| | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | We must call out hate | | | | | | | | | | Essay by Rev. Irene Monroe April 8, 2021 "There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers." Proverb 6: 16 -19. On March 16, Robert Aaron Long killed eight people, 6 of which were women of Asian descent. Long's action has not yet been classified as a hate crime because the motive, he states, was his sex addiction. The women in the spas were merely collateral damage in Long's effort to eliminate his temptation and guilt. Sex addiction, however, is not a medically recognized diagnosis. And, research has proven there is no correlation between sex addiction and killing.  Nonetheless, in looking for an explanation for Long's action other than a hate crime, his church's "purity culture" is being called into question as a possible motive. Perhaps during this recent time of high holy week of Passover and Easter, it might be a good time to examine one's theology. Purity culture became a fast-growing and popular movement in the 1990s in white evangelical churches, like the Crabtree First Baptist Church, to which Long belonged. "Purity culture "purportedly assists teens and young adults in practicing abstinence before marriage. "Believing that true love waits, I make a commitment to God, myself, my family, those I date, and my future mate to be sexually pure until the day I enter marriage," the True Love Waits pledge reads. Purity rings are outward symbols of upholding the pledge. Pop stars once wore them like Demi Lovato, Selena Gomez, the Jonas Brothers, and Miley Cyrus before they caved in.  Understandably, Long, like many teens and young adults, would wrestle with their sexual urges and purity culture tenets. Given its compulsory heterosexual mandates, its denunciation of present-day gender theories, and its denunciation of the fluidity of human sexuality, purity culture's laundry list of dos and don'ts create an untenable environment. The psychological toll and spiritual harm have made many teens, and young adults like Long leave these churches. While the suffering and confusion in these rigid church environments are undeniable, there is no correlation between purity culture and acting out violently or killing.  Since no one yet wants to call Long's killing of six Asian women a hate crime, mass shootings are predominately within a specific demographic group— young white men. The problem of young white males and mass shootings has been screaming out at us for some time. Getting to the why these specific types of shootings are predominately from this demographic group is not as mysterious or elusive as it is purported to be. Neither mental illness nor addiction has been the principal cause. Long, like many of these young men, has made his private hell a public massacre. "I think we need to examine critically the fact that most mass shootings are done by young, white, relatively economically privileged males. What is it about their socialization that results in the manifestation of their mental illness in a rage-fueled carnage of this magnitude? If we don't ask these questions, along with all the others, I fear we are missing an important factor in this and other mass shooting tragedies," wrote an academic administrator from UMASS Boston in an email to me. Entertaining Long's sexual addiction as a believable explanation for the killings diverts attention from his acts of intentional xenophobia and racialized misogyny. The fetishization of Asian American and Pacific Island women has constantly made their lives expendable to sex traffickers and men's violent fantasies. Long's killings could have been part and parcel of a snuff film porn fantasy disguised as removing the source of his sex addiction temptations. "Racism and sexism are partners that stoke each other with frightening ease," Anne Anlin Cheng, a Princeton professor, told The Atlantic. "Here's the thing that many people find hard to accept: Hatred does not preclude desire." As a result of Long's act, six women of Asian descent are no longer with us:  Xiaojie Tan, 49; Do you Feng, 44; Soon C. Park, 74; Hyun J. Grant, 51; Suncha Kim, 69; and Yong A. Yue, 63. This recent attack highlights the expanse of racist violence in this country on people of color.   Also, with Covid-19 derisively called the "China flu" and the "Kung flu," these killings are the consequences of the yearlong verbal and physical attacks ignored against our AAPI brothers and sisters across the country. Sadly, laws in this country have never protected POC until we fought that they do. Hate crimes are challenging to prove. In Long's case, it would have to be proven that he committed the crime solely because the women were Asian. I, however, see Long's actions as similar to that of Dylan Roof's hate crime. In 2015, Roof went into Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in SC and killed nine black parishioners during Wednesday Bible Study.  Not to prosecute Long's heinous act for what it is - a hate crime - will merely continue anti-AAPI hate with impunity.  Proverbs 8 reminds us that "To fear the LORD is to hate evil." To combat hate, we must do it in unison with one another. I am fervently in solidarity in combating anti-Asian American and Pacific Island racism. I am saddened, pissed, and frustrated by the recent incident. My heart, prayers, love, and condolences go out to our Asian American and Pacific Island community of Atlanta and across the nation because  Martin Luther King said, "Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality."  