If you reflexively defend the actions of the state over against the citizen, you are not a conservative nor a liberal. You are an authoritarian who loves power when it is displayed against those you deem unworthy of protection
#BreonnaTaylor Unworthy perhaps because of their physical location (the womb), or their affiliations, or their class, sex, ethnicity, or "race". #ProLife #BreonnaTaylor

Such a system must be condemned in Christian terms in the strongest possible way. It must be condemned under any system that purports to be just. It must be condemned because it is not "balanced scales".

https://twitter.com/elderjds/status/1308880813174460417

It is to be condemned for it privileges the strong (armed state agents) over the weak (innocent sleeping citizen). It is to be condemned for it distorts the very meaning of the word "justice."

Racism has never been simply "the sin of partiality". That's garbage 🗑. It has always and ever been about a self reinforcing social system constructed to justify the oppression of Black people specifically & non-Whites more generally. So stop the nonsensical trite theologising "It was not simply that Europeans held to an amplified ethnocentrism... but it was within the framework of Eurowestern Christian civilisation that the racialist ideology of White Supremacy emerged."

This advice is good so far as it goes; pastor's shouldn't tweet dangerous mental health advise. However, pastors are frequently one of the first persons to be engaged by someone with mental health issues & a good pastor will want to serve their parishioners well.

https://twitter.com/SusanCodone/status/1301528424280985600

Mental health issues are NOT like hypertension; they are more complex & multifaceted. What the pastor needs are tools to know (discern) when it is a mental health issue in addition to being a pastoral care issue. Then they will be equipped to make the proper referrals.

Some things Christians should do is 1) avoid making sweeping judgmental statements about the motives of people who differ politically from you. Just because someone supports Trump, or Biden, is a Republican or Democrat does NOT mean they don't value human life 2) Speak charitably of those we disagree with politically, always seeking to discern what is praiseworthy, instead of highlighting, amplifying, and vilifying those defects which politicians of differing political views share

If you don't understand the horrors experienced by Russia in the 20th century (and before) you can never understand their mentality & policy considerations.

https://twitter.com/MichaelShurkin/status/1292776755342827520

Russia lost probably the equivalent of the whole of its current population (around 170 million) in single 50 year time span due to wars, revolutions, civil war, purges, famines, another war.

Here are some things no one asked but I thought I should share:
1. I am a Christian. I am a Man. I am Black. These all interpret one another, theologically, culturally, and sociologically. Don't ask me to separate them; I cannot. 2. Jesus is the integrating centre of my theology. He is the ever living Word made flesh, the eternal God who ever liveth to make intercession (yes, I reverted to the King James becuz I am a Black Pentecostal, so not "evangelical", and that's how we roll).

The funny thing that people forget about racial reconciliation in the Bible is that the reason for the estrangement was because Jewish privilege vis-a-vis the Law & their descent from Abraham. They had to lay down their presumption & privilege.

https://twitter.com/plittleton/status/1287178370820734976

In other words, the problem was not the Gentiles, who the Jews despised as dogs. It was the Jews who saw themselves as gatekeepers to the faith & to proper theology. In our contemporary situation it is not the racial minority that has the principal problem.

I "get" the question, but the implications of how it is asked is problematic. The implication is that southerners should live in perpetual shame, wearing metaphorical sackcloth & ashes & never express any pride or even happiness in being from the South.

https://twitter.com/theblckkhaleesi/status/1284871316802330626

Additionally, slavery, Jim Crow and rebellion aren't unique to the south. Many southerners resent having to be the whipping boy of all of America's faults and sins whilst having the nation look down the nose at them for being "rednecks"

What this discussion mentions is that the whole great tragedy of slavery and subsequent racial terror was never dealt with. It really isn't about reparations per se, but about a whole history of "abuses and usurpations"

https://twitter.com/CharlieDates/status/1282032262981312513

Where has there ever been true reckoning or accounting for judicial systems that looked the other way on lynching? Those people never had to give account or even admit the truth

Inasmuch as we want to either avoid blame or cast blame on political leaders for the soaring pandemic numbers in the US, one thing I haven't seen taken account of is the general unhealthiness of the US population it is no secret that the US population is generally unhealthy - overweight, sedentary, sick. This doesn't mean that people who are healthy cannot get the disease. Clearly they can, & some have died, but...

