Thread by @robertpjones

THREAD
1/ My latest:
A Lenten reflection on the weight of white Christian Innocence.
#WhiteTooLong
robertpjones.substack.com/p/moving-light…

2/ The ruptures of the last 2 years hold deeper lessons. The 2021 backlash to the Black Lives Matter movement—w/ the elevation of “white discomfort” as the def of discrimination—has revealed the biggest encumbrance of all for white Christians: insistence on our own innocence.

3/ The white American myths of innocence—staples of Trump’s rallies and rhetoric—are the mark not of a great people but of fragile egos who refuse to grow out of an adolescent naiveté. Such indignant insistence on our own innocence is a barrier to Christian growth & discipleship.

4/ We are witnessing desperate ploys to cling to white innocence as the rising waters of counter-evidence—pent up by a dam of white Christian power that is no longer holding—are lapping at our ears. This persistent denial of our own culpability threatens to drown us all.

5/ The soft cultural power that secured the dominance of this false narrative in the 20th century will be insufficient in the 21st. The next mile down this road will be littered not only with the bodies of political enemies but with the ruins of our democratic institutions.

6/ If we white Christians lay aside the exhausting, never-ending efforts to maintain our innocence and prevent honest conversations about our past, we might just experience another New Testament promise: that the truth sets us free.
#WhiteTooLong
robertpjones.substack.com/p/moving-light…