I wonder if any of these narrowminded hateful creeps. That probably call themselves "christian" if you ask them(or check their bio). Realize that muslims believe in the same god.
A personal thank you for your efforts to encourage everyone to be thoughtful in their words and actions. Civil talk about issues are what is needed. Keep up the good work. Our shared humanity thrives on it.
I think about history a lot, about those cultures and civilizations that appear to have just vanished, often when the good times stopped (years of no rainfall will do the trick), and I think we can guess what happened - public dialogue and trust in each other ceased, probably for the same reasons it's happened now (self-interest, avoiding justified punishment, etc.)
But I also think it will play out differently this time (as it has in the past as well).
We must continue to speak truth to power, to call out those who would burn it all down rather than experience their deserved hardship.
Thank you for keeping the fires of truth burning, inspiring us to do the same.
How white Jesus betrays people of color. From Tamice Spenser Helms' book, Faith Unleavened: The Wilderness Between Trayvon Martin and George Floyd:
“Numb” is not the right word because it was sharper than that. “Angry” won’t suffice either because it was deeper. It was as if the world was spinning, and I could not find my balance. With every hashtag, the crack in the toxic foundations of my faith grew wider. Where do you run when the only person you can turn to is White Jesus? I could not breathe. I could not sing another damn song about joy.
I didn’t know it then, but I was fellowshipping with the 81% of white evangelicals who voted for Donald Trump, and there was leaven in the bread.18 How could they be so oblivious to the issue at hand? How could they not see it? Why did they argue with me so much about it? Why did I have to calm down? They were convinced all those who had been killed had done something wrong, something to deserve being gunned down like beasts with no family, no future, and no dignity. Why were all the pictures of the slain so dark and thuggish? Why were all the murderers in uniforms and family photos? The anguish was unbearable. It was the culmination of so many things I’d ignored for so many years. How many Black bodies had to drop before they cared? Didn’t Jesus care? Why didn’t they know any of their names? And why did all the GoFundMe money go toward George Zimmerman’s bail instead of Trayvon’s burial? Deep inside I knew something was happening to me, and I knew it was the beginning of the end. Of what? I didn’t know. I hoped it wasn’t my faith, but I didn’t have the energy to fight it. I couldn’t see Jesus through the pile of dead Black bodies anyway.
I spent the three years after Trayvon died in perpetual despair. It felt like there was trauma in my bones. Like I was carrying the pain and the weight of the entire struggle for freedom and dignity, and I couldn’t decide if I wanted to be free. At the same time, this pain gave me a sort of strength, and it began to lift me. Right as it did, Donald J. Trump was coming down an escalator to announce his run for the presidency. And I began seeing red. Trayvon Martin, his shoes, and the trial of George Zimmerman were responsible for the beginning of my exodus from toxic, white Christianity. Before that, my peers in the white churches I attended routed their racist attitudes through religious beliefs and backed them with biblical authority, which made them harder for me to detect or resist. But when Trayvon died, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Religion was no longer an adequate obfuscation. George Zimmerman’s story just didn’t add up.
My friends didn’t budge when I tried to talk to them about it. It was sad, they told me, but I needed to trust that Jesus was on the throne and remind myself what Paul said in Romans 13 about respecting authority. But what was dangerous about a boy in a hoodie? What is threatening about a bag of candy? What authority did Zimmerman carry? Even still, they were positive they were not racists. How could they be, when they were friends with me? They were just being objective, radical for the truth, swayed only by facts.
I reeled as the list of hashtags grew and the people around me did not. Jesus couldn’t be this cold and unfeeling. There had to be a way to love both God and my neighbor with a clear conscience and common sense. It had to be possible to love and follow Jesus in a way that would let me sleep at night. There had to be an answer for the carnage and something stronger than the rage. There had to be a way to love the Lord and breathe. I could not breathe. I didn’t need Jesus to be on the throne; I needed Jesus to come down here. I could no longer worship a god whose love couldn’t break through yellow caution tape. I could not negotiate any longer with a god who could not meet me on blood-soaked asphalt next to shell casings, evidence markers, and white chalk. But I did not know where to find that God.
