Arthur writes:
“Hi, [Sally].
“I see racism as a core part of the Edomite Curse.
“My perception is that there are three primary strongholds that are intended to pervert the essence of the Trinity.
“According to Ephesians 3:14-15 and Luke 3:38 God the Father is associated with the human community and anything that fractures community is a perversion of the nature of the Father.
“I use the term Edomite Curse to capture that, because of Obadiah 10ff. God’s fury was over the savagery 𝗶𝗻 𝗿𝗲𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽, not the act itself.
“So fundamentally the propensity of human community to blame instead of standing with those who are hurting goes back to Adam and Eve, and then Cain, and millions after them.
“Our religious culture nominally says we are not to hate, but broadly does not teach people HOW to love — especially across cultural (or racial) differences.
“Tonight in my live broadcast, I am going to specifically describe how I have come to love the African American, high crime, “hood” here in Spartanburg.
“𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗱. One can and MUST learn to love. Exhorting people and having a token African American on staff and holding symbolic foot washing services when the television cameras are rolling is not the same.
“But if we are only exhorted not to hate, and not taught and held accountable for how to love, we are pawns of the devil.
“After the love in the heart comes action with the feet. But love first.
“My opening point in the message tonight is that passivity on the part of righteous people about racial injustice, WILL bring condemnation from God against those very people.
“There is a massive self-righteousness in the White middle class church. Lots of people have never done anything negative to an African American or Latino or Asian. But they haven’t ever done one little thing to change their deplorable situation either.
“[Sally], I came out of that. In 1963 our family flew into Miami, bought a car, and spent 90 days driving across the US. We took the southern route. This was a year before the Civil Rights march and the landmark legislation.
“My dad was a White, Protestant, minister and he was as racist as it came. We drove through the South in the summer of 1963, stopping a many relatives homes, many churches, shopping as needed, getting gas.
“NEVER in that trip did I see a Jim Crow sign, or a colored drinking fountain or any of those extremely ubiquitous signs of entrenched racism.
“Why? Because my father carefully edited the trip in terms of visual images, and never discussed at all the racial tension in the US.
“I read about it all years later and was stunned. I WAS THERE! And I saw NOTHING.
“Today’s TV makes it hard for White middle class Christians to not know, but it is still easy to ignore.
“And God has some pretty brutal things to say about “righteous” religious, “God-fearing” people who habitually sidestep racism.”
I may lose half my following tonight, but if so, it is people who shouldn’t be hanging around us anyway.
So there is my rant. The nickel version of what I will share tonight.