B159. White Man Secrets

The Cosmic Clash of 2020. The perfect storm. White Male Supremacy finds its savior, but the savior is an outsider who knows nothing about protecting the fraternal secrets. Suddenly centuries of seemingly separate struggles make sense, and everyone wonders how we overlooked this critical piece of the puzzle. How are systemic racism, sexism, religion, politics, and attitudes toward LGBTQ and abortion all interwoven? Pour yourself a cup of coffee, and sit back to explore with me this important piece of the puzzle that’s been hidden in clear view, a piece that links it all together.

Once upon a time, white men sailed to this “new world” from Europe with dreams of being free of the oppressive governments and religions of their native lands.They came from different countries and many different life circumstances. Many of them were members of secret male societies which they continued on their new soil, fraternal brotherhoods built on tiered secrets, opened one level at a time, and on brotherhood loyalty as the supreme guiding virtue. The vision was a masterful one of guaranteed power, and it worked for centuries until that chosen savior exposed the secrets.

The basic vision was this: The brotherhood was for men only, and all white, with such an intricate network of leadership that whatever need one had, legally, professionally, or maybe a career position for his son, someone within the network could meet the need. The levels within the organization began with shared ritual as the new members developed and proved their loyalty, then progressed to multiple successive keys of power, intricately woven into each other’s power to form an unbreakable power network. The organization was for leaders and laborers of all kinds: elected officials, attorneys and judges, business owners, ministers, police, entertainers, writers, military personnel, landowners, slaveholders, even framers of our beloved Constitution . . . all white and all male.

The fraternal loyalty, which took precedence over everything else including religion and family, was a cemented commitment to each other’s power and to white male power in general. Only white men would be decision makers in this constructed civilization. They alone would vote. They alone would be allowed a college education. It was the law. They made the laws. They were the courts. They were the police. They were the controllers of what children were taught in school and the framers of religious indoctrination.

Another brilliant part of the plan was that hundreds (Dr. Robert Forrey says thousands) of organizations would spin out from the original, each taking new names, thus ensuring that if one organization should get into trouble or fall into negative reputation, it would not soil the name of all the others. These ranged from seemingly unrelated fraternal lodges like The Kiwanis, The Shriners, and The Grange, to organizations like The KKK which began as a "respected" and "Christian" organization.

What They Needed from Black People

From black people they needed manual labor. Large landowners needed their crops planted, their cotton picked, their dinners prepared, their houses, businesses, and churches built; and because they bought and sold slaves as if they were work horses or mules, their wealth was very literally tied into them. Female slaves were regularly used for sex, which had the added benefit of creating more slaves/property.

After slavery was abolished, the black population became a threat to the white brotherhood power. The last thing in the world they ever wanted to see was black people getting to vote.That could threaten the white male systemic control and design of society; so throughout the nation’s history to now, laws have been forged and lines drawn to keep black people from voting or obtaining any other power, even including owning a house or land.

Between 1877 and 1950, more than 4000 black people, mostly men, were lynched. These murders were events that sometimes brought 4,000 - 5,000 white spectators, sometimes with souvenirs and even postcards made of the hangings, and spectators often lined up to pose for photos with the hanging dead man. Often it was no secret who the mob instigators were, but they were protected by their brotherhood. After the Civil Rights era, white on black murders changed in nature, becoming fewer and more discreet, but they never stopped.

In 2008 when a black man became President of the United States, the white supermacist arms of the white brotherhood came out in full force from their hiding places; and in 2016 they were instrumental in the election of one who would give them whatever they wanted in exchange for their loyalty to his own personal power. This has unleashed a culture of black murders like we haven’t seen since the lynchings. With the motivation consistently to keep black people from getting to vote, the loyal brothers are turning a blind eye to the most egregious and heinous of murders, most noted by police officer brothers, but also by blatant white supremacists who are literally hunting black people as if they were deer, shooting or running over and disposing of any who are spotted alone. I’m making no assertion here that the mainline fraternal lodges condone such behavior, but the protective network of each other is there nonetheless. “Self defense” they say, or “he was just a lone wolf,” to divert any thought of a network. Then they might put him on leave, maybe even suspend his pay for a time, maybe even let him go to jail for a couple of years, but ultimately the network has his back.



What They Needed from Women

From women their needs were twofold. They needed sex, and they needed a wife to cook and care for them at home. It would seem their strategies could be simpler here, right? But they aren’t. 

In order to keep a woman at home, she must be dependent on her husband for survival. Thus the early laws that only men could attend college and the cultural expectation that a woman’s place was in the home. Outside work was a threat to that dependency, giving her money with which she might support herself.  A sinister aside to this education strategy is that now, because there are more women than men graduating from college, there is a white male strategy to disavow college education, making it meaningless, and encouraging instead church schools, some of which are being named “colleges” without any credentials or legitimate accreditations. The goal: men remain in control.

The best way to keep a woman from working outside the home is to keep her pregnant and busy with child-raising. Read that again. The biggest blow to this strategy was the birth control pill in 1960. Anything that can stop pregnancy is the enemy to the brotherhood power. Thus the current political manipulation of religious groups about abortion. Taught that “liberals” are “baby killers,” rather than that “liberals” are against elected men making decisions that control women. Nobody, by the way, is pro-abortion; and the “partial-birth abortion” propaganda being shown and touted in churches comes out of right-wing politics as a manipulation of the vast population of so-called evangelical voters. Real pro-life and pro-choice are not mutually exclusive of the other.

Now stay with me here. This gets deeper. What better way to keep women under control than to convince them that it’s God’s idea. Southern Baptists, for example, have an annual preaching and Sunday School teaching rotation that regularly reminds women that the man is the head of the home, that wives are to submit to their husbands, and even that they are to say yes to sex anytime their husband wants it. God says so, because the men wrote and designed the doctrines and the study curriculums.

Women are not left completely out of the fraternal orders. They have their own companion organizations, often called auxiliaries. Auxiliaries by their very name are supplements or add-ons to something else. They don’t stand alone, and their teachings are controlled by the main (male) organization. The role of women’s (or ladies’) auxiliaries is subordination, support, and assistance to the main (men only) organization. This distinction begins early. In Southern Baptist mission training of children, for example, the boys’ organization was originally named Royal Ambassadors (RAs) and the girls’, Girls Auxiliary (GAs). 

Until 1920 women also were not allowed to vote (and then, only white women). Just as with black people, voting is power, and women had no business with that kind of power. When the women’s movement won the women’s right to vote, another of the learned white fraternity strategies came into play. Intimidating. Manipulating and belittling woman into believing that only men need to care about politics, and only men can properly understand it. Then, not only does the woman’s vote not make a difference, but it can even be two votes for the man as he instructs his wife in how to vote.

Take-overs

In the 1970s a power marriage took place between conservative politics and fundamentalist religion. This was a carefully conceived strategy led by Jerry Falwell Sr., father of the Jerry Falwell of recent “pool boy” fame. This union would be a boon to the Republican Party and a political infusion to denominations like the Southern Baptists, who would be led to focus their religious fervor on the white fraternity political issues of abortion and homosexuality, both threats to white male control. 

Although the brotherhood members were in the framework of the establishment and on-going organization of the Southern Baptist churches from the Convention’s 1845 inception, in a fierce denominational battle that spanned from the 1970s through the 1990s, the male power network officially gained full control, one entity at a time, of all the SBC resources, boards, and seminaries. Control of the seminaries, the educational grounds for future church leaders, ensured perpetuation of the political takeover. All administrators, leaders, and individual churches that refused to embrace their ideology, were ousted from the Convention. With the SBC being the largest Protestant religious denomination in the country, with currently over 14.5 million members (2019), this was no small victory for the white brotherhood network. 

Despite its large membership, the SBC was in some ways an easy target. Already, with few exceptions, only men were allowed to be pastors or deacons, and denominational education materials indoctrinated church members to believe that God set men in power over everything. Still the take-over was a huge undertaking; but it would not be their biggest.

2009 saw the beginning of a spin-off extreme right political group that called itself the Tea Party, set out to take over all the local, state, and national politics. The ultimate power grab. And, although the Tea Party name didn’t hold a respectable reputation for long, they successfully overtook the mainstream Republican Party, much of which was already a part of them.

Election 2020

Therefore . . . Are you still with me? . . .Our current political storm. It’s not an isolated battle of black vs. white, or men vs. women, or even Republican vs. Democrat, in any traditional sense, as neither the president nor the Republican party is traditional Republican. Rather, it is a war, and quite a nasty one, between white male control for absolute economic, political, and social power, and Democrats who are fighting against that complete power grab.

I’m not sure there’s any such thing as a “normal election,” but this one is definitely not that. The thousands of white power brotherhood organizations will be voting for the Republican Party, which now belongs to them until traditional Republicans can find a way to take back the party. The rest of us MUST vote Democrat. Not because Democrats get everything right, but because, in this particular moment in history, Democrats are trying to save our very Democracy from an internal white power terrorism like we cannot begin to imagine.

Friends and family, we have all been manipulated and brainwashed. Yes, white men included. So many white men in the lower levels of the fraternal organizations, or in leadership positions in their churches, are not aware that they are being played as pawns on a chess board, perpetuating a worldview completely contrary to that of the biblical Jesus that so many of them profess and passionately desire to follow. Maybe pride, or too many decades of indoctrination, or maybe the fraternal bonds themselves, will keep them from hearing this alarm, but the rest of us must break away. Vote Republican again after the Republican party reclaims itself, but this November, all true US patriots must vote against this takeover, even if it means voting separate from your husband, son, or pastor.

White Brotherhood Strategies

Allow me to shift gears here. For the sake of your reading time, I will skip here the analysis of the current president and how he fits into this whole white male power system. He doesn’t fit neatly into any party or any fraternity or lodge. The strategies he brings to his corrupt politics overlap but are not identical to the institutional strategies of white male power. I will highlight here six major strategies that are easily recognized if we begin to watch for them. These are not new strategies, but tried and true strategies that have manipulated and controlled people like us across many centuries and cultures.

1.Gaslighting and Intimidation take many forms. The idea is to question the speaker in such a way as to make them question their own intelligence or sanity. Gaslighting might be overt or very subtle, making us doubt ourselves or feel like we are less intelligent. It can be as simple as the criticism of “women drivers” (coined because driving was another way women gained their independence), or as deeply woven into us as religious doctrines of depravity and guilt. Now we are seeing it constantly in social media in the laughing emoji to intimidate / laugh at those who post anything “liberal.” 

One strategy that has worked effectively for centuries is name calling. If we give a group of people a label and use that label derogatorily, we dehumanize the group, making them less intelligent, less important, or less human than “us.” Women drivers. Old wives (and their tales). “Baby killers.” “Feminist” and “Feminazi” are the names pinned to women who don’t accept that women are subservient to men. Vietnamese soldiers were brainwashed to call their enemies “gooks,” making them less human and easier to kill. And the N word. 

The current president uses this strategy constantly: the Chinese virus, Crooked Hillary, Sleepy Joe, Pocahontas, nasty Women . . . Perhaps the greatest current example is the word “liberal,” which comes from the same root as “liberty” and “library,” meaning free or open to views different from one’s own. It has become a derogatory word, though, used to describe anything or anybody that disagrees with extreme white male politics. It works as a dehumanizer because we have fallen for the gaslighting.

2.Terrorism and Threats are the ultimate intimidation. Cross burning. Lynchings. Church shootings. Cowardly anonymous threats on the lives of People of Color and/or Women running for office or speaking out in power. Ask any of them. They have stories.

3.Truth has no meaning. Lying has no meaning. Say whatever might save you at the moment, whatever might get you a vote, whatever might keep you out of trouble, whatever pops into your head, no matter how ridiculous, no matter if you said exactly the opposite yesterday. For example: Following the 2020 Democratic National Convention , the president tweeted that the DNC left “under God” out of the pledge of allegiance. Then later the NC Republican Party mailed cards to households across the state repeating this blatant lie. Why? Because if people see it in writing, they will believe it without question, and it will anger them against voting for “liberals,” and if anyone were to sue them for blatant lies, they know the voting damage has already been done, and also that the case would take longer than the election.

Denial fits into this strategy. Just deny every accusation, even if it’s right there in plain view; even if you just said the opposite to a different group of listeners and it’s on record for all to see.

Another form of this is Accusation, accusing the opposition of the corruption you yourself committed, before they can accuse you. Then, when they do accuse you, it becomes a “he said, he said,” farce, as if neither is truthful. This is another favorite of the current president. Want to learn his secrets? Listen carefully to the out-of-the-blue accusations he makes about his opponents.

4. Another strategy, especially of our current presidential administration is Bombarding, or shooting so much corruption without pause so that it’s impossible for opponents or outsiders to keep up with or to react to all that needs reaction.

5. Strategy number five: Distraction or diversion. When something damaging is being exposed, it’s a strategy to distract attention from it, with whatever might divert people’s attention.

6. Finally, Education is critical to the longevity of any ideology, especially through the institutions of school and church. If we wanted to perpetuate the superiority of white men, we could fill children’s history books and curriculum with photos and stories of mostly no one except “dead white men,” particularly those the secret societies know belonged to their own. The best way to perpetuate any thought into the future is to make it a part of every child’s education, including the important job of textbook writing. A quick Google search, for example, will bring up innumerable shamefully whitewashed textbook descriptions of American slavery and “happy” slaves.

Second only to schools, places of worship are the most strategic institutions for perpetuating whitewashed history, politics, etc. Especially in the denominations in which leaders have little or no educational requirements, or in which their educational institutions are self-contained (i.e. taught by their own), this is a relatively easy target now, thanks to centuries of carefully laid groundwork. Find an isolated passage in the Bible that appears to make your point, and preach/teach it repeatedly as coming straight from God’s mouth. In the SBC, for example, all 47,500+ churches celebrate a Sanctity of Human Life Sunday every year, in which they reiterate the evils of abortion, using two verses (Psalm 139:13-14) for which the writer had no thought whatsoever of abortion. Yet, because of the indoctrination, the mere mention of the verses automatically takes the more than 14.5 million Southern Baptist minds to their politics of abortion.  Any teaching can perpetually and repeatedly be spread to thousands of churches through the Sunday School curriculum, and through the training curricula of future ministers.

The deteriorating quality of educational testing has also made indoctrination (or brainwashing) simpler. When a unit on the Holocaust, for example, is tested objectively with “How many Jews died?” rather than “What could make an entire nation follow the orders of such a corrupt man?” the higher order levels of thinking are not being trained. Memorization, not analysis, synthesis, or problem-solving, becomes the goal.

And, because public schools teach science, which is a threat to some of this brainwashing, many church groups are being encouraged to open their own church-supported or home-based schools, in which they can perpetuate and control their own church teachings, similarly insulating what the children will be taught.

Summary and Final Thoughts

We are living in a frightening time of unprecedented political divisiveness. We see voices of color crying out. We hear young voices and women’s voices yelling to be heard. We identify the politics and sometimes the religion. These cries are not separate from each other. The connecting thread is the centuries old white male fraternal network, the brotherhood of white male power and loyalty, divided into many names for its own posterity, but no longer secret.

The white fraternity lodge culture is losing ground in American society  as the younger generations of men are finding their relationships and identities elsewhere. Freemasonry in the US has declined from 4.1 million members in 1960 to fewer than 2 million at this writing. While this is good news to “liberty and justice for all,” the fraternal mindset is so woven into our nation’s framework that we rarely recognize its face when we are looking squarely at it.

Fraternal orders have made great contributions to our communities, states, and nation. For much they are to be commended and appreciated. Against the insular hoarding of wealth and power, however, the time has come for us to take a stand, to finally make good on our American dream of “all humans are created equal." Daddies, brothers, and uncles, will you join us, side by side, in this movement for change? Your mothers, your sisters, your daughters and granddaughters, your black and brown and Jewish and Muslim coworkers and neighbors are watching for your courageous response.

Disclaimers

1. This article is not saying that white men are bad. This article is not saying that members of white male secret societies are bad. This article is not saying that all members of white male secret societies condone the evil racist acts and ideologies of the KKK and neo-Nazi organizations that use much of their ritual and teaching. This article is not saying that white male fraternal organizations do not also use their wealth and power for valuable contributions to society. It IS saying that the most threatening terrorists and the greatest danger to our democratic republic are white and male, and that they are not “lone wolves” but a long and strongly established network of intentional power.

2. Most of the mainline fraternal organizations have made valuable contributions in the building and framing of our culture, and some have abandoned the racist and sexist philosophies embedded in their beginnings. The writer of this article says thank you for both, and adds a strong challenge that those lodges that now know and do better will openly own their past and intentionally work to tear down and rebuild what has proven detrimental to our national, spiritual, relational, and political health.

The Writer

The writer of this article is a Republican-turned-Independent and writes out of love for our country and our democracy, not for any political party, although in this election she will vote almost entirely Democrat. She grew up in a rural one-stoplight town and has always lived in the South. Her religious background and seminary training are Southern Baptist.

Through several decades she has been in close relationship with freemasons and other fraternal lodge members. She has read a number of books and magazines published by the organizations themselves and by men within them. The information within this article, however, can be found on-line freely accessible to all.

Suggested Reading

1984, by George Orwell, 1949. Sometimes dangerous warnings have to be presented as fiction, to protect the author

Caste, by Isabel Wilkerson, 2020. If you only have time for one book, this one.

When Everything Changed, by Gail Collins, 2009. HIstory of Women 1960s to 2009

White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo, 2018. Why it’s hard for white people to talk about racism

White Too Long, by Robert P. Jones, 2020. White American Christianity’s shockingly intimate relationship with white supremacy

Suggested Watching

13th 2016 documentary about the 13th Amendment and how law enforcement, the courts, and the prison system by design perpetuate racial inequality

The Handmaid’s Tale 2017 TV series based on Margaret Atwood’s novel; society where women are property

B128. Two Kinds of Trump Supporters

I live in North Carolina, a swing state that has been called by some the most critical state in this upcoming presidential election. If Hillary Clinton wins NC, they are saying, she will win the election. If Donald Trump loses NC, he will have no path to getting the electoral votes he needs to win. My loved ones are Hillary supporters, and my loved ones are Trump supporters.

Me? I’m definitely a Hillary supporter, but before you roll your eyes and move on, it might surprise you to know I didn’t vote for her 8 years ago, I voted for Republican John Kasich in this year's primary, and I have never been a Democrat.

What we have in this election though is not a 2-party presidential race. There is no real Republican. Even the past Republican presidents are not supporting Trump. Nor is Colin Powell or Condoleezza Rice or many of the current Republican legislators across the nation. 

This Republican nominee personifies everything that opposes morality and basic human decency. We have watched him degrade veterans, women, immigrants, people with disabilities, black people, Muslims, and Hispanics. We have politely pretended not to hear him as he has made f-bombs, p*ssies, and gun threats commonplace talk even in conservative circles. We have watched him lead rallies that look more like The Jerry Springer Show than American politics. This election season has made even little children scared, and has empowered those of all ages who bully others, erasing the line of decency that in the past they would have had to cross.

The prospect of a Trump presidency scares me to the core. Not in a political way. Not in a “my party vs. your party” way. But in a “this could be the end of our country as we have known it” way. I imagine that most Hillary supporters are dumbfounded as to how anyone could support Trump. Self included, but my anguish and ponderings have brought me to this explanation. I think there are two basic types of Trump supporters*:

1.  First the “deplorables.” These are the ones we have seen punching people at his rallies. These are the KKK and other white supremacist groups that enthusiastically support him. These are the angry white men who are tired of hearing about rights for black people and immigrants and women. "What about my rights?", they demand to know. These are the men who educate themselves and each other to the loss of any other reality, believing made-up conspiracies, believing the government wants to take away their gun rights, believing everyone's out to get them. These are true Trump supporters. They hear his words and see a brother. No one will change their minds.

2. The second group is the more difficult to understand, and they are the group I know best, the fundamentalist Christians. These are not the angry disenfranchised, fearing that someone else is taking their rights. These are kind, gentle, loving and caring people who want above all else to please God and to do what’s right. These are people whose religious traditions have fed and clothed the needy for centuries. Throughout their history they have sent money both overseas and across their homeland to help those less fortunate. They volunteer at natural disaster sites and at rehab centers and soup kitchens. They speak without four-letter words. They pray, sing old hymns, and share pot-luck dinners on the church grounds. Many of them don’t even drink alcohol. They are good parents, good spouses, and the best of care-takers for each other.

So what on earth? Well, it’s not their fault, except that they have been taught to be too trusting. For centuries fundamentalist Christian churches have ingrained in their congregants the rules of the church. Attend regularly, give 10% of your income to the church, pray, honor the Bible as the Word of God, obey God, honor your pastor as God’s servant . . . This worked well until politics saw its vulnerability and set out to exploit it. Well documented, in the 1970’s a group led by Jerry Falwell made a plan that would marry the fundamentalist Christian churches, a huge segment of the population, to right-wing politics. A brilliant plan, because, if it worked, and it did, right-wing politics would gain a large group of the most devoted voters, already trained to believe and obey whatever they were told. The group called itself the Moral Majority, and just as planned, the fundamentalist churches attached themselves to it, thus becoming Republicans for God.

Once the Republican party became seen as God’s party, the rest was easy. Every Republican issue became God’s issue, and Republican leaders became God’s spokespersons. To be Christian meant to vote Republican, no matter what issue and no matter what candidate. God and Republican were one.

Now fast forward to Election 2016. What a mess. These God-fearing people find themselves voting for a man who exemplifies everything their Jesus does not. Hate your neighbors. Hate your enemies. Turn away the foreigner. Use and demoralize women. Bear false witness in everything. Cheat employees and business clients. (The man has been sued over 4000 times.) Use the most offensive language possible. Compassion? What’s that? And Jesus’ favorite: leave the poor where they are.

Why am I writing this blog? Because I know that many of my own family and friends are still worried about how to vote in this election, and their church leaders are dutifully handing down the political messages as God’s mandates. I’m writing because this election is not politics as usual, but a most frightening time that could leave us in less than one week with the most dangerous elected leader this nation has ever seen. Vote for your Republican candidates on the rest of the ballot if you want, but please pray, really pray, about your presidential vote. If you just can’t vote for Hillary, then please consider leaving the presidential race blank, or voting third party or a write-in.

I also understand that the abortion issue is the one issue that is guiding many of you at the polls, and I get that. But consider this. Roe vs. Wade made abortion legal in the US in 1973. That was 43 years ago. No Republican president since then has reversed it (which is not in a president’s power anyway), and it is quite unlikely that a man of Donald Trump’s record would have any such passion. (Did you know that prior to being a presidential candidate he was adamantly pro-choice?) There is no reason this should be a major 2016 election issue except that someone has told us to believe it is.

Pause, my friends. Pray alone, and listen for the Spirit’s response. It might be that deepest gut feeling that keeps calling to you. I will continue to love you even if you keep wearing the red cap, but I write because I fear, really fear, for the world we are leaving to our children and grandchildren. A world without Morality, Trust, Truth, or Christianity except as defined by Government. Maybe I fear too much. Maybe not.

*Note: Certainly there are other Trump voters who do not fit into either of these 2 groups. Staunch Republicans who automatically vote Republican despite having no religious interest, for example.



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B126. Why I'm Not Afraid of Hillary
B50. Franklin Graham's Religion Is Not His Father's

B51. Jesus Times Two

We are a culture that loves the name of Jesus.  Say the name, and it sells products.  Post the name, and it’s shared widely on Facebook.  “Praise the name of Jesus,” we sing.  “Blessed be the name!”  “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, sweetest name I know!”  When I sang these words as a child in the ‘60s, there was only one Jesus, and indeed the name was sweet.  My grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, and all my Christian acquaintances sang of one Jesus, and all the Christians I had encountered were a united spiritual family.

Today though we are confused by two Jesuses, and they don’t resemble each other at all.  One is the Jesus of our Christian subculture which includes many of our churches, and the other is the Jesus of the Gospels.  I fear that unless we find our way back to the Jesus of the Gospels, church as we know it is on its way to irrelevance, and then to oblivion.*  Christian friends, please hear me out.  We might be fighting for the wrong Jesus.

The first Jesus is a political entertainment figure. We could nickname him “Jesus Beck,” “Jesus O'Reilly,” or  “Jesus Limbaugh.”  This Jesus teaches his followers that all things Republican are of God, and his two main concerns are abortion and gay rights.  This Jesus came into prominence in the 1970s, the brainchild of Jerry Falwell and others who united with him to forge Christian America into a political army.

God, however, is neither Republican nor Democrat, nor even American, and, while abortion and gay rights are important issues worthy of our discourse, Jesus of the Gospels said nothing at all about them, at least to our knowledge, unless we count loving our neighbor and forgiveness.

Then who is the other Jesus, the one we have left behind?  We could call this one “Jesus the Christ.” He too has his passions.  Love your neighbor.  Feed the hungry.  Welcome the immigrants.  Don’t confuse God and Caesar.  Care for the poor.  Stand up for the oppressed.  Reach out to the marginalized.  Show compassion.  These are his heart’s cries.  These are his passions.

If we continue to listen to the media Jesus (via our chosen media sources or via church and denominational leaders who listen to these sources), we might never hear Jesus the Christ, for he is gentle and speaks in our quietness and our solitude.  We prefer to hear the Jesus that speaks in loud angry words.  We prefer to judge our neighbor and decide for ourselves whether he is worthy of any compassion.  We know who deserves to be helped better than Jesus does.  We understand food stamps, prisoners, and immigrants better than Jesus does.

How can we find Jesus again, the Jesus of the Gospels, if we want to?  The answer is simple, yet so very difficult because it probably means standing against church and religious culture.  We find him in the Gospels.  Not in the Church’s interpretation of the Gospels, not in cable news’ take on world events, but in reading the Gospels for ourselves, at home, alone, just like we read the newspaper, just like we read a best-selling novel.  And when we finish, we read them again from another translation, and then again from another.  Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, cover to cover, over and over.

It’s not our fault, Christians, but we have been led astray, tricked, used.  I’m going back.  I miss Jesus.


*Note: True Christianity will endure, but it might not resemble what we call "church" today.

B50. Franklin Graham's Religion Is Not His Father's

Franklin Graham is using the power of his father’s name for his own political agenda.

Throughout history there may not have been a more respected Christian leader than the Rev. Billy Graham.  He ministered for a lifetime without serious controversy or compromise, focusing on preaching the message of Jesus Christ and keeping himself clean of all political factions.

In the 1970s when Jerry Falwell changed the face of American Christianity by marrying it with conservative politics, Rev. Graham refused to be a part of it.  Although a Southern Baptist and a registered Democrat, he never let either of those distinctions rule his life.  Graham willingly pastored all presidents regardless of political party, from Truman to Obama.

He refused in 1979 to join Falwell's Moral majority, saying, "I'm for morality, but morality goes beyond sex to human freedom and social justice. We as clergy know so very little to speak with authority on the Panama Canal or superiority of armaments.  Evangelists cannot be closely identified with any particular party or person.  We have to stand in the middle in order to preach to all people, right and left."

In 1981 he told Parade magazine, “I don’t want to see religious bigotry in any form.  It would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right.  The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it.”

In 2005, struggling with Parkinson’s disease and then 86 years old, Rev. Graham handed the reins of his Billy Graham Evangelical Association powerhouse to his son Franklin, whose ministries include the popular Samaritan’s Purse shoebox ministry which delivers Christmas gifts to needy children around the world.

Franklin, however, is unquestionably a proponent of the Christian right that his father so avoided and denounced, and now, with the aging minister approaching his 94^th birthday and struggling more and more with his failing health, including substantial vision and hearing loss, his Association, led by Franklin, is using his name and face to press a political agenda the respected minister would never have advocated. 

Most recently there have been photos circulated on-line of Gov. Mitt Romney’s visit with Franklin and his father, implying an endorsement by the elder Graham of Romney for president.  Yet, the only quote they could get from him was “I’ll do all I can to help you.”  Had there been anything more substantial from his lips than that, we surely would be seeing it in videos all over the internet.

Following this visit and the deceptive implications of an endorsement, the Association’s website deleted its description of Mormonism as a cult. Does this mean the organization has decided to embrace Mormons into its Christian box?  No, Franklin does not call Gov. Romney a Christian.  It’s all just politics.

Earlier this year when NC was voting on an amendment to define marriage, Billy Graham’s name and face were used in ads in favor of the amendment.  No voice.  No meaningful quotes.  No video.  But there was his face, implying that he initiated the ads.

It was Franklin, also, who won the fight to make the Billy Graham Library the burial site of his parents where it will be a tourist attraction, despite his mother’s plea to be buried near Asheville where they had lived for many years, and despite his brother Ned’s strong support of his mother’s wishes.

Franklin is devoted to the political religious climate of his time, but we should be very wary of accepting anything we see or hear that appears to be coming from his father, especially during this volatile election season.  Franklin now has control of the Billy Graham Association, but Franklin’s Christianity is not his father’s.  More newspaper ads are coming.  Look at them, but be sure to notice the details that are missing and the voice that is not really speaking.  If we can hear the words as those of Franklin, not his father, we can protect the respected name of a dear man who deserves to live his last days as he so carefully lived the rest, according to his own spiritual wisdom and conscience.

Gov. Romney's recent visit with Rev. Graham
(photo from Washington Post)

President Obama's 2010 visit with Rev. Graham
(photo from Wikipedia)

" . . . (Billy) Graham always functioned as a 'paramedic' rather than a 'policeman' for the Kingdom of God."  - A. Larry Ross (B. Graham's principal spokesperson since 1981)

B38. Liberals Are Taking Our Country

Preacher says liberals are taking our country, and we need to be ever watching and alert.  Preacher says we are becoming a minority and must stand up for Jesus amidst a sea of persecution.  Blessed are we when we are persecuted for righteousness sake, he quotes to the situation.

Name-calling is nothing new.  We did it as children.  We do it as adults.  It puts us above other groups of human beings, even if only in our own minds.  If we call them a harsher name than they call us, we can feel like the victors.

Rarely, however, do the names we call each other really mean what we wrap inside them.  Let’s look together at this “liberal” word.

What the preacher means when he says “liberal”

When the preacher calls people liberals, he means “worldly” people who are without Jesus in their lives.  People who make ungodly choices and want to erase God and Christiainity from our culture.  People who are going to hell if they don't repent.

What does “liberal” really mean?

The word “liberal” comes from the Latin liber, meaning “free,” the same root from which we get the word “liberty." Interesting how two words from the same root can be interpreted so differently in our emotions, one appealing to our national pride and the other having evolved into a Christian slur.  Have you ever heard the preacher call someone a “liberal” and mean it kindly?

So who are the liberals?  Those so called are often very educated people, unfortunately another trait often degraded in our churches, even to the point of teaching that education is detrimental to our spiritual consciousness.  Interestingly though, have you noticed that whatever level of education a preacher has, whether a seminary degree or an 8^th grade education, that is the most spiritual level, according to him, and anything above that is useless or harmful?

“Liberals” are often well-traveled people.  They have worked with and befriended people of different races, religious backgrounds, and ideologies, and often they have given up their prejudices and judgments of those who are different.  They generally believe that every human being has the right to live his/her life as s/he chooses so long as it doesn't impinge on someone else's rights.

And what about the “godless” accusation?  “Liberals” are both Christian and non-Christian.  For those who are Christian, what they have rejected is not Christianity but the particular brand of Christianity preached in many of our churches.  This brand is fundamentalism.

Fundamentalism was not born with Jesus.  Jesus was as unfundamentalist as they come.  Our particular brand of fundamentalism was born in the 1970s when there was an unprecedented wedding between Christianity and right-wing politics.  This movement was led by Jerry Falwell who started the Moral Majority, and other men like Adrian Rogers, James Dobson, and Pat Robertson.  These men turned the Christian culture into a political powerhouse, thus changing the very nature and focus of our so-called faith. This fundamentalism is characterized by a literal interpretation of the Bible and by anything Republican.

As an aside here, Billy Graham was never a part of this movement.  His Association, now led by his son Franklin, is very much entrenched in it and has recently used the evangelist’s good name to push some politics in which he would never have become involved during his days of leadership.  Billy Graham was the spiritual advisor to all the presidents of his day, without regard to political party, and in 1981 he actually made this powerful statement in an interview with Parade magazine:  “I don’t want to see religious bigotry in any form.  It would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right.  The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it.”  Perhaps it would surprise you that one of his ghost writers (celebrities rarely write their own books) was a gay man.  (If interested, read Stranger at the Gate by Mel White.)

A “liberal” Christian is likely to be more interested in reaching out to the poor and oppressed, feeding the hungry, fighting for rights where they see them being trampled, than in our traditional rituals.  Although there’s certainly a place for both, I offer the question of which one most resembles the life and ministry of Jesus.  Perhaps we should be less harsh?  Perhaps there's a place for us all?

Preacher also warns us about “feminists.”  We should avoid them.  Trouble-makers they are.  Worldly.  Can we examine that word too, before we move on?  What does the preacher mean when he says “feminists”?  He means women who do not adhere to the fundamentalist interpretation of women’s roles in the home and church.  A woman’s main purpose, according to fundamentalist understanding, is to support her husband.  Her role in life is centered on child-rearing and home-making.  At church she is a hard worker in multiple behind-the-scenes support roles, and she might teach other women or children, but she does not preach, serve as a deacon, or teach where men are present.

So, what are “feminists” really?  I suppose they are women (no, actually many are men) who dare to think that women have the God-given right to choose their own lives.  To marry or not to marry.  To have children or not to have children.  To be housewives or to be doctors, lawyers, professors, politicians, pastors, gardeners, soldiers, or welders.

Is our current Christian culture helping us share Jesus with those around us?  I don’t think so.  Do you?  What I see is that the Church’s hatred of “liberals,” “feminists,” and let’s not even talk about gay people, is driving them as far away from us as they can get.  And sadly, they might never see Jesus’ reflection in us at all, but Falwell’s instead, or Dobson’s, or maybe even Rush Limbaugh’s.

We have fallen away, my Christian friends, and we must find our way back, or else watch the younger generations, who have rejected our foolishness, find God on their own and develop their own churches which will not resemble ours at all.  Be assured though that God is not dead.  Be assured that God is speaking and working with the younger folks, the educated folks, the Democrats, yes, even the gay people . . . God is a God of open arms, open even to us who have strayed without meaning to stray.

If I am a liberal, if I am a feminist, if I am any other label anyone might want to pin on me, I wear it proudly, along with my Christian label.  Maybe the “liberal” Christians can claim the same Scripture of justification:  blessed are they who are persecuted for standing for Christ, even if the persecutors are other Christians.

The last prayer Jesus prayed was for our unity.  How did He know way back then that we would be fighting amongst ourselves about how to interact with the world and how to read the Scriptures?  Maybe he even knew we’d be calling each other names.  Was his prayer in vain?

Related posts:

I'm Not Stupid, but I'm a Christian

Why You Can't Reason with Evangelical Christians

God Did Not Write the Bible

Sexual Orientation: It's Not a Sin

The Flaw in Biblical Guidance

Leaving Church

Change? Who? Me?

B24. Why You Can't Reason with Evangelical Christians

Hi.  I’m Kathy, and I’m a recovering Southern Baptist.  I was born that way, or at least into that path of experience.  I was raised in a devout Southern Baptist family in a small rural community in the heart of the Bible Belt.  I listened well to the teachings and remained an exemplary Baptist until I left my church this past April at age 49.  I have not and will not leave the Christian faith, but have come to realize there is a vast chasm between that which is truly of God and that which is human indoctrination and tradition, alongside the realization that few in the Christian Church ever question that distinction.

Such Christians are not bad people.  In fact, they are extremely committed to being the best people they can be, based on their taught understanding of what that means.  Nor are they necessarily uneducated people, but their religious indoctrination often erases their capacity for acquiring and applying knowledge outside of the evangelical box in which they live.

Fundamental Christians are taught from birth to see the world and everything in it as good or bad, us or them, right belief or wrong belief, everything clearly black or white.  “If you believe what we tell you to believe, you are on God’s side.  If you don’t believe what we tell you to believe, you are on Satan’s side.”  They are taught an idolatrous attachment to the Bible, worshiping it as written by God in God’s exact words to be understood literally in answer to every issue of our 21^st century American lives.  To propagate such an understanding though, like every other Bible teaching group, their leadership must carefully pick and choose which passages they will stress, and explain to the learners how to interpret them.   This is done through weekly Bible Study materials distributed to all the churches and through the deliberate training of future pastors in their own educational institutions. 

Now the scariest part of Evangelical Christianity is what has happened to it in the past few decades.  Beginning in the 1970s under the power of men like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and James Dobson, the face of Christianity in America took a drastically wrong* turn.  These men, seeing the potential power of the Christian Church and its sheeplike ability to follow, constructed a new bulwark of conservative political power, deceiving the Christian community into accepting that to follow God meant to follow their version of ultra-conservative politics.  Thus Republicanism and political issues such as abortion and homosexuality suddenly became Evangelical Christian issues, with “right belief” being indoctrinated by the Church and “wrong belief” meaning one was outside God’s favor.

Soon, every issue, whether political, moral or doctrinal became a war of words.  No longer was faith a personal mystical search for God, but rather a recitation of all the right words.  Saying we love our neighbor took the place of actually loving him.  Voicing agreement to give our lives to Christ saved us for eternity, taking the place of struggling daily to actually live such a life.  Worshiping the Bible and fighting for it took the place of actually reading, studying and striving to understand it.  Being a good Republican took the place of personally thinking through and struggling with issues.

Now, as a direct result of that 1970s power movement, Evangelicals no longer have a need to think or reason.  They get all they need from such power-mongering pontificators as Rush Limbaugh, Shawn Hannity, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and any political leader of the far right.

Still all human beings have the capacity to reason, don’t they?  Maybe not.  We can be indoctrinated/brainwashed (same thing really) to do or not to do anything.  Evangelicals have been so indoctrinated that they have lost their ability to reason, or perhaps better said, they see such reasoning as sinful before God.  If God (through church interpretations of the Bible, through Fox News, through Republican politics) has said black, then to consider white or gray or purple, or to listen to someone reason about it, is to oppose God.  There is no argument of reason that can stand up against what God has clearly said.  Therefore to reason with a Fundmental Christian is a frustrating and futile experience.

 To my evangelical/fundamental friends and family:  We desire the same thing.  Political culture is not God.  God existed long before ultra-Republicans or Fox News or gay bashing, and God will exist long after all of these have become just ugly blots in the face of American history.  What will endure is the love Christ so fervently taught and demonstrated.  Can we live it and share it in more than just right words?



Disclaimer:  This blog makes a generalized observation of Evangelical Christianity.  It is not meant to be a description of every evangelical church nor of every individual with them.  Likewise, it is not meant to be a statement against any political party in and of itself.

*I am not making a judgment here about these men's politics, but rather about the marriage they brought about between right-wing politics and Christianity, via the formation of the Moral Majority, the Religious Right.