As an African American lesbian Christian minister and theologian, I know that the struggle against racism is only legitimate if I am also fighting anti-AAPI racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, sexism, classism, and Islamophobia together, to name a few. I know that all these "isms" are merely tools of oppression that will continue to keep us fractured from one another instead of united toward a common goal. ~ Rev. Irene Monroe Read online here About the Author The Reverend Monroe does a weekly Monday segment, “All Revved Up!” on NPR's WGBH (89.7 FM). She is a weekly Friday commentator on New England Channel NEWS. Monroe is the Boston voice for Detour’s African American Heritage Trail, Guided Walking Tour of Beacon Hill: Boston’s Black Women Abolitionists. A Huffington Post blogger and a syndicated religion columnist; her columns appear the Boston LGBTQ newspaper Baywindows, Cambridge Chronicle, and the Boston Globe. Monroe states that her “columns are an interdisciplinary approach drawing on critical race theory, African American, queer and religious studies. As a religion columnist I try to inform the public of the role religion plays in discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. Her papers are at the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College’s research library on the history of women in America. Click here to visit her website.   | | | | | | | | Question & Answer   Q: By Jude How can we stop the hate and bring the far right & left together to find the middle we can walk together and work for the USA’s survival? A: By Rev. Jim Burklo   Dear Jude, I’ve been asking myself and others this same question for quite a while!  And I don’t have the full and definitive answer.   But I do believe that the first step toward an answer is the one Jesus inspires us to take – into unconditional, divine “agape” love.  To love people with whom we vigorously disagree is to pay attention to them, to listen with open hearts and minds.  The goal is not necessarily compromise, but understanding and connection.  We don’t need to “find the middle” in the process.  There is no “middle” between hatred and compassion.  There’s no such thing as being “half racist”.  But by asking sincere questions of people we perceive to be haters or racists, and by respectfully receiving their answers  - hard as they may be to hear - we model the compassion we hope will prevail, and we establish relationships that may, over time, change hearts and minds.  If we spent most of our time in political discussions asking questions instead of spouting out our opinions, we’d go very far toward healing the divisions in this country.   As your question suggests, democracy is seriously threatened in this country and many others around the world right now.  A major cause is media illiteracy:  tens of millions of Americans get their information about public affairs from unreliable sources.  Propaganda masquerading as journalism has poisoned political discourse.  When I get into a conversation about politics with someone I don’t know very well, often I start by asking them where they get their information.  What do they read?  What do they watch?  Are they consuming long-form journalism, editorial opinion pieces, or both?  How and why did they get started following these media outlets?  If we share the same kinds of news sources, then we can have discussions about what we found in them – which can lead to meaningful dialogue about issues.  But all too often, our sources are drastically different - misinformation from Fox versus in-depth reporting from PBS or NPR.  If we start political discussions with conversations about information sources, we can politely invite folks who inhabit the media miasma of conspiracy theories, overheated punditry, and outright falsehoods to pay a visit to the media universe that is committed to reporting facts.  There is little point in debating politics with people who aren’t grounded in the realities that public policies address.    Good journalism is attentive inquiry: it is a form of love.  It is the opposite of the angry invective, whether of the right - or left - wing variety, roaring out of commercial radio and television stations.   To heal our politics, let’s start by asking each other serious and thoughtful and honest questions – and by following news sources that do the same. ~ Rev. Jim Burklo Read and share online here About the Author Rev. Jim Burklo is the Senior Associate Dean of Religious and Spiritual Life at the University of Southern California.  An ordained pastor in the United Church of Christ, he is the author of six published books on progressive Christianity, with a new one coming out soon:  TENDERLY CALLING: An Invitation to the Way of Jesus (St Johann Press, 2021).  His weekly blog, “Musings”, has a global readership.  He serves on the board of ProgressiveChristiansUniting.org and is an honorary advisor and frequent content contributor for ProgressiveChristianity.org.  | | | | | | | | Please continue to send us your feedback… we are listening. We aim to give voice to many different perspectives that are relevant and inspiring along this spiritually progressing path. We are not here to tell you what to believe or how to act. We are here to support your journey, to share and learn together.Thank you for being a part of this community - join us on Facebook! | | | | | | | | | | | | | | As a non-profit ProgressiveChristianity.org relies heavily on the good will of donors. We want to continue to bring you the messages of progressive Christians via our Progressing Spirit Newsletter; however, the fact is, the cost of a subscription goes towards paying our authors. We therefore rely your generosity - specifically, if you are in a position to contribute to our efforts, we would be grateful for your donation.    