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“Separate but equal” in marriage
The fastest way for a preacher to get fired from a conservative Southern church today is to sanction interracial marriages from the pulpit. I could easily name men whose congregations gently let them go soon after the pastors intimated that interracial Christian marriages, especially between whites and blacks, are fully permissible and pleasing to God. These men weren’t promoting interracial marriages as necessary. They simply communicated that God smiled when seeing a white Christian and black Christian, for example, enter the covenant of marriage.
Over 40 years ago (June 12, 1967) the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Virginia statute barring whites from marrying nonwhites. Fifteen other states struck down similar bans. Factoring in all racial combinations, MSNBC reports Stanford University sociologist Michael Rosenfeld’s calculations: More than 7% of America’s 59 million married couples in 2005 were interracial, compared to less than 2% in 1970.
Christians, however, remain among those who seem most resistant to interracial marriages in America. Why is this? If it is true, with respect to being a full member in God’s family, that there is neither “Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28), why do our standards for marital unions go beyond what God sets forth for union with his own son?
I was in a black church once with a friend who made the mistake of bringing his blonde-haired girlfriend to church. Based on the looks he received, I wondered if he was wearing a sign reading, “I hate Christians.” Christian parents talk positively about “equality” until “Martha Lynn” brings “Tyrone” or “Miguel” home for Thanksgiving dinner. “Ahh, Houston we have a problem!” True beliefs are exposed behind questions like, “what about the kids?”
One of the greatest pronouncements the Church can make about the radical implications of the resurrection of Jesus for the human family is to champion our future interracial heavenly reality here and now by marrying across races and classes. Without interracial marriages Christian churches will likely remain “separate but equal” like they were in 1967. The racial reconciliation that many long for in Christianity will bear better witness to the world at the wedding altar than the weekend conference.
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They also demonstrate that they are out of touch with todays social and political reality.
On all fronts: thoelogically, socially, politically, and morally, to not point out that interracial marriage is an acceptable social norm is to be out of step with reality.
I don’t believe Jesus ever suggested that there shold not be interracial marriages. I do believe that he said any number of times that marriage was an excellent idea.
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In the bibilcal book of Ruth, Boaz, an Israelite, married a foreigner–Ruth was a Moabite. And she became King David’s great-grandmother, which puts her in the royal line of Jesus.
As I recall, Moses married a Cushite (African), didn’t he?
Esther, a good Jewish girl, was married to Xerxes, a Persian king. That marriage was providentially instrumental in saving the Jewish people.
I know of no stated opposition to these mariages in the Bible on racial grounds. There are general prohibitions of Israelites inter-marrying with those in foreign cultures who worship other gods (religious and moral incompatibility), but I don’t thik there is a clear prohibition of marrying purely for racial incompatibility in the Bible.
And I have never seen or sensed the slightest discomfort whatsoever at my church over anyone’s marriage on racial grounds (yes, we’ve had inter-racial couples without any visible sign of rejection from anyone at all to my knowledge).
Paul once wrote about no longer regarding other people according to the flesh. What matters is that we end up in heaven, and race is not a factor in that blessed hope. That faithful hope is what churches shuld be primarily about.
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In the biblical book of Ruth, Boaz (an Israelite) was married to a Moabite (foreigner of a different race). His wife, Ruth, became the great grand-mother of King David, and Ruth was in the royal line of Jesus.
As I recall, Moses married a Cushite (African) didn’t he?
A good Jewish girl named Esther married a Persian King named Xerxes. This inter-racial marriage was providentially instrumental in saving her Jewish people.
I know of no objections to these marriage in the Bible on racial grounds. I know of some general objections in scripture to inter-marriage on the grounds of religious and moral incompatibility, but not on the sole basis of anything racial.
I have never seen or sensed even the slightest discomfort in anyone at my church over anyone’s marriage. We respect holy matrimony, period. To put it more specifically, inter-racial couples at my church have not visibly had any level of rejection whatsoever, to my knowledge (we are about 60 percent Caucasian and 40 percent black).
Paul once said he no longer regards other people according to the flesh. What matters is that we get to heaven and race is simply not a factor in that blessed hope. And that hope is what churches should be about, primarily.
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There is a subtle form of church bashing that goes on in posts such as this one. The church reflects society (warts and all) and is often on the leading edge of changing society. To find fault in the church only accentuates that Jesus came for that very reason, to forgive sin and go about the business of reconciling people to God and cleaning them up.
Some Christians drink, smoke, don’t recycle, hide bigotry and prejudice, beat their wives, beat their husbands, get in debt, overeat and run stop signs. That should come as no surprise.
Ask any true, Bible believing, born-again, Spirit filled, Jesus worshiping Christian if their life has changed as a result of having a dramatic encounter with the living God and you will find that many have quit smoking, drinking, started recycling, quit beating their spouses, are working their way out of debt, and now stop at stop signs.
All at once? Not hardly, but certainly a redeemed life will surely show signs of redemption over a period of time.
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I don’t know about “conservative southern churches,” but if our pastor here in California preached on interracial marriage the congregation would not respond with an “Amen” so much as a “No duh!” That is so forty years ago.