At the same time, I had the gross realization that my only purpose in the lives of some of my colleagues in ministry was to sanction their racist attitudes with my silence born of self-preservation. I held my tongue in the name of unity among believers, but they never held theirs. They made ignorant and infuriating comments without any hesitation or care for the ways their opinions did violence to my soul. I fell into a deep depression and began to let tequila do the work that the Spirit once did.
The murders of Trayvon Martin and George Floyd took place at either end of a number of messy, painful, glorious, beautiful, and liberative things that happened in my life and theology, which are the focus of this book. Trayvon’s death caused the upheaval of everything I knew and believed. As everything came crashing down around me, I was left with mere fragments of the faith that had motivated every major decision I’d made up to that point.
The devastation defined me for a time and led me into a dark and lonely place until the silence from God broke one day in 2015. That word from God gave me the courage and permission I needed to begin extracting the poison from the Christianity I had adopted. If Jesus was the bread of life, then there was something else making me sick and I needed to figure out what it was. I learned it wasn’t the bread; it was the leaven of whiteness.
May 25, 2020, the day a police officer murdered George Floyd, was a wake-up call for a lot of white people, but I couldn’t at that point call any of them friends. I’d lost so many of them along the wayside of the acquittals and non-indictments in the years that followed Trayvon’s death. By that point, I’d given up bickering over confederate flags and monuments and trying to help them recognize how atrocious their justifications for brown children in cages were. Too much had transpired, and it was too late for their apologies to have any bearing on my well-being or my tolerance for White Jesus.
I broke when George Floyd was killed, but I did not break the same. The systems hadn’t changed, but I was different, and that changed the nature of the sting. As the world witnessed the horrors and toxicity of the yeast of whiteness, I loved myself, my Blackness, and the truth enough to find refuge and solidarity in Jesus, the author and perfector of a new, unleavened faith.
Spencer-Helms, Tamice. Faith Unleavened: The Wilderness Between Trayvon Martin & George Floyd (p. 12). KTF Press LLC. Kindle Edition.
For many white people it's the BLACKNESS that is the bigger problem, being Muslim is fuel to their racist fire.
Many do not remember how Muhammed Ali who had converted to Islam faced jail time for refusing to fight an "unjust" war (Islam does not support unjust wars). I remember as I was a volunteer in Vietnam in 67 (served USMC 65-69). I personally did not want anyone in a foxhole next to me if they didn't want to fight. Ali's decision was his as far as I was concerned. I was in an undeclared war.
But Ali faced prejudice as both a black man and a convert to Islam. Here is part of the story of how he escaped jail time:
"And as previously stated, on April 23, 1971 the eight voted 5-3 to uphold the conviction, and that would have been that. Except that Tom Krattenmaker told Justice Harlan that he figured that that as a minister in the Nation of Islam, Ali was entitled to claim he was a conscientious objector.
"I thought — perhaps unwisely — but I thought I knew enough about the doctrines that Elijah Muhammad had propounded in the Lost-Found Nation of Islam," Krattenmaker says. "What those doctrines stood for was a pacifism that was — had only one exception, and that was for wars that were declared by God, as he would put it, declared by Allah, to fight a theocratic war. And for all other wars, it was — people who belonged to what they called the Lost-Found Nation of Islam were not to participate."
Muhammad Ali had presented the same argument. But he’d also said things like "I got no quarrel with them Viet Cong," which had perhaps bolstered the argument that Ali only opposed certain, specific wars, such as the one the U.S. was waging in Southeast Asia, rather than all wars. Krattenmaker focused on the fact that Ali’s faith dictated that he could only fight in a war declared by Allah. Practically, this meant no wars declared by men. Just over 15 years earlier, a member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses had prevailed at the Supreme Court with a similar argument.
OK. But how often does a decision get changed after the Supreme Court has voted?"
