Some thoughts about CNN on “White Christian Nationalism” in 2022

“Much of the House January 6 committee’s focus so far has been on right-wing extremist groups. But there are plenty of other Americans who have adopted teachings of the White Christian nationalists who stormed the Capitol — often without knowing it, scholars, historians, sociologists and clergy say.
White Christian nationalist beliefs have infiltrated the religious mainstream so thoroughly that virtually any conservative Christian pastor who tries to challenge its ideology risks their career, says Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of the New York Times bestseller, “Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.” — from the place where the CNN article completely derails.

You may ask why I make an admittedly provocative comment. Well, as always, I am happy to share my “why{S}”:

For the past seven years, OG-MC and too many BIPOC USA residents have defended and rationalized adolescent fraternity boy/ middle school clique behaviors with adult, literate and sentient human beings who chose membership on the Lincoln Log Cabin GOP Republican Party. Many of us who have been born and raised in the USA, especially any of us with friends who are from anywhere except the USA are weary of politely accepting “I don’t know, I had no idea, I don’t/didn’t understand. What these folks should have said is any and or all of the following: “I chose not to know, i did not ever want to choose to know for/because ( fill in your own excuse here), I chose not to think, read, listen to anything except what my party said, and, most critically — I CHOSE/CHOOSE TO NOT UNDERSTAND AND OR QUESTION, EVER.”

As a professional educator, now also long-time trained, educated and specializing in Exceptional Education ( to wit, mild-to-moderate and moderate-to-severe disabilities) with an earned Masters degree in Theology with a concentration in Pastoral Counseling from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, CA, bloodied but not bowed from 5 years in LAUSD schools in the Los Angeles Basin, I have infinite patience with those adults who tell the truth, but am profoundly bereft of patience with willful ignorance from too many adults. Ironically, perhaps, but ESPECIALLY with the USA’s self-described/named Christian Evangelicals and Roman Catholics and Secular Jews who typically do not know their individual First Person Historical narratives, and hardly ever know the origin stories (history and historical context)of the faith(s) and systems of belief they all claim to hold so dear. This apparently ‘blissful’ and ‘satisfying’ ignorance is apparent in the colonization of the American Continent, after the systematic destruction of lands, climates, and human beings in their countries of origin. The “Geographic Solution” was never a solution, or a panacea. It was and always has been a myth, a delusion, a distraction.

As to the second cited paragraph, “White Christian Nationalist beliefs are foundational to their systems of belief and well known by all Jewish people, “practicing”, secular, and or for socioeconomic and or sociopolitical gain”. Hitler’s team came to the USA to study Jim Crow racism, as it was being practiced. Then they went back to Germany and manifested the WWII Holocaust. In the 1800’s, if memory serves, Jews and or anyone with a Jewish surname or “appearance” ( a deadly and ignorant stereotype, but extant nonetheless) were slaughtered in Atlanta, Georgia and surrounding areas — just like the BIPOC people they allied with economically and politically. In my lifetime, I have been in one too many situations where Jewish people who had no idea I had fluency in Yiddish openly made vile and derogatory racial comments in public spaces like commercial airliners between LAX and EWR or ORD and EWR that I ignored- on purpose. The USA began fractured, its spiritual communities were and still are rotting/rotten/rotted from the inside out. The 2022 Jesuit Pontiff/Holy See is not by definition penitent as regards the BIPOC Holocaust in the Commonwealth of Canada, for example. (See also, 1776! The Musical (circa 1976) and Frank Capra’s 1948 classic “State of the Union”, among others.)

Now, everyone is of course free to finish the CNN story carried by multiple outlets. It is my hope that you can now read the rest of it through the lens I offer in these comments.

Be well. Stay safe. With special thanks to my So Cal Mom for bring this article to my attention. I offer some quotes from 50 Free black men in 1848 in Cleveland, Ohio:

FROM: REPORT of THE PROCEEDINGS of the COLORED NATIONAL CONVENTION, HELD AT CLEVELAND, OHIO, On Wednesday, September 6, 1848.

“Resolved, that we forever shall oppose every action, emanating from what source it may, whether civil, political, social or religious, in any manner derogatory to the universal equality of men.

Article 26. Resolved, that, as a body the professed Christian American churches generally, by their support, defense, and participation in the damning sin of American slavery, as well as cruel prejudice and proscription of the nominally free colored people, have forfeited every claim of confidence on our part, and therefore merit or severest reprobation.

Article 29. Resolved, that among the many oppressive schemes against the colored people in the United States, we view the American Colonization Society as the most deceptive and hypocritical… “With the livery of heaven to serve the devil in,“ with President Roberts of Liberia, a colored man, for its leader.”

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