Racism

“GOD HAS NO RELIGION”

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“GOD HAS NO RELIGION”
-Mahatma Gandhi, Indian Philosopher

Today, I see so many divisive posts, it angers me and also makes me wonder if I need to invest in assault weapons and the canned bean industry. During my US History classes I usually taught that 1968 might have the most divisive year since the end of the Civil War. Tet, Walter Cronkite telling us that the war was unwinnable, war protests, continued Civil Rights issues and the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King were just a few of the reasons that I cited. Now I am not so sure that I could still say that. Any type of opinion is met with ridicule and name-calling from the other side – gay marriage, Black Lives Matter, the issue of the Confederate Battle Flag, our “entitlements,” illegal immigration. Now things that should never be an issue have become one. Case in point is religion. Christians versus Muslims; Christians versus Atheist; Christians versus gays; Christian conservatives against Christian liberals…do I see a trend here? At least, Christian conservatives are supporting the Jews in Israel, and perhaps, the Jewish presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.
I grew up Methodist, went to a Lutheran institution of higher learning, flirted with Episcopalians and Presbyterians and married three, that’s right, three Baptist women. While I find women to be a type of religious experience, that last admission is what keeps me out of the gay marriage debate along with any kind of statements about abortion and keeps me from agreeing to be a Deacon, which is a blessing. My tiptoeing through so many Protestant religions, not to mention three marriages, has also caused me, despite my public dunking into the Southern Baptist Church, to develop my own form of the Christian religion – one that I have mentioned before in other writings – The Evolutionary New Testament Church of Christ as “hallucinated” by Don. As of this moment, my newly-founded church has an enrollment of one.
I would characterize my Methodist upbringing as being very conservative. There weren’t a lot of amens coming from the Amen Corner and our music was very straight-laced. My wife would say it was “tight assed.” This description comes from a woman who went to church every time the doors were opened, sometimes when they weren’t , and as you might know, was instructed that dancing was against the tenets of God. I believe this prohibition developed because while Moses was up on a mountain talking to God, the Israelites were dancing naked around an idol. But didn’t David dance to celebrate the Ark’s arrival in Jerusalem? Was he naked like that Greek statue? Well, this taboo did lead to my favorite religious joke. Why don’t Baptists make love standing up? It looks too much like dancing!! “Cha-Ching!”
We, the members of my church, did have our moments of religious fervor, usually around revival time when we put our “high church stuffiness” away. I remember a particularly hot August evening before our church was air-conditioned. During a weeklong revival it was hotter than…you can fill that in. I remember hearing the roll of distant thunder as lightning flashed just above the visible horizon that I was watching from the opened window. The only air circulating came from the hand fans provided to us by Wolfe Funeral Home. They were working overtime and probably just spread the heat produced by our exertions. Our visiting minister brought me back from my thoughts as he finished the “hellfire and brimstone” portion of his sermon by slamming his hand onto his Bible and shouting, “If you think its hot tonight, JUST WAIT! Benediction Please!” His admonition drew a good number of amens and hallelujahs, along with a record altar call which may not have been due to his sermon but to the misty cool breeze of the building storm that suddenly cascaded through the windows.
As I limped out to attempt to complete my morning run before church, I could not get thoughts of divisiveness out of my mind. When I arrived back home and watched some of the news programming, the divisiveness became more entrenched in my mind. One should not watch “The Donald” on Meet the Press before church. I continued to ponder divisions as I sat in church, not paying attention to the sermon. For some reason, I thought of a former student who was the strangest mix of religions. He grew up as a Musdu or a Hinlim. Take your pick because I know he didn’t know which one. Mo’s parents (yes, short for Mohammed) migrated LEGALLY to the United States several years before Mo was born. They had grown up and met in an area between Pakistan and India called the princely states of Kashmir and Jammu which have been a bone of contention since the partition of Pakistan and India in 1948. The conflict erupted into a shooting war at times. The problem? First, the states are coveted by Pakistan, India and China but a major issue is…wait a minute…religion. Pakistan is largely Muslim and India is largely Hindu. In Kashmir there is a Muslim majority and in Jammu a Hindu majority. You can probably figure out who wants to be aligned with whom. If you put them together, the population is still largely Muslim. China doesn’t practice either religion and just wants the land. Into this mix “love would spring eternal” in the form of Mo’s Muslim father and Hindu mother and would not be denied. Love would conquer all but it would require a trip of several thousand miles and a huge change in culture. At least, they got away from the in-laws. Mo was a product of his parents and their progressive belief that he should grow up and decide for himself which religious path he would follow. Sometimes you get exactly what you weren’t expecting.
Should you want to interject another religion into this story, Mo looked like a short, round, brown Buddha. Oh no, I just had a vision of Mo as the Buddha sitting in a loincloth. While a product of his parent’s genes, he was his own man and a free thinker who had an extremely rebellious side. You see, Muslims eat no pork, while Hindus eat no beef. In order to display his disdain for his parents’ predominantly vegetarian diet, Mo would periodically stop off at The Clock for a bacon chili cheeseburger; take it home; and eat it in front of his mortified parents who were equally concerned about their son’s soul. According to the Quran, alcohol is forbidden but that didn’t stop Mo from throwing down a brew or five with his burger. Today, Mo has further complicated matters. He has married a Southern Baptist woman. I wonder if he has been publicly dunked and, if he has, my guess is that he still dances.
It concerns me terribly when I hear or see that “all Muslims are terrorists.” I keep wondering if I am missing something because I can’t hear that and not think about Hakeem, Mo’s father, and the few Muslim students that I have taught. None of them would turn out to be terrorists…would they? I despise how judgmental we have become as Christians. “Judge not, lest ye be judged!” Learned that at my grandmother’s knee. “To err is human, to forgive is divine.” In Don’s Evolutionary New Testament Church of Christ, it is not our place in life to judge. If you believe in God, you have been taught that judgement is His responsibility, not ours. Our responsibility is to help those who want to convert. We should not try to force our Christian values down the throats of non-believers. Today, however, I fear many Christians are doing just that!

AN INCONVINENT TRUTH…OF SORTS

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This has nothing to do with Global Climate Change or a documentary of the same name produced by a former Democratic vice president but I feel the need to express my belief that while the climate has changed as much as the South’s most revered river, the Mississippi, has meandered, both will continue to do so without help from the human population that inhabits our little blue ball. That being said, I also believe that, despite what superstitious conservatives say, the human population is helping to speed up and worsen the outcome of those changes and that Al Gore did not invent the internet. Hopefully the audience that is reading this has a clue as to what I just said.
There is a problem with history because it is just that—history. We weren’t there and we have to rely upon the writings of others in the form of what are called primary documents to attempt to put together the pieces of the puzzle that is that history. We must also view what is being said using the “light of the times” which has dimmed as time has marched on. Most of us, unless we are historians, don’t want to go to the trouble of pouring over dusty historical texts that are decades old. We want the CliffNotes or we want someone to teach us the history that we need to know and if it is an inconvenient truth we look for a different set of CliffNotes or teachers who support a more convenient truth. We also tend to look at it in the light of our times which sometimes reminds me of that beautiful “honky-tonk angel”… when the harsh light of closing time comes on…not that I have spent any time in honky-tonks lately unless Linda Gail was in attendance and she looks beautiful whatever the light.
For instance, “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.” Ever heard this statement before? Sure you have. Civics and US History classes or if you slept through mine, Fourth of July celebrations. Sometime in your life you have heard it even if you can’t remember if it is the Declaration of Independence or the Preamble to the Constitution. Which is it? Hint—July 4, 1776. But what did it mean in 1776? That’s right it was the Declaration of Independence but what did “all men” mean. We think that “these truths” meant “all men and women.” The old universal man because we are seeing it in the light of today. But “these truths” didn’t mean that. Our founding fathers could have just as easily said “Only white men of voting age who are landowners are created equal.” No slaves, no women and no white men who didn’t own something. Universal women’s suffrage would not be enacted until 1920 although women in Wyoming territory had the right to vote in 1869 the same year that the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified giving all citizens the right to vote…except women. Male ex-slaves would have the right to vote, although severely abridged, before women and Native Americans who were not made citizens as a group until 1924. I also believe that there are a group of old white guys in blue suits who wish it was still that way. Yeah I’m an old white guy but the closest I will come to a blue suit will be a predominately blue Hawaiian shirt.
As the Civil War is being re-fought throughout social media I keep seeing statement after statement, reported as truth, which as a history teacher has me reaching for the Preparation H or at least the Gold Bond. Excuse my indelicacy but, “It galls my ass!” The latest had to do with the most revered man of the Confederacy, Robert E. Lee and the most defamed man in the Union, Abe Lincoln. Over and over posters stated that Lee “freed his slaves before the war” and that Lincoln was actually a “closet” slave owner. I also something about him being gay but he never appeared to be too happy. From my research, I am not sure how many slaves Lee actually owned, if any, and he may have freed what HE owned but he certainly did not free the ones his wife, and therefore he, inherited from her father until 1862 when the point was mute because the Union Army had already taken over his inherited home at Arlington. Why did he not free them? In his own words Lee stated that he needed them to avoid bankruptcy “and to put things right.” Should this make him any less revered? Should we defame him for having the worst comb over prior to Donald Trump? Viewing it under the light of times, I would say not, but stating what are at best the half-truths in today’s light makes one wonder.
Abe Lincoln a slave owner? Except for a short stint of time in Washington, Lincoln spent his entire life in Illinois, a free state. His family was so poor that his father “contracted him out” to pay for the families debts. Maybe that is where the confusion came from. Lincoln was a type of indentured servant for his own family which is a type of forced servitude but he owned no slaves. Grant owned slaves, as did eleven other former US Presidents but not Lincoln.
While I am on stupid statements about slavery, “There was just as much slavery in the North as the South!” Really? Not including the Border States, which were considered Upper South and in which Delaware was included, only two Northern states, Connecticut and New Jersey, had not abolished slavery by 1848. According to the 1860 census Connecticut had no slaves to free in 1865 while New Jersey had a whopping two hundred and eight-six too many. And while we are at it, Lincoln could not free the slaves in the rest of the United State with the Emancipation Proclamation. It would take an Amendment to the Constitution to do that and it did in 1865.
I was taught that if you were unsure of an answer or were sure you did not know the answer try and “baffle them with bullsh!t.” It would seem that I was not the only person to learn this lesson. I have seen much bul sh!t lately whether is dealt with the Civil War, religion, gay rights or our presidential candidates. Anytime someone states an opinion other than yours, rather than take the time to look up and research a rebuttal, we throw out what are at best half-truths or at worse total lies. When all else fails we just call each other names.