Posted on 02/08/2015 7:41:51 PM PST by SkyPilot
People who wonder why the president does not talk more about race would do well to examine the recent blow-up over his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast. Inveighing against the barbarism of ISIS, the president pointed out that it would be foolish to blame Islam, at large, for its atrocities. To make this point he noted that using religion to brutalize other people is neither a Muslim invention nor, in America, a foreign one:
Lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.
The "all too often" could just as well be "almost always." There were a fair number of pretexts given for slavery and Jim Crow, but Christianity provided the moral justification. On the cusp of plunging his country into a war that would cost some 750,000 lives, Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens paused to offer some explanation. His justification was not secular. The Confederacy was to be:
[T]he first government ever instituted upon the principles in strict conformity to nature, and the ordination of Providence, in furnishing the materials of human society ... With us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the negro. Subordination is his place. He, by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Yet another amazingly stupid piece of writing from a liberal who thinks he’s smart.
Oh, I don't think he's serious about that. They never are. He wants to harangue the nasty white people while they sit down, shut up and take their punishment in silence.
My response to this and other BS.
I do not need a history lesson.
9-11 changed everything
"Ta-Nehisi Coates is a national correspondent at The Atlantic, where he writes about culture, politics, and social issues. He is the author of the memoir The Beautiful Struggle."
It’s foolish to blame the Nazis for anti-semetism.
Jew hating goes back centuries, long before the rise of the Nazi empire.
And them Jews! Don’t forget them Jews!
If you don’t bow down and worship Herr Obama, you must be a racist.
I thought this was a girl. The writing sure sounds like a gushing teenage girl.
Yes, people defended slavery using religion. So we marched on them and overthrew them. Is that his point?
Not a girl. But on the down low?
“People who wonder why the president does not talk more about race...”
Is there really someone who thinks him interjecting race into every issue on a weekly basis is “not enough”?
You may as well say that Brian Williams doesn’t boast enough about his accomplishments.
This moron and obama all spit in the faces of the many many christian abolitionists who used the bible and scriptures to finally end slavery in the western world.
Slavery still exists in islamic countries. By the way.
Note that comments on the Atlantic article have been closed. A casual read shows evidence of a stunning lack of historical knowledge alloyed with a complete lack of willingness to defend one’s own civilization and compounded by an invincible ignorance.
None of these people are fit to live in a free society. They are in fact enemies of Western civilization.
Ta-Nehisi?
The writer is correct that some Bible verses were used to justify slavery in Antebellum America. But, he is incorrect when he and Obama says that Christianity was the pretext for slavery. There is no teaching anywhere in the New Testament that encourages enslaving anyone except oneself in service to Christ.
The writer quotes Alexander Stephen which alludes to some kind of “divine” maxim that blacks were inferior and therefore properly subjugated under the white man. There is no such teaching in the Old Testament that there were any inferior races. Just the opposite - in Psalm 33 (KJV) it says:
“The Lord looketh from heaven; he beholdeth all the sons of men. From the place of his habitation he looketh upon all the inhabitants of the earth. He fashioneth their hearts alike; he considereth all their works.”
And in Proverbs 22:
“The rich and poor meet together: the Lord is the maker of them all.”
And in Job 31 an amazing passage in verses 13-15:
“If I have despised the claim of my male or female slaves
When they filed a complaint against me, What then could I do when God arises? And when He calls me to account, what will I answer Him? Did not He who made me in the womb make him, And the same one fashion us in the womb?”
In other words, God views all humanity as equal in value before Him - all mankind comes from Him. We are all held accountable for our acts and sins.
Yes, people have used the Bible and done terrible crimes in the name of Christ.
But, the big difference between Christianity and Islam is that there is no teachings in the New Testament that justify mistreating, torturing or killing those who refuse to believe in Christ, there are no teachings that advocate treating anyone as second class or inferior. In fact, as we all know (except Obama and the writer of the article it seems), that we are to love our enemies. We are to do good to those who persecute us and speak badly of us. We are to bless them and not curse them.
On the other hand, Islam DOES INDEED teach and call for jihad and killing those who refuse to acknowledge Islam and their god, Allah.
When it comes to foolishness and historical illiteracy, Ta-Nehisi Coates certainly is an expert practitioner, however despite that indisputable expertise, this article is way off base.
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