Help keep ProgressiveChristianity.org/Progressing Spirit online and going strong - click here to donate today! * Another way to support us is to leave a bequest in your Will and/or Trust designating us a beneficiary.  | | | | | | | | Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited China Revisited, Part I Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong September 9, 2010 I first went to China in 1984.  In that year we could only visit Hong Kong and the New Territories.  The Cultural Revolution, led by the “gang of four” and fuelled by those called “The Red Guards”, had thrown the nation into a paroxysm of paranoia from which it was still emerging.  Suspicions ran high.  The mentality of the Red Guards was that anyone who still in any way resisted the revolution was guilty of treason and anything that reflected pre-revolutionary China was subject to their destructive fury. Foreigners were not welcome either.  On that trip, the closest one could get to China proper was to walk in the New Territories to the border itself that was guarded by soldiers of the Red Army with their guns at the ready position.  Massive red flags were mounted on every parapet and were flapping noisily in the breeze. I went to China again four years later in 1988.  The change was impressive.  By this time, Mao Zedong had been dead for ten years and China had moved on.  It was still a Communist nation, but serving the people not the revolution had become the pressing agenda of the government. The great and disillusioning realisation that I had in 1988 was in regard to how deeply my image of China had been created for me by American propaganda.  The China I saw in 1988 was a far cry from what the press, the media and the government of the United States projected.  I felt the same way I had felt when I learned that the Gulf of Tonkin episode that had been used to justify the massive build up of American forces in Vietnam was a fabricated event with no basis in reality.  It was similar to the feeling I would have years later when high officials in the Bush administration in Washington had justified the invasion of Iraq on the basis of Iraq’s development and possession of “Weapons of Mass Destruction” and that had also turned out not to be true.  I shall never forget Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s comment that if we did not destroy Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, the next terrorist attack would be marked by a “mushroom cloud”.  Most of the citizens of the United States do not travel abroad and sixty percent have never applied for a passport.  So the majority of Americans are at the mercy of the way the world is interpreted to us by the policies and spokespersons of our government.  Today the vehicle for communicating that perspective is the media, including three competing twenty four-hour-a-day news channels that hype every story in search of ratings.  The China I saw in 1988 was very different from the China about which I had read in my newspapers and heard about on television. This second visit to China was some 25 to 30 years after the Korean War had finally ended.  In that war, Chinese soldiers had poured in endless waves across the Yalu River and they had succeeded in driving the American army, commanded by General Douglas MacArthur, out of North Korea and almost into the Pacific Ocean.  When the fury of this attack was over, the American forces held only a tiny defensive perimeter around the South Korean port city of Pusan.  It was one of the worst defeats that America had absorbed in its history, costing huge numbers of casualties and ultimately ending General MacArthur’s magnificent military career at an unprecedented low point.  MacArthur blamed his defeat on the fact that the Truman administration had tied his hands by not allowing him to attack the build up and supply lines north of the Yalu River, but the fact was that in communiqués after the dramatically successful Inchon invasion, he had informed the Truman administration that there was no chance the Chinese would enter this war.  He was profoundly wrong.  MacArthur was removed from his command by President Truman and a great political debate ensued in America, as always happens after a military miscalculation and a political defeat. For President Truman, the dominant issues behind his decision not to attack China itself were twofold. First, he did not believe he should involve the American military in a land war on the continent of Asia where would-be conquerors have historically been absorbed by the conquered until they have been drained of their power.  Second, he was convinced that an attack on China would bring the Soviet Union into the conflict and World War III would be unavoidable.  So the Truman strategy was to recoup and re-supply the army and thereby to drive the Chinese and North Koreans out of South Korea after which they would seek a political settlement.  That was in fact done and it was under the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower that the Korean War was finally brought to an end. In order to perfume this defeat and to save face, however, it became necessary for this country to portray China as a significant military power.  That was what became both blatantly and obviously false to me when I saw China with my own eyes in 1988. Militarily, China was a paper tiger.  