I’ve seen a meme on Facebook that says “If you ever wondered what you would have done during slavery, or the holocaust, or the Civil Rights Movement, you’re doing that right now.”
I’m going to make my own meme that says “if you’ve ever wanted what you did during the Russian Revolution, you’re doing that now.” There’s a small but vocal radical group who is undermining and working against our history, institutions, ideals, and culture.
The Boston Arts commission unanimously voted to remove a statue of Abraham Lincoln. Boston’s Emancipation Memorial is a repeal of another Lincoln statue in Washington D.C. which was erected in 1876 and funded by freed slaves. The statue depicts Abraham Lincoln and a freed slave who is kneeling in front of Lincoln, his shackles have been broken.
Student groups at the University of Wisconsin have also set their sites on a Lincoln statue on their campus. The Lincoln Memorial was vandalized.
There’s been renewed public debate in recent weeks about statues of confederate generals. I can appreciate that debate. I could even go along with tearing down every statue or monument that we have a confederate soldier.
But Lincoln? If he’s not safe, no historical figure in American history is safe.
A statue of Ulysses S. Grant, who was the general of the Union Army, was defaced in Philadelphia. Statues of outspoken abolitionists have been defaced in Philadelphia and Wisconsin.
This has quickly devolved to a point where it’s not about removing confederate statues. It’s an attack on history. It’s an attack on great people who made a positive impact on our history. They too must be erased. Because the fanatical progressive cult is zealous for their beliefs and their core doctrine is that America is – and always been – a racist place. There are no redeeming qualities. The only hope for goodness is for America to be remade in accordance with their idea of utopia.
And so great people like Lincoln don’t fit their narrative and they too must be torn down.
Arguments I’ve seen for taking down the monument are that it offends some people. I thought great art was sometimes offensive? I’ve seen arguments that it portrays Lincoln as a “white savior.” And its original design in Washington was funded by freed slaves. Who are we to say that their idea of a memorial is unacceptable and needs to be erased? You have people who are not radicals but who go along with the purge because it’s easier to go with the current,
When is censorship good? When is tearing down history beneficial to a society? Who’s life is this making better?
In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court has struck down June Medical Services v Russo, a Louisiana law which required doctors who provide abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the court’s four liberal justices. Roberts said he disagreed with the ruling but voted with the majority because of a legal doctrine of stare decisis which calls for following establish precedents.
Opponents of the law argue that admitting privileges are unnecessary and that it adds an extra layer of difficulty for abortion providers and reduces wren’s ability to pursue abortions.
In 2016, the Supreme Court overturned a nearly identical Texas law. For that decision, Roberts had ruled against the majority but overturned his prior ruling to go along with precedent. While the laws of the two states were similar, it has been argued that the situation of the states was different as Louisiana hospitals do not have the same admittance standards as Texas.
Roberts wrote: “The legal doctrine of stare decisis requires us, absent special circumstances, to treat like cases alike. The Louisiana law imposes a burden on access to abortion just as severe as that imposed by the Texas law, for the same reasons. Therefore Louisiana’s law cannot stand under our precedents.”
I’m not a lawyer or a jurist. I understand that precedents matter. But it’s a bad precedent. States don’t have a right to decide minimum healthcare standards for doctors who perform abortions?
Daniel Horowitz of Conservative Review points out: states regulate the standards for licensed professionals all the time – everything from lemonade stands to mowing grass – even when “an objective assessment might suggest that those same tasks could be performed by others.” But when it comes to the sacred ideals of abortion, the state is somehow powerless to regulate.
He says that a precedent can’t be changed without special circumstances.
We can’t overturn a bad decision from four years ago for a ruling which favors life, and safety, and state’s rights? Precedent matters but it’s not the end all be all.
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Tomorrow will be the fifth anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision which guaranteed the right to marry for same-sex couples.
In the years preceding the decision, state after state after state voted against it. 32 of 33 states where this was voted on, voted no. In 13 of those states, the vote wasn’t even close, with more than 70 percent of people voting to ultimately preserve the traditional American definition of a marriage. The will of the people was ignored and five justices -who are no more virtuous than the rest of us – declared the law by fiat.
Many years ago, the argument for recognizing the legal validity of same-sex marriages and unions was the “what if two people are in a loving relationship for many years and one is in the hospital. Their partner can’t visit them?”