To read the rest of the story paste this link in your browser:
Thank you for the work you do as you focus on what needs to be done now and for the future. To me, that would also include not giving a rat's ass to the haters.
Qasim…… i’m so sorry that you have to put up with this kind of nonsense and hatred and bigotry, stupidity and ignorance by people who call themselves Americans. I respect and value you and your opinions and I love your writing and your thoughts. Please keep it up and don’t let these idiots Get you down. There’s more of us who applaud you. I always look forward to your posts and they keep me sane. ❤️❤️🙏🙏
I am disgusted and offended by the attacks you are receiving. No one deserves such disheartening language- especially when they work to raise awareness for the rights of the downtrodden. I think appreciate your efforts to ensure that we have respect for human rights as much as possible in this climate of insanity. Thank you for giving us hope…
Thank you for all your posts. They have never failed to inform me and to inspire me. I am sorry for the hateful speech you have been subjected to. It really depresses me that this kind of thing happens. It's beyond sad that we cannot be civil with each other. Keep up your excellent work and ignore the haters. There are many, many more that value what you do.
For those who write that Islam is here to conquer: if they themselves declare themselves to be Christian, they should contemplate how Christians used the cult-like manifest destiny to take possession of two continents from millions of native people, destroy their culture, slaughter many of them, enslave many others ... I'm not sure that the adherents of any other religion have been so into conquering as Christians, despite the fact that conquering contradicts the tenets of the New Testament (e.g. the beatitudes). Before casting the moat from your neighbor's eye, cast the beam from your own.
It’s insane, isn’t it? It’s not that hard to figure out. And those who have used it to their own advantage have a rude awakening coming their way. One bright day…
"When dehumanizing language enters the conversation, we all suffer. Marginalized communities suffer because the focus shifts away from their dire needs, and into justifications to further harm them."
I wonder if any of these narrowminded hateful creeps. That probably call themselves "christian" if you ask them(or check their bio). Realize that muslims believe in the same god.
Keyboard warriors abound these days. Could it be that their message isn't getting the approval they need? Hater gotta hate.
A personal thank you for your efforts to encourage everyone to be thoughtful in their words and actions. Civil talk about issues are what is needed. Keep up the good work. Our shared humanity thrives on it.
I think about history a lot, about those cultures and civilizations that appear to have just vanished, often when the good times stopped (years of no rainfall will do the trick), and I think we can guess what happened - public dialogue and trust in each other ceased, probably for the same reasons it's happened now (self-interest, avoiding justified punishment, etc.)
But I also think it will play out differently this time (as it has in the past as well).
We must continue to speak truth to power, to call out those who would burn it all down rather than experience their deserved hardship.
Thank you for keeping the fires of truth burning, inspiring us to do the same.
How white Jesus betrays people of color. From Tamice Spenser Helms' book, Faith Unleavened: The Wilderness Between Trayvon Martin and George Floyd:
“Numb” is not the right word because it was sharper than that. “Angry” won’t suffice either because it was deeper. It was as if the world was spinning, and I could not find my balance. With every hashtag, the crack in the toxic foundations of my faith grew wider. Where do you run when the only person you can turn to is White Jesus? I could not breathe. I could not sing another damn song about joy.
I didn’t know it then, but I was fellowshipping with the 81% of white evangelicals who voted for Donald Trump, and there was leaven in the bread.18 How could they be so oblivious to the issue at hand? How could they not see it? Why did they argue with me so much about it? Why did I have to calm down? They were convinced all those who had been killed had done something wrong, something to deserve being gunned down like beasts with no family, no future, and no dignity. Why were all the pictures of the slain so dark and thuggish? Why were all the murderers in uniforms and family photos? The anguish was unbearable. It was the culmination of so many things I’d ignored for so many years. How many Black bodies had to drop before they cared? Didn’t Jesus care? Why didn’t they know any of their names? And why did all the GoFundMe money go toward George Zimmerman’s bail instead of Trayvon’s burial? Deep inside I knew something was happening to me, and I knew it was the beginning of the end. Of what? I didn’t know. I hoped it wasn’t my faith, but I didn’t have the energy to fight it. I couldn’t see Jesus through the pile of dead Black bodies anyway.
