The Profound Damage Ignorance About Ethnocentrism and Oppression Does.

Mistaken interpretations that journalists, Bible scholars, historians, and politicians make when they don't factor in ethnocentrism and oppression.

1.  Let's begin with journalism.  In a recent USA Today Network/Associated Press Investigation titled "Teens growing up under fire," four reporters combine to report "an epidemic of shooting, smaller cities are bearing the brunt."

In one explanatory paragraph, they state:

"Poverty and a sense of hopelessness in the most violent neighborhoods is a common thread."  They briefly mention job loss due to manufacturing jobs leaving these cities.  Good analysis as far as it goes, but it is only a half truth posing as the whole truth.  There needs to be at least one or two more paragraphs explaining the cumulative impact of past and present economic and racial systems of oppression.  Without this explanation, the typical white reader will conclude this is another case of proving black crime, black dysfunction, black inferiority on public display.

Centuries of white oppression, white ethnocentrism have created and maintain these economic and racial ghettos, thereby this sense of despair and hopelessness.  Read Exodus 9:6.  They got the poverty and hopelessness right; they missed the causal forces of white ethnocentrism and oppression.

2.  Flawed Bible Interpretation

Around 35 years ago, I heard the following report from a Bible scholar at the Christian College where I was teaching sociology.  He had a doctorate in his field; taught NT Greek.

On a sabbatical, he had studied a puzzle in the gospel of John.  The curious phrase "the Jews" occurred 47 times with no explanation or definition of who "the Jews" were.  At end of his study, this scholar reported that he still could not definitively solve this puzzle.

Though I am only a sociologist and an amateur Bible scholar, I had taught the course Gospels and Acts at our prison program.  It was quite clear to me what the solution to this Bible puzzle was.  The answer could be found in chapter 2 of John and confirmed by a cross-gospel comparison.

Chapter 2 includes the story of the cleansing of the sacred Temple; the other gospels place this story near the end of their gospels.  Why did John place this passage so early on in his account?  To make it crystal clear early on who the bad guys were and why?  Why were they the enemies of Jesus Christ?

The Jews had turned the Temple into "a den of robbers"; a religio-politico-economic system of oppression.  "The Jews" were a corrupt elite; this made them the enemies of Jesus Christ.

A little basic research on the gospel of John:

* the 47 reference to "the Jews" were mostly negative.
* there were 14 reference to the Pharisees.
* there were 10 references to the chief priests.
* In chapters 18 and 19, there are 14 reference to the chief priests and Pharisees and 15 references to "the Jews" all mixed together.  Many of the references to "the Jews" occur in or near the Temple.

My conclusion:  The Jews were the religio-politico-economic elite corrupting and controlling the Temple. Or, they were the principalities and powers serving as agents of Satan in the cosmos (evil social order) and the Temple (evil religious order).

Matthew 23 describes in some detail the evil of the scribes and Pharisees; Luke 11:42 describes the Jews as ones who "neglect justice and the love of God."

3.  The ethnocentric and oppressive Puritans

For many American Christians, including an attendee at my CCDA workshop where I presented a severe critique of the Puritans that he admired, the Puritans were a godly and biblical people.  God  and the Bible were freely combined with the ethnocentrism and oppression they had brought with them from England creating a perverse syncretism.  Some of the evils of the Puritans:

* at times they killed whole villages of Indians because they needed more farm land for their increasing numbers.
* they paid money for the scalps of Indians.
* Johnathan Edwards went down to Providence, Rhode Island and picked out a slave for his household.
* the syncretistic pattern they set early on has continued on down to today; white ethnocentrism and oppression are so deep-seated in America that they now seem natural and normal, legit evil.

4.  Yesterday an American president gave a major speech at the UN that was riddled with ethnocentrism and oppression.

* brazenly, blatantly and proudly ethnocentric and oppressive.
* falsely portrayed Americans as victims; actually they have been oppressors, imperialistic.
* Trump is not an aberration; he is 100 percent American in his ethnocentrism and oppression as were many of the 80 percent of evangelicals who voted for him.
* rich, white males are the oppressors, not the victims.
* were some Puritan genes passed down to Trump?