The China I saw was no more than a third-rate military power.  Economically, it was a disaster.  Its communication system was primitive.  Its army had massive numbers of well-equipped soldiers, supported by Russian tanks.  It had, however, almost no navy and its air force, made up primarily of Russian MIG fighters, was hardly a match for a major power.  China’s public streets were filled mostly with bicycles and a few motor scooters because cars were very expensive and thus extremely scarce.  China’s highways were largely un-travelled except for dated trucks carrying produce from population centre to population centre.  Many, if not most, houses in that year lacked both electricity and running water.  The highly touted “Great Leap Forward”, engineered by Mao from 1958-1961, had been a colossal failure, resulting in massive starvation that cost the lives of more than forty million Chinese people.  The later “Cultural Revolution” from 1966-1976 resulted in the persecution, death and displacement of millions of Chinese and the destruction of much of the artistic heritage of that country.  The corporate memory of those events left the Chinese people traumatised and those memories were still present in 1988.  There was nothing I saw in China then that gave any evidence of it being a “great power”, let alone a military power.  It was important, however, to American military and economic interests for China to be viewed as a huge threat that must be contained.  Led by what came to be known as the China Lobby, defending Taiwan and Chiang Kai-shek from Communist aggression became the Holy Grail of the American anti-Communist stance in the eyes of such figures as Senator William Knowland of California.  In the presidential election of 1960, defending two relatively insignificant islands off the China coast, Quemoy and Matsu, became the cause célèbre in the debates between Senator Jack Kennedy and Vice President Richard Nixon.  All of this kept the American “military, industrial complex”, the power of which President Eisenhower had warned America about in his farewell address, going at full speed. My second 1988 realisation, derived from seeing China with my own eyes, was that from the vantage point of the masses of the Chinese people, the Communist revolution had brought great hope.  American propaganda at the time made it difficult to admit that Communism was capable of anything good.  China surely had a long way to go in 1988, but they had begun the march forward. One window into that future was especially visible to me during that visit came when I saw a section of Shanghai, once known as “Millionaires Row”, where the 19th Century drug barons had built palatial homes with the profits from the opium trade that they controlled from the days of the Opium Wars.  These huge mansions were juxtaposed to the squalor in which the Chinese poor lived.  The Communist revolution literally grew out of this gap between the rich and the poor and closing this gap was a major motif of the revolution.  The Communists, in their victory, had confiscated these houses to the distress, I’m sure, of their owners, turning them into buildings dedicated to the educational and artistic expression of the children of Shanghai. One mansion was transformed into a temple for music.  Here piano and violin lessons were given to China’s children, along with instruction in all of the other instruments from clarinet to saxophone, from viola to flute and even drums.  Thus this mansion began to ring with the youthful sounds of music.  In another of these mansions, it was voice and choral music that was the focus.  Children as young as six and as old as eighteen were learning the music of their culture and the classics of the world and were even being heard in concert!  At another of these mansions, the acrobatic arts were the focus.  Today China is world renowned for its skill in acrobatics, with Chinese teams roaming the world, putting on performances.  Much of the expertise and success of Chinese artists and gymnasts today is a direct result of this emphasis that I noted on “Millionaires Row” some 22 years ago.  I recently attended a chamber music concert in Western North Carolina in which each of the musicians in the quartet, now in their thirties, were natives of Shanghai.  A government willing to invest in its children as deeply as I saw the Chinese government doing in 1988 is a government that not only has a vision, but that also believes in the future of its nation.  I was amazed and impressed in 1988 when I heard nine-year-olds playing both the piano and the violin at advanced concert levels; when I saw acrobatic feats performed by twelve-year-olds that were breathtaking and when I listened to teenage choral groups that reminded me of Fred Waring and his Pennsylvanians, a reference that those of you my age will recognise.  For those younger, it was like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. These two things were new insights for me in 1988, but these insights were destined to pale beside the things I saw in my visit in 2010.  To that story I will turn in my next column. ~  John Shelby Spong | | | | | | | | Announcements The Wild Christ, Wild Earth, Wild Self Weekend Intensive ™ is back by popular demand! This experiential, nature-based, immersive weekend is designed to help you remember your primary participation in sacred Earth. An Online Weekend Intensive: April 15, 2021 - April 17, 2021   READ ON ... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |