Weird story time: My great grandfather was obviously the source of the autism in our family line. Man could not read social subtext to save his life. He felt driven to find some sort to group to belong to that had set meetings and such. For a 5 year span, he joined, like, everyone. Elks, masons, you name it. When we were helping him clean out his house in the early 90s we found a KKK uniform. We asked about it. Apparently it was billed as a men’s group and they just had costumes made. He went along with it for a few meeting and then the extracurriculars were discussed at his last meeting. He finally got the point of it. He got out. We had his calendar book from that year(and every year from the 30s-retirement) and we saw the date where he started crossing out the KKK meeting times.
Why he kept it? It was the best work his wife had ever done.
Several years later I asked my grandfather if his dad was racist. Basically, he said that his dad had gotten in trouble for not understanding the racist, unwritten policies he was supposed to enforce and kept asking why, as there was no logic to them.
Yes. Yes they are. Also, I think a “radical Christian” would be the opposite of the KKK.
Also, I think a “radical Christian” would be the opposite of the KKK.
A millennium and a half of Christianity would say otherwise.
Just because you’re white european doesn’t mean you’re a Christian
Statistically, you’re probably not a Scotsman, either.
Well, no one can really be a True Scotsman
I guess I’m a radical Christian then.
I believe Jesus taught tolerance and love, so I try to treat others with tolerance and love. And not fake love like “thoughts and prayers,” but real love, which comes with action.
John Brown was a radical Christian, and he’s okay in my book.
Truly an American hero.
Pretty telling that he’s not mentioned in history books. I didn’t learn anything about him until well into adulthood.
It’s always funny when I hear this, currently teaching ELA in Florida of all places. So, we all heard of the cuts to education, stop teaching certain bits of history (please fill me in on the correct term, I currently remember trump or Desantis’ buzzwords about not teaching slaves being enslaved and them being “indentured” and “learning valuable skills!” the cunt.)
Anyway, our current section for this lesson plan is on Harriet Tubman, underground railroad, teaching the kids how to get characterization from the text and follow context clues, stuff like that. John Brown is mentioned, and in my counties’ plans is a side lesson on John Brown, what he did, which works better for me since I should be teaching history regardless. I’m telling these kids all about him, what he believes in, and how raiding that armory is what caused the federal government to come crashing down on him, all the crazy radical badass things this man did.
Now, as I’m teaching these things, in the back of my head I’m thinking “This is surprising… Isn’t this supposed to be forbidden knowledge right know? What got cut?” Anyway, sorry for the walk of text. Slightly drunk, figured it fit here.
Edit: Forgot to mention, I am in a VERY fucking red part of Florida. Lifted white trucks, truck nuts, punisher stickers over blue line American flags, the fuckin works. You guys should see bike week, you’d swear it was the second coming of the führer.
The people checking are too dumb to have him tagged as someone to remove? That has to be the reason.
I don’t know much about it but I assume it would be any texts white washing history. As an example I grew up in the south and learned about John Brown and Harriet Tubman with basically facts that can be regurgitated. Nothing diving into the day-to-day hardships and anything sounding too sympathetic.
The rationale for the civil war was white washed to “state’s rights” and specifically “slavery wasn’t the major cause”. For 'what" state’s rights obviously due to economic ones because the north was purposely attempting to keep the south down.
Another example was that slaves had a better life as slaves and many came back! The ‘silent racism’ of the North was even worse than the South’s violent racism because in the South they could live (in slavery) while on the North they will be destitute and invisible.
The point being, if it’s attempting to redo that, then it is the overall message and subtext of the curriculum.
Oh I got to cover the “many came back” part too, in the form of the fugitive slave law. Thomas Sims for example, people just grabbed off the street in the north and dragged back south because the good ol’ boy system of the courts got some cash from detlaring any random black dude a runaway slave was also prominently taught. Again, NOT DEFENDING MY HOME STATE. Just wondering what the hell I’m missing.
