Marshall aka 3:16):

3:16:  I think you position Descartes’ radical thinking in terms of a philosophical theology. So what’s the place of philosophical theology in Descartes’ work? You say something surprising (to me at least) when you say that it was probably more important to Descartes than it was to Aquinas! How come?

JC: Let’s think of philosophical theology as the theory of the universe’s First Principle: whether the universe has a First Principle, and, if so, the nature and character of that First Principle.

For Aquinas, First Principle Theory is the culmination of philosophy, what philosophy leads to. Each of the arguments for the existence of God in the Summa Theologiae —the so-called Five Ways—is based on each of the Aristotelian four causes . . .  Before you embark on philosophical theology you need to have studied the natural world, and learned what change or motion is, learned about . . . what form and matter are, and learned about the four causes and how they are related. So, for Aquinas, not only it is possible to do a lot of philosophy before you get to First Principle Theory, it is necessary to do so.

Descartes reverses this. A large part of the Meditations project is to position us as knowers within the universe, and for him that project is inextricable from philosophical theology. This means more than ticking off the “God exists” and “God is not a deceiver” boxes. It means understanding our position: this involves understanding what the First Principle is . . . , the nature of our dependence on God, how error enters a universe authored by a supremely perfect being, and, finally, seeing how all Scientia [knowledge] depends on the recognition of God. Descartes views the need to orient ourselves in this way as a sort of propaedeutic [preparatory study] that has to come before other disciplines; and so, for him, First Principle Theory does not come after natural philosophy, as it does for Aquinas.

But what is this First Principle? This is a long interview but I couldn’t find a precise definition. This comes closest:

[Descartes] thinks that Scientia requires a systematic understanding of our position as intellectual beings within the universe . . .  Achieving such an understanding involves knowing something about the First Principle of the universe (God), as the source of the universe’s intelligibility, the origin (or author) of our natures, and the Being that ultimately accounts for our minds’ being plugged into the universe’s order.

So, for the rationalist philosophers, the First Principle, apparently more fundamental than the Principle of Sufficient Reason, is God — or rather what the existence of God as a perfect being and creator of the universe means, as far as we human beings are concerned.

I think this makes a lot of sense. I don’t mean it makes sense for our intellectual starting point to be a perfect creator of the universe. I mean it makes sense that certain 17th century philosophers had that starting point. The rationalists began with their understanding of God and went on from there. Their writings are more understandable if they had God as their intellectual bedrock. It explains why God shows up in their arguments, sometimes seemingly out of the blue (like the most wonderful deus ex machina there could possibly be). Having this kind of philosophical/theological perspective explains why they rely on their understanding of God to justify so many other beliefs. 

Prof. Corriera’s view does explain a passage from Spinoza that he cites. Spinoza argues that empirically-minded philosophers or theologians who begin with the natural world and then draw conclusions about God have it backwards:

For the divine nature, which [philosophers like Aristotle and his followers, as well as, presumably, later philosophers as well] should have considered before all else—it being prior both in cognition and in Nature—they have taken to be last in the order of cognition, and the things that are called objects of sense they have taken as prior to everything. Hence it has come about that in considering natural phenomena, they have completely disregarded the divine nature. And when thereafter they turned to the contemplation of the divine nature, they could find no place in their thinking for those fictions on which they had built their natural science, since these fictions were of no avail in attaining knowledge of the divine nature. So it is little wonder that they have contradicted themselves on all sides. (Ethics, 2p10s)

The professors can argue whether God or the Principle of Sufficient Reason was more fundamental for the rationalist philosophers. Did God make things so that everything happens for a reason? Or does that fact that everything happens for a reason explain God’s presence and proclivities?

Or is there no God and stuff happens for no reason at all? That may be too cynical a view, but it’s definitely in the running.

By the way, I’m 100% certain the professors would agree that Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz would all recommend making every effort to vote for Democrats this year. God or no God, it’s the only rational thing to do.

The Light and the Dark in Christianity

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Rev. William Alberts is both a Unitarian and Methodist minister. His article at Counterpunch is called “Christianity: Empathy Versus Evangelism”:

Christianity has built-in contradictions.

Certain Christians seek to empower people, while other Christians seek to gain power over them. Some Christians want to comfort people, while other Christians want to convert them. There are Christians who seek to love their neighbors as themselves, and other Christians want to make their neighbors like themselves. Certain Christians believe that people know what is best for themselves, while other Christians believe that they know exactly who and what is best for everyone. For some Christians, faith is about social justice and ethical behavior for other Christians, it is about theological orthodoxy. Certain Christians are committed to creating justice for people in this life, while other Christians stress justification by faith in Jesus Christ alone as the key to salvation in a future life.

Not that evangelizing-motivated Christians do not comfort or empower or want justice for people, but they want it on their “Jesus is the Savior of the world” terms. Their unconscious predatory paternalism prevents them from experiencing and honoring other people’s reality and beliefs and negates any real mutually respectful democratic give and take.

Christianity’s built-in contradictions are found in its scripture. In Luke’s gospel, Jesus is recorded as saying that his mission was one of empathy: “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to “proclaim good news to the poor . . . liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, and to set at liberty those who are oppressed.” (4: 18,19) But the liberator was transformed into an evangelizer. In Matthew’s gospel, an assumed resurrected Jesus commissioned his disciples with, “All authority in heaven and on earth is given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you..” (28: 16-20) From identification with people to domination over people.