We have plenty of interracial marriages in our church. One of our daughters is dating a African-American man. The only problem it causes is the occasional miffed black woman. It is our daughters second serious boyfriend, but my husband and I would not be more pleased if this one was a keeper. Not because of the color of his skin, but because our daughter would be hard pressed to find a more caring, courteous gentleman.
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You know Anthony, maybe you should consider a long visit to Hawaii–where race isn’t such a big factor. Go to any church and you’ll see all sorts of interracial couples, many so mixed I could never figure out what the blend was, so I never bothered to try.
I’m with Adios. The heart is what’s important and I wouldn’t mind a child marrying outside of our race. And I can’t think of any churches I’ve attended where it would be a problem.
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Why is it when something like this comes up it always steers around to how backward and archaic the south is. We are just like the rest of you warts and all. I have actually had people from California chastise me about the way the south treats blacks and in the next breath say that what I really ought to have to deal with is Mexicans. What’s the difference there? I have a friend whose 28 yr old daughter lives with a black man. He couldn’t be more courteous. I have another friend whose daughter only dates the black “boys” (she is still in high school). My friends attitude is that she just hopes her daughter marries a Christian. Now me? I hope my daughter marries an Episcopal, Christian white man because that is what her daddy is. Should she come home one day with someone else…we will cross that bridge then.
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I’ve sat through sermons where the pastor swirled out the “Jews shouldn’t marry Samaritans” argument and whipped it into a “whites shouldn’t marry blacks” chant. Ridiculous.
I’ll never forget when my Fellowship of Christian Athletes huddle group came to my house after Christmas caroling for hot chocolate and cookies. As the other members were leaving, we were all hugging–as was our custom. My mom walked into the room to say goodbye to a few kids and saw me hugging a–gasp–black girl. She sucked all of the air out of our house. Meteorologists reported later on the news that all of the wind patterns changed in a three county radius.
This was frustrating.
I now live in a multi-racial home. My wife (white) and I (white) adopted a little girl from a foreign country (Asian). As we discussed the challenges of parenting our little bundle of joy. We have three older children as well.
More than likely, she’ll date Asians and might date young men from other races as well. And she might actually date a Caucasian.
From a creationist standpoint, we have all descended from Noah (and Adam before him). From a scientific standpoint, the primary difference between races is the amount of melanin in the skin.
Let’s hope we can all become color-blind.
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Y’know, Anthony, unless you tell us a little more about the names and times of these excused Southern pastors, I’m pretty tempted to wave the BS flag.
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Stubob, LOL!
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Kim, I put “conservative southern churches” in quotes because it is what Anthony Bradley said. Having never been to the south I have no idea what the climate is like in churches there. But here in So Cal I can’t think of a single church where this is an issue as a church. We do have some backward individuals to be sure, but like others have said it is not a church thing.
Like Stubob suggests, give us the facts, man, give us the facts.
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Military towns (including the South, which is my only experience) are pretty full of interracial relationships as well. Soldier marries local while on temporary duty somewhere, and there you go.
As far as the children are concerned, they couldn’t care less. The only issue I ever saw was when it came time to bubble in government forms in class that asked about race. In the late nineties, there were several single-race choices (white, black, etc.), but no way to choose more than one or a mixed-race option. They asked me how were they supposed to choose. What a horrible question to have to ask.
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stubob, I really wish I could. I recently spoke with one of these guys in person. It was devastating. I think in the end his family will be better off but it really burned him.
If I put the pastor’s names and church names on the internet (without their knowledge) I would most certainly be accused of gossip and slander. Phones would start ringing off-their-hooks. Of course people love the gossip. But giving the names and churches is not the point of the post. It’s real, it happened both within the past couple of years. One was over the summer.
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Well, it’s considerate of you to respond. Even naming names and places, I don’t believe your thesis statement, which says that every, single conservative southern church is intolerant of interracial marriage. As Adios says, most godly churches, southern and otherwise (must the south always be demonized when the topic of race comes up?) rightly respond with “no duh.”
This isn’t the first post you’ve made implying or outright stating that nothing has changed in American churches in the past 40 years. Every time you do, there’s a thread of responses saying, “I don’t know what church you go to, but we’re not having that problem.”
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Well, for many years I was part of a church (in Chicago) that had every kind of mixed family you can imagine: white people married to black, Hispanic, or Asian people; white people who adopted black children; even one black family with an adopted child who was some other race (I was never sure what). We even had a couple where the wife was half Jewish and half black, and her husband was a redhead with blue eyes. (Their daughter was a blue-eyed blonde, which I’m sure the mother never thought she’d bear!!)
I’m currently in a Southern church that’s mostly white, with a pastor who’s from Alabama and openly admits he’s got a lot to learn on racial issues. (He is reading books I’ve loaned him on the topic.) But we have a black church meeting in our facility, with the dream of someday becoming one church. We have few black people in our own church, though members of the two churches sometimes attend the other service, but we have one black man who has come for several years and has been loved fervently, and one who has just started coming. (The black man who has come for several years had a white girlfriend until recently, and if there was any response to that I never saw it.)