Love is a verb
I believe Jesus taught tolerance and love
So that’s what he meant when he said
34 “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. 36 And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household.
Matthew 10:34-36
or when he said:
“Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters."
Matthew 12:30
So tolerant and loving! 😍
Matthew 10:34-36
Look at Matthew 26 (specifically 52) where Jesus stopped Peter from defending him with his sword. Jesus is opposed to violence, full stop.
The sword Jesus spoke of in Matthew 10 wasn’t a literal sword. He’s saying he’s here to disrupt the status quo. Following him requires being at odds with the status quo (Jewish law), which is likely to result in being excluded from families and whatnot. He certainly doesn’t condone violence, but he does acknowledge that this is a fork in the road and people need to pick sides, because they can’t do both.
This similar idea is conveyed in Matthew 6:24 (replace “money” with anything else that stands between you and following God):
No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.
Or Matthew 5:29:
If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.
I also don’t think he means you need to preemptively abandon your family, just that if you have to choose, choose God.
The same idea is true in secular ideology as well. If your family are Nazis, it’s better to leave them than become a Nazi.
Yes, because Jesus’ message was going to divide families, because some members won’t accept others who choose to follow Him. It was also to correct other ideas about the messiah uniting everyone and creating peace. The conflict Jesus creates are from those who are intolerant, not Jesus Himself.
It helps to read the verses in their context instead of cherrypicking.
Whether or not you believe that Jesus rose from the dead is another thing, but you cannot deny that the Jesus of the New Testament’s moral teachings were good.
Oh come on, I can see from a mile away that’s it’s a metaphor
Someone please correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t the democrats start the KKK and were they not as religious? Or is there something else?
Also does modern kkk still burn crosses?
Don’t wanna argue with the premises here. But isn’t Christianity also a bit stupid for praying towards the instrument that’s been used to torture and kill their leader.
Just imagine you are Jesus and come into a modern church. You’d run away screaming with all those crosses triggering your PTSD. And that’s before you’ve even heard of all the atrocities they’re doing there in your name.
The core of Christianity is originally the redemption, not the threat that necessitates it and often is more prominent.
The cross is a symbol of the sacrifice made to redeem people from the threat of hell. More relevant here is that sin separates humans from God, and through that sacrifice, the connection is restored. It is a catalyst of redemption and reunion. In that sense, they don’t so much pray towards an implement of torture as an implement of liberation, salvation and mercy.
Given that those are hard things to put in a visual, tangible form and that humans tend to place a lot of value in visual, tangible representations, it’s basically the simplest symbol you could come up with as a nascent cult.
It’s not the only symbol, and particularly during the rise of the Roman church, you’ll note that icons of saints become very common too. Some places will even have the Crucifix feature the crucified Jesus as well, to drive home the point about sacrifice and gratitude.
Protestants later held that the worship of saints was tantamount to idolatry and did away with them again, leaving just the core of the message of redemption. There was in some places a conscious choice to pick the “empty” cross rather than the crucified saviour as a symbol that he is no longer dead.
All in all, given his divine wisdom and love for metaphors and similes, I’d think Jesus would understand the point of the cross…
…then proceed to trash the place out of rage over the waste of money and effort that went into gaudy churches and gold-embroidered robes instead of helping the sick and poor.
Not just their leader, early christians were violently prosecuted, they turned their symbol of oppression into the symbol of their faith in an ultimate act of defiance as well as love and forgiveness.
Sacrifice is a big thing in Christianity, the cross is the symbol of the biggest sacrifice that God did for us, on Christianity canon.
Totally. And it really makes sense when you think about it…
God is all-powerful, all-knowing and all-loving and he created man in his own image… And then doomed them all to an eternity of suffering because… reasons.
God was known for being petty and jealous, so he forced humans to destroy their food to prove that they love him.