These contradictory biblical narratives are explained by a leap of three centuries after Jesus death. It was not until 325 A.D. that the Christian Council of Nicaea confirmed the oneness between the Father and the Son. And not until 381 did the Council of Constantinople add the Holy Spirit, finalizing the doctrine of the Trinity. . . . Evidently, the writer of Matthew’s gospel put words in the mouth of an assumed resurrected Jesus in recording him as telling his disciples: “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit.” The New Testament itself contains no explicit reference to the doctrine of the Trinity.

Whatever happened to the Jews prophecy that a Messiah will come and liberate their nation and create peace on earth? Roman authorities arrested Jesus for sedition, and Roman soldiers crucified him on a cross, as they commonly crucified other would-be Jewish liberators. (See “Report of the Ad Hoc Scholars Group Reviewing the Script of the Passion”, May 2, 2003)  Instead of liberation and peace, the Jews continued to be brutally oppressed under Roman rule. Thus, obviously, Jesus was not their prophesized messiah, who would restore Jewish independence and bring them peace.

Along with his concluding emphasis on evangelism, the writer of Matthew’s gospel engaged in the horrible anti-Semitic act of blaming the victims. Roman ruler Pilate had complete power over the Jewish people, with a reputation for crucifying rebellious Jews who tried to stir up Jewish nationalism. (see “Blame Pilate, Not The Jews” by T. R. Reid, The Washington Post, April 25, 2000)  Jesus is believed to be one more such prophet. Yet Pilate supposedly made an exception of Jesus, giving in to the Jews who repeatedly shouted, Crucify him!” Pilate’s supposed next words branded the Jews with an unpardonable sin: he washed his hands of the matter, saying, “I am innocent of this man’s blood. It is your responsibility.” Then these words were put in the mouths of the occupied Jews, setting them up for their own persecution through the ages by Christians as “Christ killers”: “All the people answered, ‘His blood is on us and on our children.’ “ (27: 24-26) Blaming the Jews for their own historic persecution as “Christ killers” is an example of irrationality, dehumanization and violence — hardly an example of The Bible as the source of infallible truth.

Blaming the Jews, not the Romans, for Jesus’ death was timely. The Jews were turned off by Jesus’ crucifixion and their continued oppression. And blaming them for Jesus’ death would go over better in the Roman world, which became the fertile ground for baptizing people “in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” In fact, the small Christian sect became dominated by Gentiles who had been pagans.

Not that these early Christians were welcomed by the Roman world. Their reported belief in Jesus’s resurrection, which led them to refuse to worship Roman gods, resulted in countless Christians being killed by wild beasts in arenas, beheaded, burned to death and crucified. The Christians’ steadfast faith in Christ in the face of death became a moving testimony to Romans, leading to Christianity being more and more rooted in Roman soil and souls.

In 380, “Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius I . . . signed a decree . . . that made Christianity the religion of the state and punished the practice of pagan rituals.” Ironically, also reported is that “non-believers were persecuted with the same fervor that was once reserved for Christians and Jews.” And, “during the coming centuries, it wasn’t just the poor that were fed in the name of Christ; critics and dissidents were murdered in the name of the Lord as well.” (“Christianity becomes the religion of the Roman Empire – February 27, 380” by Matthias von Hellfeld)

Empathy versus evangelism. Power over people, more than morality, is believed to motivate Christians who believe The Bible is literally the Word of God. Here faith is about authority, not authenticity.

The centuries following are replete with instances of evangelizing Christians using the power of the state to explore other lands and exploit their inhabitants. In 1495, Pope Alexander VI “issued a Papal Bull,” the Doctrine of Discovery,” which “aimed to justify Christian European explorers’ claims on lands and waterways they allegedly discovered, and promote Christian domination and superiority.” (“Doctrine of Discovery”, Upstander Project)

Howard Zinn wrote in A People’s History of the United States that, upon arriving in the Bahamas, Columbus reported: “‘The Indians are so naive and so free with their possessions . . .’ He concluded his report by asking for a little help from the majesties and in return he would bring them from his next voyage ‘as much gold as they need . . . and as many slaves as they ask.’ “ Zinn added that Columbus “was full of religious talk: ‘Thus the eternal God, our Lord, gives victory to those who follow His way over apparent impossibilities.’”

The U.S. was “discovered” and expanded on the bodies of Native Americans – and on the backs of black Africans forced into slavery. Christians justified slavery with biblical passages, such as Paul the Apostle’s admonition: “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.” (Ephesians 6: 5)

The Doctrine of Discovery itself is reported to be “the inspiration in the 1800s for the Monroe Doctrine which declared U.S. hegemony over the Western Hemisphere, and Manifest Destiny, which justified American expansion westward by propagating the belief that the U.S. was destined to control all land from the Atlantic to the Pacific and beyond.” . . . This usurping of Native American land was justified in biblical terms, with a number of U. S. presidents equating America with Jesus’ teaching: “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden” (Matthew 5: 14)

. . . Jesus is recorded as teaching, “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 7: 12) He is also recorded as declaring, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14: 6) The one path leads to human solidarity. The other path supports state imperialism. . . .

Unquote.

State imperialism, among other things, is on the ballot in November. Please vote and choose wisely.

Rev. Alberts included several paragraphs describing the Republican National Convention, which emphasized “the sowing of enmity toward other peoples, not the cultivation of empathy, and the use of evangelistic Christian nationalism to legitimize imposing America’s will on them”. For those who are interested: another link to his article.