[Serious] The black man as a slave to the white man's god

[Peebothuhlu]

At work.

It's not about the theology ye Numpty.

It's not about the theology.

...the role that Christianity plays...

Please, by all means, parse out the gaping chasm of difference between those two phrases.

I am left mentally adrift as to where your mind's concepts currently steam full ahead.

EDIT: My ability to more finely edit things is a tad hampered, to boot.

[onlinebiker]

Religion in general is colorblind...


It enslaves all who are willing to embrace it.

[Foxaèr]

A religion that is colorblind is also equal opportunity.

That was never the case with black people.

Sure, believe in our god, but you're still beneath us. Thus, you'll be our slaves..

Nothing colorblind about slavery to religion. Church people are the worst sinners, for they judge who else is sitting with them in the pews and find them unworthy based on all sorts of criteria.

[GrandizerII]

A religion that is colorblind is also equal opportunity.

That was never the case with black people.

Sure, believe in our god, but you're still beneath us. Thus, you'll be our slaves..

Nothing colorblind about slavery to religion. Church people are the worst sinners, for they judge who else is sitting with them in the pews and find them unworthy based on all sorts of criteria.

Something I've noted before in another thread, but I feel some atheists who have this strong tendency to criticize religion for all sorts of bad stuff have this rather narrow view of what religion is. They seem to think it's this static set of firmly established doctrines or rules that are not consistently acknowledged/followed by its professed adherents and that are often (or always) harmful to its adherents and/or wider society. Whereas I personally see religion and the individual/societal interpretation of it as either one and the same or at least inextricable. In the latter view, the Christianity of white people who referred to its doctrines as justifying of slavery is not the same as the Christianity of black people who embrace it as a means to liberation rather than slavery. So it comes off as absurd (and also as inconsiderate and arrogant in this case) to criticize black people for upholding a religion that, for them, led them out of slavery just because you refuse to separate that from the religion of white supremacists.

[Foxaèr]

Poppycock.

[The Grand Nudger]

Christianity never lead anyone out of slavery. It doesn't hold anyone's hand and walk through dark fields. The reason that black christianity can't be separated from white supremacist christianity is that it's the same christianity. Literally inflicted in the past, ofc, but it's not as if white supremacy is done milking strong christian moral character to disenfranchise minorities. That continues to this very day. As a tradition, black christianity has, itself, had to come to terms with this. Thus the thematic differences between traditions.

Putting the two in comparison we can see one of the failures of god belief. We have two groups swearing to christ that god agrees with them. In the end, it doesn't really matter which christian faction has this one right. Maybe god is with the supremacists - but that won't mean that we're going to be...and supposing god was with the disenfranchised..well..that wouldn't be why we sided with them as a government. The fact that different sects contain contradictory statements of faith relevant to severe and continued civil unrest that are not resolvable to any fact of any matter is not a defense of christianity - but a further indictment.

People have been assessing christianity in this way since it's birth. We're more than capable of looking at a bad thing with good effects, and good things with bad effects. A belief doesn't wriggle off the hook it's worked so hard to deserve just because it gives away little cakes.

[Fake Messiah]

If slavery is a reason for black people not to be Christians then the same reason could be used for white people. People forget that white people were also slaves throughout the christendom, so white people's ancestors were also slaves.

Take for instance that novel "Ben Hur" where its author made one of the most popular historical blunders when he made slaves as rowers on Roman war galleys. Lew Wallace made an honest mistake because it was normal throughout the Christian history in Europe to use slaves as rowers of the galleys, who were treated very badly and therefore didn't live for long. Church participated in it by not banning it and also giving blessing to it. Like when having chaplains for the galley slaves, or when its own catholic military orders used them.

[Fake Messiah]

All in all, it seems that Eleven posed an interesting question.

For instance, just few days ago there was an interesting article on nbcnews.com, and here are few excerpts. Read the whole article on the link below

Racism among white Christians is higher than among the nonreligious. That's no coincidence.

Over the last several weeks, the United States has engaged in a long-overdue reckoning with the racist symbols of the past, tearing down monuments to figures complicit in slavery and removing Confederate flags from public displays. But little scrutiny has been given to the cultural institutions that legitimized the worldview behind these symbols: white Christian churches.

For example, surveys conducted by PRRI in 2018 found that white Christians — including evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics — are nearly twice as likely as religiously unaffiliated whites to say the killings of Black men by police are isolated incidents rather than part of a pattern of how police treat African Americans.

And white Christians are about 30 percentage points more likely to say monuments to Confederate soldiers are symbols of Southern pride rather than symbols of racism. White Christians are also about 20 percentage points more likely to disagree with this statement: "Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for Blacks to work their way out of the lower class." And these trends generally persist even in the wake of the recent protests for racial justice.

Moreover, these statistical models refute the assertion that attending church makes white Christians less racist. Among white evangelicals, in fact, the opposite is true: The relationship between holding racist views and white Christian identity is actually stronger among more frequent church attenders than among less frequent church attenders.

While it may seem obvious to mainstream white Christians today that slavery, segregation and overt declarations of white supremacy are antithetical to the teachings of Jesus, such a conviction is, in fact, a recent development for most white American Christians and churches, both Protestant and Catholic.

The unsettling truth is that, for nearly all of American history, the light-skinned Jesus conjured up by most white congregations was not merely indifferent to the status quo of racial inequality; he demanded its defense and preservation as part of the natural, divinely ordained order of things.

Moreover, the content of what was preached confirmed that white supremacy was part of the Christian worldview. Sermons, by necessity, tended to be light on the themes of freedom and liberation in Exodus, for example, and heavy on the mandates of obedience and being content in one's social station from the New Testament writings of Paul.

In these seedbeds of American Christianity, an a priori commitment to white supremacy shaped what could be practiced (a slave master could not share a common cup of Christian fellowship with his slaves) and preached (white dominance and Black subservience were expressions of God's ideal for the organization of human societies). Such early distortions influenced how white Christians came to embody and understand their faith and determined what was handed down from one generation to the next.

As monuments to white supremacy are falling all across America, a great cloud of witnesses is gathering. Our fellow African American citizens, and indeed the entire country, are waiting to see whether we white Christians can finally find the humility and courage and love to face the truth about our long relationship with white supremacy and to dismantle the Christian worldview we built to justify it.


https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/ra...cna1235045

[Belacqua]

Poppycock.

You began this thread by issuing orders to enslaved people. (YOU say they're enslaved; they don't agree.)

This is the White Savior Complex: the idea that black people will become free by obeying your order, rather than someone else's. 

In fact, people become free by deciding for themselves. And it seems that a very large number of black Americans have decided for themselves to form a Christian church which serves their needs. You don't approve of this. 

It's possible that they're wrong about metaphysics and that no God exists, despite the social benefits of having a church. Your response to this incorrect decision is to insult them by calling them "delusional." 

The way to show respect for a free people is to discuss things with them respectfully. If you feel their metaphysical commitments are incorrect, you can go about it in the same way you'd argue metaphysics with anybody else. 

1) Get a clear view of what they believe.
2) Construct a logical argument as to why you disagree.
3) Put together evidence from history, and expert opinion, as to why they should change their minds. 

This is how adults discuss things. 

Your inability to do any of these renders you in effect inarticulate. Your insults are the verbal equivalent of stamping your little feet. A competent high school teacher could introduce you to methods of articulating your reasons and arguments. 

Black Christians deserve better than orders and insults.

[ignoramus]

If I can put it into perspective. We're all slaves to the white man's god.

Here's the white man's god.

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Screwing us over faithfully since 1913!
Systemically manipulating the currency where it has now lost 98% of its purchasing power.
We have allowed a handful of people BIS>IMF>FED to successfully turn the vast majority of us into debt slaves. Including a majority of what used to be the middle class.

Squabbling over race and religion is their perfect sandbox.

Read: G Edward Griffin: Creature From Jekyll Island