The swirl of thoughts and emotions surrounding the one year anniversary of an #insurrection have been difficult for me to sort out. I'm sure many of you feel the same. So here are some related but distinct items I'm reflecting on concerning the assault on our democracy...🧵
White evangelicals, who are all wrapped up in this thing because of Christian Nationalism (more on that in a moment) spend tons of time arguing about whether women can stand in the pulpit, but hardly a word from conservatives on the crumbling of the democratic process.
I wrote in my first book about the complicity of segments of U.S. Christianity in racism. If I were to write a history of the past 5-7 years, it would be about the conspiracy of many Christians to undermine democracy and promote authoritarianism with the veneer of religiosity
As a historian I'm reminded of the period following the Civil War--Reconstruction and "Redemption." At no time in our nation's history were we more poised to make drastic changes to set up a truly multiracial democracy. That didn't happen. One reason is a lack of accountability.
Andrew Johnson became president after Lincoln's assassination. He was prodigious in pardons for Confederate soldiers and leaders. He vetoed the Civil Rights Bill of 1866 (a veto later overturned). His failure to unequivocally repudiate the Confederate cause still haunts us.
Perhaps the most pernicious outcome of the January 6 insurrection is the failure to hold the prime culprits responsible. The process is ongoing, but it may already be too late. If we can't prevent terrorist acts, we should at least hold the perpetrators accountable for them.
I'm also concerned that too many people will see January 6 as disconnected from the racial uprisings of 2020 and racism and white supremacy more generally. This was a rebellion not just against democracy, but of the participation of Black and brown people in that democracy.
What galvanized support for the insurrection was the goading of right-wing political leaders as well as the supposed threat posed by historically marginalized people who dared to use their votes to shape a more inclusive nation.
The white racial backlash has led to an absence of accountability for politicians who spread disinformation, a war on CRT, and a refusal on the part of Republicans and others to pass any federal measure that protects the right to free and fair elections.
Lastly, white Christian Nationalism, and the literal, physical violence it co-signs and promotes, must be seen as the true threat to democracy that it is. Political officials should be involved, but resistance must also happen in churches and faith communities.
White Christians, in particular, must talk to their leaders and fellow church members to define white Christian Nationalism and explain why it is a perversion of the faith handed down to the saints. If those leaders or members will not listen, the time for separation is nigh.
The U.S. is not destined to be a democracy forever. Those who support a participatory government must fight to ensure its preservation. Let 2022 be a year of prophetic imagination and generative action for the sake of justice.
#January6th #Insurrection

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More from @JemarTisby

30 Nov 21
As hard as fundraising is, in general, it’s even harder for Black-led nonprofits. Here’s why… 🧵
#GivingTuesday
jemartisby.substack.com/p/why-its-so-h…
Racism grew and endured in the United States because it was attached to a financial system—race-based chattel slavery…For centuries, enslaved Black people literally built the wealth of this nation and they were compensated not a bit.
jemartisby.substack.com/p/why-its-so-h…
Even after emancipation, Black people found themselves released from the physical chains of slavery only to be enslaved to generational poverty.

Through replacement systems such as convict leasing and sharecropping, the economic exploitation of Black people’s labor continued.
Read 7 tweets
29 Nov 21
The “scandal of the evangelical mind” continues by denigrating the work of historians and sociologists for not being sufficiently “biblical.” We are called “false teachers.” But here’s a thread of my so-called false teachings. Decide for yourself. Image
From the intro to the “Color of Compromise” I explain why this tragic history of racism must be revealed—not to harm but to heal.
bookshop.org/books/the-colo… Image
What must the church do in light of its racist past? Discern between a complicit Christianity that compromises with racism and a courageous. Christianity that confronts it. Image
Read 5 tweets
21 Nov 21
I don’t think *most* of the Christians who try to discredit my work and that of other scholars are mean-spirited. I do think they’re so used to a narrow interpretation of the faith that they believe theirs is the self-evident and best way to think about and do Christianity.
When people come along who say A) your theological reasoning is just as socio-culturally influenced as you say mine is and B) your loved practice does not match your professed theological belief…they get defensive and default to what’s most familiar to them.
What’s most familiar to many Christians is a highly cognitive form of faith that explicitly or tacitly thinks that right belief necessarily, or at least mostly, leads to right practice. Pro-slavery and pro-segregationist church folk obviously show this fallacy.
Read 9 tweets
23 May 21
#OTD: This is a couple days late, but on May 21, 1961 prominent civil rights leaders (including #MLK), other activists, and everyday Black folks in Montgomery, AL were nearly burned alive in a church by a mob 3,000 white people. This is the saga of the "Siege of First Baptist."
The day before, on May 20, 1961, Freedom Riders had once again been viciously attacked by segregationists at the Greyhound bus station in downtown Montgomery. The attackers used baseball bats and iron pipes. They specifically targeted white Freedom Riders like Jim Zwerg (below). Freedom Rider, Jim Swerg shown in a hospital bed, beaten and
The next night, a Sunday, about 1,500 Black people gathered at First Baptist, pastored by Ralph Abernathy. Black Christians started ithe church in 1867 after the Civil War. After a fire, leadership asked members to bring a brick a day to rebuild. It's nickname: Brick-A-Day church Black and White photo of First Baptist Church Montgomery
Read 11 tweets
8 Apr 21
People making big deal about opposing CRT and "wokeness" don't seem to realize, or don't seem to care, that folks are leaving churches (or never being part of them) not because there's too *much* talk and action around justice, but because there's too *little.*
Study history. What has done more harm to people and the witness of the church--whiteness or wokeness? The consolidation of power among a select (white, male, wealthy) few or attempts at fostering racial equity? It's not even close.
#ColorofCompromise
zondervan.com/9780310113607/…
Would Jesus' words from Matthew 23:23-24 seem to apply more to those saying #BlackLivesMatter and talking about systemic racism or to those talking about wokeness as a "threat to the gospel"?
Read 4 tweets
7 Jan 21
It is clear that a consequential portion of Republican elected officials hold a particular view of America which only benefits “their kind of people.”

It is a vision so anti-democratic that secure it through exercise of raw, brutal power.

So what is to be done...
Unequivocally and boot these opponents of liberty out of the Republican party or start a new one.

Accept the repentant, but don’t waste time trying to persuade the obtuse, arrogant and violent.

Remember who caved and never, ever, ever vote a Trump lackey into office again.
Make repair for the damage the party has wrought.

Extend and protect voting rights for all. Act in true democratic fashion and listen to the will of the majority.

Aggressively enact policies to disrupt white supremacist extremist activity. Disassociate from racists.
Read 11 tweets

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