God, being all powerful, I guess changed his mind about wanting people to burn for eternity, so being the all-powerful, all-loving being that he is, he changed his mind and deleted hell so that all humans could enjoy eternity with him… LOL jk.
No, instead he split himself into another being and became a human with the sole purpose of being murdered in 30 years so that humans didn’t have to burn for eternity…? Actually, I kind of lose the thread at this point. It’s never been clear to me why an all-powerful god would need to create such a bizarre, convoluted, byzantine means for redemption when he could have just snapped his fingers and made it all go away.
But all of that makes sense when you think about it as just another sacrifice to prove to god that you love him, and our rudimentary understanding of symbolism is all we need to prove this. After all, there’s no need to read any other books, therefore this has to be the deepest, most profound thing ever written. I mean holy shit, Jesus is the “lamb of god” that needed to be sacrificed! Just like when we burned our food! Wow, talk about deep connections. No human could ever think up such an amazing story with such deep symbolism!
Anyway… I lost my train of thought.
it makes more sense when Christians were a persecuted minority, executed on sight by the Roman empire. You’re sharing in a symbol of sacrifice that could itself get you killed.
But that was 1500 years ago.
I’m not Christian but isn’t it just very emblematic of the Christian victim complex? Praying towards the instrument of your faith’s victimisation is sort of like taking the power back from that symbol and acknowledging the victimisation your belief system has gone through… As far as I can understand it at least 😂
I honestly don’t think most Christians even think this deeply about their own faith.
As a Christian, I’ve always found that stupid, so I don’t do that and don’t attend churches that do. The second commandments says:
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.
I’m pretty sure a cross counts here. I also believe Jesus taught a higher law, meaning the 10 commandments are outdated, and the only thing Jesus said to do to remember him is breaking and sharing bread and sharing wine (Communion in many churches). That’s it, that and “feed my sheep” (teach and help others).
I don’t get where everyone is getting the “wear and rub a crucifix for luck” idea. A silent prayer should be a lot more effective than directly violating the second commandment.
I choose to remember Jesus’ life. His death was an event, his life was full of teaching and wisdom, so I focus on how he treated others instead of how others treated him.
I like your perspective and wish Christianity aligned more with your post than whatever it’s doing now.
I’m not Christian, but I have observed that the worship of the cross and Christ’s death is directly tied to the theological idea of salvation, especially with evangelicals. If his death is the single most important part of your faith, then the cross becomes a symbol and reminder that you’re saved and not going to hell. It was primed to become a symbol and eventually an idol.
I also think historically the cross as a symbol for Christianity comes from the Greek letter chi (x) in the spelling of Christ. “X-tians” was a shorthand form way before the “taking Christ out of Christmas” nonsense.
But to the original point of the Klan burning the cross: I’ve read that they argue that cross burning is a medieval European affirmation of faith, something that is doing double duty of arguing that it’s an expression of their faith and connecting them to their “racial” roots.
Yeah, I think modern Christianity has really lost the plot. The most important part of Jesus’ life is certainly debatable, but surely him rising again is more important than his death? So if we want a symbol to remember being saved, surely the empty tomb with the rock rolled away is the better symbol.
But the only symbol Christ recommended is the last supper. That is how we’re supposed to remember him, and that’s why we go to church.
And Jesus never said we’re saved just because be died, otherwise why would he go around forgiving people manually? Surely that wouldn’t matter if they’re going to get saved unconditionally anyway. No, we need to actually change ourselves to be in line with his teachings. Love others unconditionally, give to the poor, and multiply the gifts God gave you for the benefit of others.
but surely him rising again is more important than his death?
Depends on how fixated a faith is on the “sacrifice of the Lamb.” There’s one interpretation that Jesus’ suffering and death is what appeased God and fulfilled the prophecy and ended the law of Moses. If you’re the kind of person that buys into God being the sort of deity that wants to kill himself in order to satisfy his own bloodlust, then yeah, I could see Christ’s death being the more important part.
