Evangelical theology, the poison of white male supremacy and the Georgia spa killings

No one who understands evangelical theology can be surprised if sexual "sins" are seen as punishable by death


https://www.salon.com/2021/03/22/evangelical-theology-the-poison-of-white-male-supremacy-and-the-georgia-spa-killings/


In the evangelical parachurch organization I was involved with in college, there was a running joke that would come up often when the men in the group were discussing marriage ideals: "Murder? Maybe. Divorce? Never." None of us were genuinely cavalier about murder; and, to my knowledge, although some of us from this group have had marriages end in divorce, none have committed murder. Still. The idea that "sins" in the realm of sexual ethics might be on a par with murder, or might (like murder) merit a death penalty is, in my experience, far from unusual in conservative evangelical communities.

A beloved and influential minister I knew took the deeply biblical idea that God and the laws of God are good to the apparently "logical" conclusion that an ideal state would be governed by all of the moral laws documented in the Old Testament book of Leviticus. His views are not unusual; they are part and parcel of a strand of evangelical thought known under the label "theonomy." It is part of the view that the death penalty for certain sexual "sins" — most notably, sexual relations between members of the same sex — is appropriate. I don't know anybody, not even this minister, who would say that it makes sense for U.S. lawmakers actually to impose the death penalty for such acts. Still. The idea that death is not a grossly inappropriate punishment for sexual sin is uncomfortably close to mainstream.

There was another running joke in my college parachurch organization that surfaced in the context of a summer missions project I was involved with. We were in a beach town with the mission of randomly "sharing the gospel" with the presumptively unchurched party-goers who flocked in droves to the town for vacation. Young women in revealing attire were all around us, posing no end of agonizing "temptation" to the youthful libidos of the men in our group. As a way of humorously addressing this, a few in our group took to announcing in the direction of some of these women (but thankfully in ways that nobody outside the group would actually hear) "You are flesh; we are spirit! Rebuke that!"

I can't imagine that anyone in our group was sophisticated enough to recognize the ways in which those words resonated with the long history in the Western philosophical canon of associating men with spirit, reason, rationality and virtue and associating women with temptation, sin, embodiment and wanton, uncontrollable bodily urges. The most important ancient Greek philosophers taught us that a virtuous person is one who is ruled by reason (and a virtuous state is one ruled by its reasoning parts); and these and nearby ideas have been tremendously influential on the history of Christian theological thinking about morality. And I'm sure that none of our group recognized the way in which these ideas directly support an ideology of male supremacy — the sex-analogue of white supremacy — which is the heart and soul of the "complementarian" conception of sex and gender roles taught in so many evangelical circles.

I also can't imagine that anyone in our group of summer missionaries was aware of the way in which this running joke echoed and reinforced the ideological core of the long and stable tradition of victim-blaming commentary on Old Testament tales of sexual assault — documented, for example, in Joy Schroeder's important work, "Dinah's Lament." Still. The idea that women are to be blamed — and to be "rebuked" in some way — for the sexual temptations and sins of men has long been one of the most common and persistent tropes in the sexual ethics taught not just in conservative evangelical communities but in a great many other religious communities and traditions as well.

The white males are more interested in their own life and liberty than they are than to be saved by grace. The majority of todays christians are brain-washed by decades of Prosperity Gospel/Word of Faith-doctrines. They are not christians they are bitter and isolated people.

I think Christian men feel too much guilt over likable things. They need to get over it, it's a natural part of life and there's no use self-flaggulating over this.

It's so heartening to see national news outlets finally starting to see that religion has a dark side, and that that dark side needs to be exposed and its perpetrators called to account. For centuries religion has been treated with kid gloves by the mainstream press. Hopefully this is starting to change.

> For centuries religion has
> been treated with kid gloves
> by the mainstream press.


Isn't it all about pleasing your base?






But not the "All your base are belong to us" base!