I think it has exposed another divide: between Black men and Black women.(speaking in generalities). Blk women are the most loyal base the democratic party has without exception. Blk men not as much.

https://twitter.com/DOEDoobs/status/1279787400001183746

There are a lot of blk men who, like it or not, feel a gut level resonance with Trump. And the issues he has pushed hit with blk men more than women. Men in general are more conservative politically than women

A thread: Had a nice convo with the old man (my dad) yesternight. We discussed the situation in the US. He deplores the riots - thinks there are a bunch of pointless opportunists. Talked about growing up in Jim Crow America. I was struck by something he said: Growing up he never thought about the system, & he didn't think about the racist system. It was so normalized to automatically go to the back of the bus, or buy a movie ticket, then go outside to climb stairs to the balcony, or go to 2nd rate schools

Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
let our rejoicing rise,
high as the list'ning skies, let it resound loud as the rolling sea Sing a song full of faith that the dark past has taught us,
sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
let us march on till victory is won.

I am not going to give my view on this specific issue BUT....
this is one reason why I struggle with Protestantism (I'm a protestant). The ease with which people shift doctrinal positions supposedly based in scripture and tradition is mind-boggling.

https://twitter.com/JonathanMerritt/status/1278704591509610499

I know that there is often a vast gulf between what leaders believe & teach, & what the laity believes & teaches, but... bruh... its beginning to look like a "choose your own adventure" book

an interesting article and the author gets it right about "civilisation-states" but gets it wrong in so many other areas. 1stly the definition of nation-state has nothing to do with a sanctioned monopoly on violence

https://twitter.com/NRO/status/1278584955338141696

a nation-state has to do with a state whose boundaries are contiguous with the nation, that is, with a particular ethnos (thus the various revolutions of the 19th century spurred by nationalism).

I am no fan of Trump. But I keep hearing stuff like "he's an existential threat to democracy", & I'm like, really? The very existence of a democratic system in the U.S. is under threat? American citizens aren't being executed by the president w/out trial. The IRS isn't targeting political enemies for harassment. Journalists aren't being threatened, just insulted. What is this existential threat of which you speak?

The US has the beauty and the curse of not being a nation. National cohesion is therefore very difficult as it is explicitly built on an ideology, but implicitly built on the nationality of "Whiteness". There is therefore a conflict at the heart of American identity. Some will argue that "American" is a nationality, but it is stand-in for Whiteness, which culturally speaking is an amalgam of mostly Anglo-German & other northern European ethnic cultures (which is why southern European food used to be considered ethnic food)

A historical note: Part of the reason why the American South is what it is today is because of a grand compromise effected after Reconstruction. Basically, the American South became an internal colony of the industrial north. A few wealthy elites were permitted to dominate the industrial agricultural system of the South at the expense of poor whites and even more subjugated Blacks. In exchange, the industrial North gained a ready interior market for their goods, and cheap inputs to production

Don't cloak your racism in liberal or conservative clothes. Wrong is wrong; right is right. “You shall not have in your bag differing weights, a large and a small. You shall not have in your house differing measures, a large and a small. " Deut 25:13 When your complaint about too much govt power goes silent when that power is being used to press down the neck of a citizen, then you have 2 different measures

Don't know who needs to hear this but: you can be Black, theologically astute, evangelically conservative, & be in a Black church all your black life. Stop chasing validation from Mister Charlie and Miss Anne. It is wearying to read black Christian folk describe growing up, getting saved in the blk ⛪, getting involved in some "evangelical" (i.e. White) church, experiencing trauma & then STAYING.