We’re so far beyond that now. A celebrity says something critical of same-sex marriage and there’s a backlash, efforts to boycott and essentially destroy the person. If a business owner doesn’t want to support it, he’s a hateful and bigoted. The conversation has been crushed on this issue. In the popular cultural narrative, the only accepted response is enthusiastic support and affirmation. Dissent is not tolerated.
Last week, the Supreme Court enshrined LGBT rights into federal employment law.
This week, California banned state funded travel to Idaho due to Idaho’s transgender laws. In 2016, the NBA moved their all star game with Charlotte, due to a state law that disallowed transgender people from using the bathroom which corresponded to their selected gender. The World Health Organization, which had viewed gender dysphoria as a mental illness decided it no longer was last May. In several states, transgender identified females (biological males) have dominated women in athletic competitions. And this is all being seen as more and more normative.
This would have been unthinkable a decade ago.
In coming years, I expect the popular culture to have more and more support for the LGBT community. I expect more court decisions to go in favor of the LGBT movement. As I look around and survey our current climate, I see destruction in our cities, statues coming down, calls to defund the police. I see people going after our fundamental institutions. These are attacks on our society, our history, and our system of law and order. But the church is another major institution in our society. The church and our religious tradition is fundamental to our history and worldview.
There have already been attempts to force Christian businesses to go against their moral beliefs and provide services for same-sex weddings. We’ve seen more pressure on Christian adoption agencies to work with LGBT couples. With the latest rulings on employment law, churches and Christian organizations will continue to face opposition for their beliefs.
I do expect the culture to more and more come to be at odds with evangelical Christianity. Instead of coexisting, I think the church and Christian organizations will increasingly become targets of legal action.
I look at those who want to attack our society and institutions and see the LGBT movement more and more coming at odds with evangelical Christianity. Certainly there are members of the LGBT community who want to coexist and can agree to disagree, but as Marxist thought runs prevalent within the radical progressive movement, the LGBT movement will be used to undermine religious liberty while pushing a progressive ideology that runs contrary to the gospel.
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It was only a matter of time. Activist and writer Shaun King has taken aim at images and sculptures which depict Jesus as white.
On Twitter, King said:
Yes, I think the statues of the white European they claim is Jesus should also come down. They are a form of white supremacy. Always have been. In the Bible, when the family of Jesus wanted to hide, and blend in, guess where they went?EGYPT! Not Denmark. Tear them down.
There are a few issues with that. For starters, in Matthew 2, when Joseph and Mary take the newborn Jesus from Bethlehem to Egypt, it was not because they would “blend in.” They left their territory to go outside the jurisdiction and influence of Herod, so he’s wrong on that front.
King is also making the absurd argument that art which depicts Jesus as white is ALWAYS an example of white supremacy.
The roots of Christian art go back a long way. There are artistic depictions of Jesus which go back to the early centuries of the church. Hundreds of years.
And across cultures, throughout the centuries, people have often depicted Jesus as looking like them. European art depicted a European Jesus, Japanese Christian art depicted a Japanese Jesus, Ethiopian Christian art depicted an Ethiopian Jesus.
King assumes the worst and calls it an example of white supremacy. Isn’t it possible that you have centuries of artists who had no idea what Jesus looked like, who didn’t have the internet, or TV, or photos and who didn’t always necessarily know what an Israelite would have looked like and that the artist just painted what they knew? That strikes me as the more reasonable conclusion. And artists in earlier generations influenced the artists of later generations. King says that depicting Jesus as white has always been an example of white supremacy.
Are other cultures also being cultural supremacists when they depict Jesus within their own cultural context?
Who is King to assume the motives of centuries of artists?
King later doubled down on that Tweet: Yes. All murals and stained glass windows of white Jesus, and his European mother, and their white friends should also come down. They are a gross form white supremacy. Created as tools of oppression. Racist propaganda. They should all come down.
Is the key to a better and more tolerant world to tear down the past and destroy art? To erase history? In the last few weeks, too many people are becoming too accepting of censorship as if that’s going to bring us to utopia. Should we also burn books, Shaun?
I’m not disputing that a European looking Jesus is historically inaccurate. And over the years, I’ve become more and more uncomfortable with artistic depictions of Jesus in any format. But that doesn’t mean the mob should be able to dictate what churches and museums can depict.