I spent the three years after Trayvon died in perpetual despair. It felt like there was trauma in my bones. Like I was carrying the pain and the weight of the entire struggle for freedom and dignity, and I couldn’t decide if I wanted to be free. At the same time, this pain gave me a sort of strength, and it began to lift me. Right as it did, Donald J. Trump was coming down an escalator to announce his run for the presidency. And I began seeing red. Trayvon Martin, his shoes, and the trial of George Zimmerman were responsible for the beginning of my exodus from toxic, white Christianity. Before that, my peers in the white churches I attended routed their racist attitudes through religious beliefs and backed them with biblical authority, which made them harder for me to detect or resist. But when Trayvon died, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Religion was no longer an adequate obfuscation. George Zimmerman’s story just didn’t add up.
My friends didn’t budge when I tried to talk to them about it. It was sad, they told me, but I needed to trust that Jesus was on the throne and remind myself what Paul said in Romans 13 about respecting authority. But what was dangerous about a boy in a hoodie? What is threatening about a bag of candy? What authority did Zimmerman carry? Even still, they were positive they were not racists. How could they be, when they were friends with me? They were just being objective, radical for the truth, swayed only by facts.
I reeled as the list of hashtags grew and the people around me did not. Jesus couldn’t be this cold and unfeeling. There had to be a way to love both God and my neighbor with a clear conscience and common sense. It had to be possible to love and follow Jesus in a way that would let me sleep at night. There had to be an answer for the carnage and something stronger than the rage. There had to be a way to love the Lord and breathe. I could not breathe. I didn’t need Jesus to be on the throne; I needed Jesus to come down here. I could no longer worship a god whose love couldn’t break through yellow caution tape. I could not negotiate any longer with a god who could not meet me on blood-soaked asphalt next to shell casings, evidence markers, and white chalk. But I did not know where to find that God.
At the same time, I had the gross realization that my only purpose in the lives of some of my colleagues in ministry was to sanction their racist attitudes with my silence born of self-preservation. I held my tongue in the name of unity among believers, but they never held theirs. They made ignorant and infuriating comments without any hesitation or care for the ways their opinions did violence to my soul. I fell into a deep depression and began to let tequila do the work that the Spirit once did.
The murders of Trayvon Martin and George Floyd took place at either end of a number of messy, painful, glorious, beautiful, and liberative things that happened in my life and theology, which are the focus of this book. Trayvon’s death caused the upheaval of everything I knew and believed. As everything came crashing down around me, I was left with mere fragments of the faith that had motivated every major decision I’d made up to that point.
The devastation defined me for a time and led me into a dark and lonely place until the silence from God broke one day in 2015. That word from God gave me the courage and permission I needed to begin extracting the poison from the Christianity I had adopted. If Jesus was the bread of life, then there was something else making me sick and I needed to figure out what it was. I learned it wasn’t the bread; it was the leaven of whiteness.
May 25, 2020, the day a police officer murdered George Floyd, was a wake-up call for a lot of white people, but I couldn’t at that point call any of them friends. I’d lost so many of them along the wayside of the acquittals and non-indictments in the years that followed Trayvon’s death. By that point, I’d given up bickering over confederate flags and monuments and trying to help them recognize how atrocious their justifications for brown children in cages were. Too much had transpired, and it was too late for their apologies to have any bearing on my well-being or my tolerance for White Jesus.
I broke when George Floyd was killed, but I did not break the same. The systems hadn’t changed, but I was different, and that changed the nature of the sting. As the world witnessed the horrors and toxicity of the yeast of whiteness, I loved myself, my Blackness, and the truth enough to find refuge and solidarity in Jesus, the author and perfector of a new, unleavened faith.
Spencer-Helms, Tamice. Faith Unleavened: The Wilderness Between Trayvon Martin & George Floyd (p. 12). KTF Press LLC. Kindle Edition.
For many white people it's the BLACKNESS that is the bigger problem, being Muslim is fuel to their racist fire.
Many do not remember how Muhammed Ali who had converted to Islam faced jail time for refusing to fight an "unjust" war (Islam does not support unjust wars). I remember as I was a volunteer in Vietnam in 67 (served USMC 65-69). I personally did not want anyone in a foxhole next to me if they didn't want to fight. Ali's decision was his as far as I was concerned. I was in an undeclared war.
But Ali faced prejudice as both a black man and a convert to Islam. Here is part of the story of how he escaped jail time:
"And as previously stated, on April 23, 1971 the eight voted 5-3 to uphold the conviction, and that would have been that. Except that Tom Krattenmaker told Justice Harlan that he figured that that as a minister in the Nation of Islam, Ali was entitled to claim he was a conscientious objector.
"I thought — perhaps unwisely — but I thought I knew enough about the doctrines that Elijah Muhammad had propounded in the Lost-Found Nation of Islam," Krattenmaker says. "What those doctrines stood for was a pacifism that was — had only one exception, and that was for wars that were declared by God, as he would put it, declared by Allah, to fight a theocratic war. And for all other wars, it was — people who belonged to what they called the Lost-Found Nation of Islam were not to participate."
Muhammad Ali had presented the same argument. But he’d also said things like "I got no quarrel with them Viet Cong," which had perhaps bolstered the argument that Ali only opposed certain, specific wars, such as the one the U.S. was waging in Southeast Asia, rather than all wars. Krattenmaker focused on the fact that Ali’s faith dictated that he could only fight in a war declared by Allah. Practically, this meant no wars declared by men. Just over 15 years earlier, a member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses had prevailed at the Supreme Court with a similar argument.
OK. But how often does a decision get changed after the Supreme Court has voted?"
To read the rest of the story paste this link in your browser:
https://www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2017/09/08/muhammad-ali-supreme-court-vietnam-war
I am with you totally and will continue to behave in the same way. This is a suffering we must endure. Thank you.
Thank you.
You are strong of heart, and an example for me. Thank you for being here for us all.
I truly admire the patience and grace you show.
Thank you for the work you do as you focus on what needs to be done now and for the future. To me, that would also include not giving a rat's ass to the haters.
Qasim…… i’m so sorry that you have to put up with this kind of nonsense and hatred and bigotry, stupidity and ignorance by people who call themselves Americans. I respect and value you and your opinions and I love your writing and your thoughts. Please keep it up and don’t let these idiots Get you down. There’s more of us who applaud you. I always look forward to your posts and they keep me sane. ❤️❤️🙏🙏
I am disgusted and offended by the attacks you are receiving. No one deserves such disheartening language- especially when they work to raise awareness for the rights of the downtrodden. I think appreciate your efforts to ensure that we have respect for human rights as much as possible in this climate of insanity. Thank you for giving us hope…
Thank you for all your posts. They have never failed to inform me and to inspire me. I am sorry for the hateful speech you have been subjected to. It really depresses me that this kind of thing happens. It's beyond sad that we cannot be civil with each other. Keep up your excellent work and ignore the haters. There are many, many more that value what you do.
Correction: mote (not moat).
For those who write that Islam is here to conquer: if they themselves declare themselves to be Christian, they should contemplate how Christians used the cult-like manifest destiny to take possession of two continents from millions of native people, destroy their culture, slaughter many of them, enslave many others ... I'm not sure that the adherents of any other religion have been so into conquering as Christians, despite the fact that conquering contradicts the tenets of the New Testament (e.g. the beatitudes). Before casting the moat from your neighbor's eye, cast the beam from your own.
It’s insane, isn’t it? It’s not that hard to figure out. And those who have used it to their own advantage have a rude awakening coming their way. One bright day…
"When dehumanizing language enters the conversation, we all suffer. Marginalized communities suffer because the focus shifts away from their dire needs, and into justifications to further harm them."
The poisons side of Tribalism.