From 1616 to 2016: A Comfortable Blending of Bible and Oppression.

In 1996, Jack White of TIME magazine, wrote:  "We are on the brink of something really disastrous, maybe on the brink of a total racial breakdown that leads not to violence but to the inability of people to function together and move forward."

It is now 20 years later---2016.  Have things gone from bad to worse?  Is our current racial crisis creating both increasing racial violence and an inability of people to function together and move forward?

By 1630, the Puritans were coming to New England in large numbers.  In an article in The New England Quarterly, March 1975, titled "Puritans, Indians, and the Concept of Race," G.E. Thomas states: "The record of Puritan attitudes, goals, and behavior in every major interaction with Indians reveals a continued harshness, brutality and ethnocentric bias."

In 2016, the U.S. is a nation divided---deeply divided by white ethnocentrism and oppression.  How far back in our history does this problem go?  Way back to the early 1600s, to the godly Puritans.  Along with their prized Bibles, the Puritans also brought a generous amount of British ethnocentrism and oppression which they quickly applied to the Native Americans.  Fifty years earlier, the British perfected their ethnocentrism and oppression against the Irish.

This was an unusual blending of the Bible and ethnocentrism and oppression.  Apparently, the Puritans never saw the deep contradictions inherent in this combination which was full of rationalizations and false ideology.

Americans seem to be doing much the same in today.  Did you know the President Reagan began his presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi where the three civil rights workers were killed?  This was a not too subtle hint that a Reagan Administration would favor whites and keep blacks in their place.  A few years after his presidential term began, Reagan was aggressively combining racial profiling and the War on Drugs.  White American evangelicals voted for Reagan in large numbers.

In 2016, Trump is openly playing the race card.  His opening emphasis attacked Mexican immigrants and said he would build a wall on the border to keep the riffraff out.  Evangelicals are voting for Trump in large numbers.

Why are evangelicals voting for racists in large numbers?  Primarily because they lack a biblical social ethic.  They do not have and do not want a social ethic that is built around the biblical teaching on oppression and justice.  They do not want to loose their white superiority and their white privilege.  So they conveniently ignored the extensive biblical teaching on oppression and justice for the last 400 years.

Result: a nation divided by racial oppression in 2016.

Next blog on racial crisis:  A Few Bad Cops or a Lot of Bad Whites