King has made a mockery of himself with this ridiculous argument.
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Racism is a terrible scourge upon humanity and a sin that is in the hearts of way too many of our fellow citizens.
Much has been said over the last few weeks on the subject of race in America.
There’s been a vocal group (who’s small relative to the size of our population) who’s called to defund police, some have called to disband police forces. And while it’s not the view of most people, these radical views are dominating the public discourse and national conversation. As have been the vocal fringe who’s justified rioting and looting and those who are calling to bring down statues.
These people are a threat to our institutions and while they do not speak for most Americans (they don’t even speak for most democrats), far too many people make excuses or ignore this behavior. It is not helpful or constructive towards building a better world. It’s destructive towards our current world and society.
I don’t support tearing down statues because I don’t believe it makes a difference in anyone’s actual life. I think there are actual things that can be done which will make life better for all people, and that’s not it. I think it’s better to be aware of our history than to ignore or rewrite it.
I don’t support the rioting and looting because I think it’s immoral but also because I think that the consequences of it are the exact opposite of what is desired. I don’t think it wakes people up, I think it turns people off. I don’t support it because it disproportionately impacts urban communities. It disproportionality impacts minority groups when businesses within their communities are damaged and destroyed. It disproportionately impacts minority business owners. It makes these urban areas less appealing to other businesses and investment. It doesn’t make life better, it makes it worse. I don’t think the rioting is righteous, it’s immoral and foolish.
I don’t support defunding the police for many of the same reasons. A narrative is being pushed that the police are going to war on minority groups. The statics don’t bear that out. Are there injustices? Yes. Are there bad cops? Yes, and those issues need to be dealt with, but I again fear that diminishing law enforcement is not the key to a utopia with less crime. It increases crime and will cause more death and again those who are most severely impacted are minority groups. It causes more crime in areas which already have high crime rates.
I see the browbeating. I see the woke people. I see the social justice warriors who paint a utopian picture of tearing down a system, undermining authority, erasing history. And they twist the narrative as if you don’t care about minorities and you’re a racist if you don’t wholesale buy their version of reality.
There are too many progressives who are willing to tolerate a lot of collateral damage to push a political agenda. I find that unacceptable. I think you can be a conservative and have black lives matter more to you than they do to many on the other side of the political spectrum. I look at the destruction of progressive polices and rhetoric and think of how many more minorities are going to die as a result of the rhetoric and policy decisions, and find myself asking if Black Lives truly Matter to those groups?
Social justice has become a quasi-religion. The social justice warriors have their public atonement rituals, they proselytize to their “gospel,” they have their affirmations (article I is that America is bad and systemically racist) they have their scriptures as I see person after person giving lists of books.
I don’t agree that progressivism and liberalism are the solution to these issues. Because they’ve largely caused these issues. We hear how racist the city governments and police forces are in our major cities. Who runs almost every major city in America? Democrats. Year after year. Minneapolis, Baltimore, Detroit, and San Francisco haven’t had republican mayors since the 60s, Philadelphia hasn’t since the 50s, Chicago hasn’t since the 30s, Atlanta hasn’t since the 1880s.
It was democratic politicians who created redlining. It was a democratic president who engined the major crime bill of the 90s which led to stricter sentencing. And it was a democrat who pushed the Great Society and the unintended consequences of that bill have been dire for many in minority communities and led to catastrophic erosion of the family.
As I said in the beginning, tearing down history; riots and looting; and withdrawing law enforcement are not the solution. It’s the solution that progressives want but there are actual things that can be done. We should all want reforms that will make life safer for all citizens. Police unions should not be as powerful as they are. Qualified immunity needs to be scaled back. There should be a national order for officers to wear body cams.
Families should have more options with school choice, especially in areas with failing public school systems. While we’re taking power from police unions, we need to also take power away from teachers unions.
And what society needs most is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Not a social gospel. Not a social justice gospel. Not a Marxist gospel. But the gospel. It is the gospel which changes hearts. It is the gospel which calls us to love our neighbor as ourselves. It’s the gospel which points to true justice. It’s the gospel which gives us reason to hope. It’s the gospel that lifts up the worth of all mankind as those created in the image of God.
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