Surely the resurrection should be emphasized as the result, but the death is what God demanded to atone for the sins of the world. The resurrection was just proof that he held up his end of the bargain.
I think that the Christ story suffers from the audience knowing details about the story that the characters don’t to the point that the big miracle at the end falls flat. Everyone just ends up focusing on the mechanics of Christs death rather than its purpose.
There’s one interpretation that Jesus’ suffering and death is what appeased God and fulfilled the prophecy and ended the law of Moses.
I agree with that (with caveats), but I still don’t see how that impacts the average Christian. How salvation is possible isn’t really important, the important thing is what we need to do.
If all we need to do is recognize Jesus, what’s the point of his ministry? Surely it all wasn’t strictly necessary to be bait the Jewish people into killing him.
Everyone just ends up focusing on the mechanics of Christs death rather than its purpose.
Exactly. It’s certainly important, but Jesus spent years teaching and setting an example and only a few days dying and resurrecting. That needed to happen, but it doesn’t replace everything else he told us to do.
If we claim to follow Jesus but fall to live the second commandment he gave (love others as ourselves), surely we’ll have issues getting to heaven. Likewise, if someone who has never heard of Jesus follows his commandments anyway by living another philosophy, surely they’ll be better off, no?
It’s all BS and they’ve completely missed the plot. Claiming to be saved just because of something Jesus did is the other side of the coin from the Pharisees, who claimed to be saved because they followed the letter of the law. It takes a little more effort than singing along at church…
They are stupid, yes, but also are against everything’s in the Bible so they don’t actually care about Christianity.
The Christian taliban.
Y’all’quaeda
Jesus was literally brown
And a Jew.
IIRC he also said that jews could be christians while keeping their jewish traditions, which is worse for those fake christians.
I think the idea is that he was a Jew but welcomed gentiles into the faith so technically all Christians are Jews in the eyes of Jesus.
Jesus didn’t came here to create Christianity, he was the fulfillment of a Jewish prophecy, Christianity exists because some Jews didn’t believe he was the Messiah.
Well you have to keep in mind part of who they hate are those fucking papists.
They’re Christian in the sense of “everyone i don’t like is going to hell, and I’ve got to hand deliver their ticket there”
You may be on to something there
They were Protestants and hated Catholics. Still doesn’t make sense.
I mean I hate everything about catholicism too. I mean I hate all religions, but catholicism specifically. But I don’t burn their symbols. I just avoid any circumstance I would have to be exposed to of it.
But yeah, still doesn’t make sense to burn a symbol you share with the people you hate. This is just their silent screams of self hatred. Not loud enough to drown out the “everything besides white people” hatred, but still somehow present. I guess they can’t even like themselves. Too busy hating.
Gotta get that hate-love ratio under control.
What makes you hate catholics specifically over other religions?
It started out as a prank organization to scare black people… Those outfits they’re canonically supposed to be dressed as dead confederate soldiers haunting the south.
If you ask me they leaned too heavy into the racism, and not heavily enough into theatrics and costumes. The problem is they held onto some 1900s sense of injustice, and didn’t roll with the times, didn’t stay up to date. They didn’t evolve with justice or improve on their first poorly selected target… So they became violent and nasty instead.
A shame, I’d love a horse back theater group “haunting” cops and healthcare CEOs… In that timeline the KKK would be a different organization entirely.
Hmm, we should start a rival organization. We can keep the ghost theme, but perhaps go with dead WW2 heroes that push against fascism and abuse of power of every variety.
Maybe the WWW? World War Wraiths. We can also defend the free internet due to the naming collision.
I’m in. And we can bring back the thing with women wearing bright red lipstick because Hitler didn’t like it. Am I just imagining rockabilly goths doing antifascist pranks and protests? Yes. Does that reduce this in the slightest? Not in the slightest.
I don’t know what to tell you if that was the first thing that tipped you off.
