Race IV...Gates as race victim

The media has been awash with talk about race since the arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates at his home in Cambridge Mass., last week and with President Obama's summary judgment of the whole affair as "stupid". To his credit the president has retracted his words as ill-chosen and wrong. But as I've said in a few earlier posts, race talk will not go away during the Obama administration. Why? For three good reasons:

1. The racial narrative of "African-Americans as victims" plays into white guilt
over issues of slavery and Jim Crow. Many Whites want to redress and fix these
historic grievances in the here and now and be absolved of guilt. And so long as
there are racial imbalances in life - perceived or real - they are judged to be caused by White privilege and advantage, thus Whites have something to continually "fix" or "repair" in the race "problem".

2. The racial narrative provides a powerful and convenient excuse for African-
American underachievement in many arenas - educational, economic, social, and cultural. Many Black conservatives, like John Mcwhorter and most notably the economist Thomas Sowell, have pointed out the failure of anti-achievement thinking where the racial narrative fuels a type of cultural defeatism. Why work hard to achieve and overcome if "the system" is perceived to be solidly rigged against you? Sadly, far too many African-Americans continue to think and act as if this is true.

3. Black liberals and intellectuals have vast economic interests to protect in the
racial spoils industry. Anti-discrimination is now big business.

This is not to say racism does not exist in the United States of America. It does exist - but nowhere near the extent to which it has existed in this country historically. But well beyond the extent it does exist, no matter how small it exists, there are entrenched social and political interests driving the amplification of race, racial grievance, racial profiling, and racial discrimination. With Blacks starring as perpetual victims, coupled with an industry geared to profit from racial thinking and racial bias, as the old Carpenter's song put it..."we've only just begun...."


One Day in the not too distant future, the nations of the world will be at peace under the banner and guard of the Prince of Peace. Only then we will see "race" for what it is and was - an artifice of difference designed to poison and undermine godly brotherhood.

Oh, by the way...the arresting officer, an Irish white guy named Sgt. Crowley, and the arrested professor, Henry Gates, an African American with an Irish heritage - are related!

John 13:34-35
A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.

Yeshua is Kosher!

Who says history doesn't repeat itself? An interesting development has occurred in Israel whereby a woman who ran a kosher bakery converted to Christianity, but then as a Messianic Jew had her bakery declared non-kosher by the Chief Rabbinate. Well, the Supreme Court of Israel has overruled the Rabbinate saying that belief in Yeshua as the Messiah could not be used as a valid reason to revoke the certificate of kosher. Sounds like the same biblical divisions of 1st century Judaism in its protrayal of a nation not quite sure what to do about Yeshua and His followers.

But what moved me most was her testimony of how she and her husband came to know the Lord. Read about it here:

You see the apostasy coming...

The Episcopals of North America are moving inexorably toward ordaining homosexuals as ministers of the gospel. The bishops of the Episcopal Church have voted and are now in agreement that God "has called and may call" practicing homosexuals "in committed relationships" to ministry.
I mean, you can see the apostasy coming here. Ultimately, the goal is to sanctify homosexuality as an innocent, normative, and thereby "righteous" part of the overall human condition. Once done, no holy office can be shielded from this perversion. Not legally, not institutionally, not in any way. If one objects to homosexuality on biblical grounds people will then ask, "What's your problem? The Episcopalians are OK with it. Are you holier than they?"

By then it will be checkmate. The tables will have turned. Conscientious objectors will then be "opposers of the church".

But I believe in God's protection. I believe He can and will thwart the schemes of the unholy. I am not an Episcopalian. But I believe that churches tend to rise and fall in similar ways. History has shown where regions of the world where the gospel was once preached with fervor and with signs and results following - overrun by armies or apostasized into oblivion - became pitifully reduced to the status of museums and curious landmarks.

But Jesus said, "the gates of Hell shall not prevail against the Church". This, I believe.

Let the Sodomites depart...

More schismic warnings from the American Episcopals. Why don't they just shut up and move on with their pro-gay bishops agenda? Why foist this ungodliness on those who wish to maintain fidelity with scripture and faith?

Religious Liberty and Homosexual Marriage: Incompatible

This is an old article from Chuck Colson. He provides a few case studies of what happens when Christians try to exercise their religious liberty over against the intersts of the homosexual agenda.

Maranatha!

Rev. Wright and "them Jews"

Perhaps as you read this article it might be helpful to remind you that the current President of the United States sat under this man's teaching for 20 years.

But as I have said before, if you don't understand American history and Black history you cannot fathom a Rev. Wright. He seems like a pulpit crackpot. But the truth is, he is not atypical of many Northern Black pastors and churches. He is probably more mainstream than many outside the Black community are aware of. It is unfortunate. His views are Black Nationalist and are ideologically driven by an alienation from "White American" Christianity of the 1900-1930s. Huh, you say? I think it should be called the hate that hate produced. Many Northern Black Christians and Churches responded to an indifferent White Christianity by leaving the faith altogether (Nation of Islam), radicalizing (Shrine of the Black Madonna) or melding Black nationalist ideology with Christian replacement theology (Trinity United Church of Christ).

That the vast majority of mainstream white Christian churches were indifferent to the plight of oppressed Blacks in America from the end of the Civil War to the Civil Rights movement - with a couple of exceptions - is a documented fact. Dr. King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" is a not a reply to "racists and Ku Klux Klanners" but to the mass of indifferent White Christian pastors who refused to ally themselves with the evident work of the Lord in clarifying the moral aims of the Civil Rights Movement.

Thus, the indifference of the so-called "White" Christian church in America led Black people to conclude that "White" Christianity is the enemy of Black people. And it became possible, in this construct, for Black pastors to identify themselves and their churches with the ultimate oppressed figure - Jesus himself - at the hands of the Jews. Moreover, "the Jews", or in this case "them Jews", at-large have become the co-conspirators with Whites in the narrative of "keeping the Black man down" and "practicing genocide" and opposing the truth. Indeed, contra Jews and Israel, many Black churches have adopted the radical Palestinian mantra of "Zionism = Racism".

The trouble is, despite evident racial progress and a very real change of heart from many White Christians and predominantly White churches, Rev. Wright and many others have never deviated from this "ideology as theology". The oppression narrative has expanded its scope and has explanatory power for Black pathology now. It has filled the church pews Sunday after Sunday with the alienated and economically desperate throughout urban and northern housing communities for four decades. It remains very activist. And what community organizer worth his salt would not want be an active part of such a community institution? By golly, with the help of charismatic pastors fully committed to the rhetoric of nationalism, fully committed to the narrative of Jews and Whites as continual oppressors, why, an activist politician sitting the pews for 20 years under such teaching might actually come away with having learned something.

Good Lord, help us!

Interesting megachurches study

Here's a link to Christian Post about a study of megachurches. What most piqued my interest is what I intuitively sensed about them: most of the attendees are single. most people go to a megachurch because they're attracted to the worship style; most people stay at a megachurch because they're attracted to the senior pastor.


Interesting stuff...