🧵Seminary Thread🧵
Once upon a time I attended a conservative White Evangelical seminary, @WestminsterTS.
I have asked to be removed from mailings. No luck.
Their most recent offering is a toxically amusing opportunity to reflect on White conservative culture. Let's go! 1/12
The general theme of this thread about @WestminsterTS and White conservative patriarchy is "Tell me about yourself without telling me."
They start off quite strong with a conspicuously all-male TOC for a magazine about "Looking Ahead to Westminster's Future." Dang straight! 2/12
What about these contributions? Well Peter Lillback, @WestminsterTS President and founder of the explicitly #WhiteChristianNationalist@TheProvForum, wants more $$ even though, "by His grace" they've raised $33 million for his cathedral of polemical patriarchy. 3/12
The magazine continues telling us about the Future of @WestminsterTS with a contribution by David Garner, who like Lillback and a bunch of other faculty, is a dude and has his PhD from ... wait for it ... @WestminsterTS. 4/12
And while we're talking about the @WestminsterTS faculty, let's check on the magazine's Faculty News and Update page. Are we sensing a theme? 5/12
Perhaps my favorite section is an interview with "Dr. [DMin, btw] Harry Reeder III of Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, Alabama."
The magazine is sure to include a picture of Reeder chatting with Garner. There's some great @WestminsterTS energy here! 7/12
...and we're not done with this "two old dudes chatting" @WestminsterTS energy. Some really A+ work here in "Looking Ahead to Westminster's Future." 8/12
Still no contributions from women. But the magazine's editors did find SEVEN pages to feature an address from 55 years ago by one of @WestminsterTS's many White male presidents! 9/12
Oh cool. On the last page we finally get a contribution from a woman. It's a poem. And unlike every other contributor, Whitney Rivera is not pictured.
Serious voice: this is a fantastic representation of how conservative culture in the US does "inclusion of women." 10/12
For a final sense of @WestminsterTS consistency, let's check out how they addressed the envelope.
Aside from the patriarchy, I guess any resident will work for them? It's also Dr. Young, but nevermind that. 11/12
A friend once quipped that WTS slogan should be: "@WestminsterTS: Preparing Tomorrow's Pastor's for Yesterday."
But as with all White Conservative historical imagination, it's a "yesterday" that erases everyone else and authorizes only them. Same vision for the future! 12/12
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It’s nerdy Religious Studies and biblical scholar thread time about white Evangelicals🧵
Have you ever encountered something like, “Without God or Christianity, you don’t have a basis for morality or logic,” as though it’s a home run mic drop? 1/22
Here are some suggestions and resources for thinking about the history and politics of "Without Christianity you don't have a foundation for morality."
Basic point: don't treat this like a serious philosophical system. It's a strategy for self-authorization and insulation. 2/22
There is a long history to this strategy. Some Islamic apologists deploy it too, but make their God and revelation the foundation for logic and morals. Same with cultural elites of other groups who want a simple self-authorizing strategy that seems sophisticated to insiders 3/22
When white Evangelical leaders discredit Christian support for #BLM with "Jesus came to save individuals from sin, not political change," this is #TheologyOfPrivilege. It's a dominant theology and long est. strategy for marginalizing critiques of the status quo's injustice 1/
What is #TheologyOfPrivilege? If the status quo is comfortable for you; if you benefit from the current relations of exploitation in society, you have the #Privilege of feeling non-political. You can label calls for change as political and treat your theology as pure. 2/
There is a history of #TheologyOfPrivilege in Christianity. Think of Luther’s ultimate response to exploited, starving German (Christian) peasants and their theological critiques of the feudal status quo: slaughter them, they’re not real Christians! 3/ germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/Doc.52…