I think it's clear why many social justice oriented Christians appear tepid in the eyes of the Right in their anti-abortionism: they simply don't understand the legal question as easily disentangled from the social conditions that overwhelmingly lead to abortion. 1/
2/ By far, the strongest statistical correlate to abortion is poverty. I mean, hands down. (There is an interesting spike when considering the uber-wealthy, but that's a small group.) And when you see one party championing illegality yet likewise championing libertarian style
3/ social policies, even blaming the poor for their own poverty and condemning the morals of single mothers rather than changing the conditions that make single motherhood so overwhelmingly difficult for many, it makes it truly hard to take their anti-abortionism to be more than
4/ a political litmus test and a leverage for power.

I promise, the majority of social justice oriented Christians already largely agree that life in the womb is sacred and should be afforded legal protections, even if there are disagreements on the parameters.
5/ But coupled with policy that directly results in millions of abortions, it looks a lot like politics. And this politics is often accompanied with no real action yet is consistently played as a binary - "do you care about babies or just made up stuff like systemic racism,
6/ hhmmm??" Even implying (or stating) that if you REALLY care about babies, you are REQUIRED to support the party committed to preserving the social circumstances that lead to abortion and just hope it somehow becomes illegal, effectively ignoring those who suffer at both ends.
7/ Thus, it doesn't take a genius to see why one "side" in the Church is comfortable championing illegality with no correlates, yet the other "side" feels compelled to speak of more dual faceted complex - which, unfortunately, just looks like squishiness to those attempting
8/8 to leverage the abortion issue for political demagoguery.

Just my opinion.
I mean, it seems clear to me that this is exactly what @andrewtwalk's tweet was doing yesterday.

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More from @AlsoACarpenter

30 Nov
"Deconstruction" often looks like this:

1. See a great evil that the Bible condemns being practiced by "Christians," now or in the past.

2. Wonder, "how could 'Christians' engage in and defend such evils?"

3. Begin to examine their justifications, historical or contemporary.
4. See that their justifications include specific doctrines and interpretations of the Scripture.

5. Learn that these doctrines and interpretations have a contingent history and connect well with contingent a-Biblical social doctrines and worldy ideologies.
6. Realize that you yourself have received and believed many of these doctrines from your own socialization (society, family, church).

7. Come to find there are other possible doctrines, interpretations, and traditions employed both currently and historically.
Read 11 tweets
30 Nov
If I'm reading this correctly, Shenvi cannot show that they are incorrect, but is arguing that the method used to arrive at the truths they explicate is dangerous? A "universal acid"?

Is this not a simple slippery slope fallacy? 1/
cbmw.org/2021/11/21/soc…
2/ Critique and rejection of some ideas and interpretations, based on analysis of their contingent historical provenance, NECESSARILY leads to critique and rejection of everything Shenvi believes to be born of untainted theology?
3/ And if this is so, isn't his own critique substituting something like 20th century "worldview" analysis for theology? Something that quite easily could be used as a "universal acid" as well?

I mean, showing that power dynamics have much to do with the historical development
Read 7 tweets
29 Nov
Here's how the non-CRT sociologist Joe Feagin, who coined (or at least popularized) the phrase "systemic racism" defined it:

"Systemic racism includes the complex array of antiblack practices, the unjustly gained political-economic power of whites, the continuing economic 1/
2/ "and other resource inequalities along racial lines, and the white racist ideologies and attitudes created to maintain and rationalize white privilege and power. Systemic here means that the core racist realities are manifested in each of society’s major parts. If you break a
3/ "three dimensional hologram into separate parts and shine a laser through any one part, you can project the whole three-dimensional image again from within that part. Like a hologram, each major part of U.S. society—the economy, politics, education, religion, the family—
Read 4 tweets
28 Nov
"I don’t know what most white people in this country feel, I can only conclude what they feel from the state of their institutions. I don’t know if white Christians hate negros or not; but I know we have a Christian church which is white and Christian church which is black. 1/
2/ "I know, as Malcom X once put it, the most segregated hour in American life is high noon on Sunday. That says a great deal to me about a Christian nation. It means I cannot afford to trust most white Christians, and I certainly cannot trust the Christian Church.
3/ "I don’t know whether the labor unions and their bosses really hate me—that doesn’t matter, but I’m not in their unions. I don’t know if the real estate lobby has anything against black people, but I know the real estate lobbies keep me in the ghetto.
Read 5 tweets
7 Nov
I know this is probably stupid, but i have some free time.

What is Critical Theory, as developed by the Frankfurt School? (Maybe someone can share this with Mark Levin.)

An absurdly long thread:
2/ The Institute for Social Research (ISR), later dubbed the Frankfurt School, was originally formed as a Marxist think tank intended to craft multi-disciplinary revolutionary strategies for the various workers parties. But by the time Max Horkheimer assembled the core group that
3/ would become the intellectual heart of the newly coined “Critical Theory,” the ISR had already abandoned many of Marx’s theses. With the rise of Fascism in Germany and the descent of the Bolshevism into bloody totalitarianism, the teleological and eschatological predictions of
Read 69 tweets
4 Nov
So, we know Christopher Rufo is redefining terms to wage political warfare. He's told us. But many folks respond that he is just doing what antiracists have done by, e.g., "changing the definition of racism."

This is a silly claim, and I'll explain why.

Thread:
2/ I would argue that the "new" or "changed" definition of "racism" is the modern White anti-antiracists' "definition," as developed in the era of racial retrenchment (backlash) following the Civil Rights Movement.
3/ For example, here is the first dictionary definition of "racism": h/t @rasmansa
Read 31 tweets

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