I tend to think that a couple who dates interracially will take their family and church off guard, but that isn’t necessarily “racism.” It’s the unexpected. Couples with a huge age difference or height difference probably encounter the same surprise. The key is whether, after the first surprise, others accept the situation and love the person.
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I’m a Caucasian guy married to a Chinese woman, and we attend a conservative E-Free church in southern Kansas. We’re an older couple, and our congregation is also older demographically. I haven’t once sensed any disapproval from others in our church. My dad in KC wasn’t particularly happy when we were dating; I attribute that to his experience in the Korean war, not to imply this excused his attitude.
On the other hand, I heard an interview with a societal commentator who opined that the final indicator of racial acceptance in a society was a high level of racial intermarriage. If this is true, then this would suggest that there still seems to be some work to be done in the US regarding white/black racial relations. I see a lot more white/asian couples than white/black couples, especially among younger people, even though Asians are relative newcomers to our country.
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An additional element in the mix here is is self-segregation: we tend to gather with the people we feel most comfortable with.
I don’t find it an outrage that there are predominantly black, or white, or Asian, or Latino gospel churches. We have a bunch of distinct sub-cultures in our land, and it’s hard to fault people for migrating to the churches where they understand, and are understood. This isn’t the only reason for self-segregation, but it’s one of them, and it isn’t all bad.
When a couple bravely crosses sub-cultures to marry, they do face some barriers. I suspect it’s often less about race per se than about each group’s fear that it is being abandoned for some other, alien group. (This doesn’t just happen when “our” black son starts worshiping with his white fiancee’s congregation; it also happens, albeit to a lesser degree, when one of “our” white young people pursues romance in some other white tradition, e.g. leaving the Traditional Reformed home church for the boyfriend’s Emergent) And also each group has a more-or-less legitimate concern for the children that will be born astride two cultures: will the kids fit in somewhere, or will they be forever and always resident aliens?
All this to say that the reasons why “eleven o’clock Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America” are complex and overlapping. It isn’t all about racism, and it isn’t as if no progress is being made.
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I hear people talk about the problems with inter-racial couples. The funny thing is that those problems wouldn’t exist if everybody else left them alone.
I’m a northern-born guy who claims a southern state as my home. I’ve seen bigotry everywhere I have been–even in California.
Rather than anyone getting defensive, I think we should all admit that racism exists and denounce it.
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OK, Kyle, we’ve denounced and denounced. Now what?
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I don’t believe in interracial marriage. But that’s because according the Bible there is only ONE race: the human race. There are different nationalities, to be sure, difference skin colors. But nowhere in the Scripture does it talk about different “races” of people.
Correct me if I’m wrong.
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Joel Mark post 2,
actually if you look at this closely it is stronger than that.
When Aaron challenged Moses because of his Cushite wife, Aaron was soundly rebuked by God.
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Kyle,
If someone here has responded defensively it is not about racism. You can find backward individuals everywhere. If anyone sounds defensive I think it is because Bradley makes it sound like this is a huge collective church problem and the rest of us are looking around our interracial churches sratching our heads.
Read comment #4, that pretty much hits it.
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To make the should-be-obvious connection, with apologies to Kyle A:
I hear people talk about the problems with [same-sex] couples. The funny thing is that those problems wouldn’t exist if everybody else left them alone.
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I am in the “north” (well, near Chicago) and attend a very conservative church. The church is predominently white (rather closely approximating the racial make up of the surrounding towns) but we have a number of mixed racial couples and blended race families. It is unremarkable there.
It may take a little longer in some areas just due to a tendency to stay with one’s home church (which started out single race way back when and changes over very slowly), and to find one’s spouse there.
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SteveG:
Same-sex couples are completely different from interracial couples or any other sexually diverse couple. I should think this is obvious to any thinking person. The connection is not obvious because it does not exist. The only connection is the superficial fact that both types have been opposed, that does not mean that they are the same in all other issues that define what being a couple means.
I hope this useful thread doesn’t degenerate into another platform for trumping same-sex couples.
I wish statistics on the prevalence of interracial couples were published. It may help to illustrate our culture’s racial healing. My perception is that they are increasing.
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I don’t see a lot of real discrimination against mixed-race couples, although I don’t frequent conservative Southern churches, so maybe it does happen there. But from what I see, mixed-race couples are pretty common and most people don’t bat an eye at them.
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Thankfully, my observation is the same. Maybe even to the point of being delighted when I see a mixed-race couple, and marvelling at how beautiful their children tend to be.
The problems encountered are more due to cultural differences than racial differences.
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The nice thing about the Bible is that you can make it say whatever you want it to say. Jehovah/Jesus repeatedly gave his official sanction to slavery, never called it a sin or said a word condemning it, and even wrote the protection of slaves as property into the 10 commandments, but Jehovah/Jesus hates slavery according to just about every Christian alive. Christian don’t really look to the Bible to find ou what God says; they simply use the Bible as a canvas to paint a picture of the god they’d like to worship. Of course, for sheer idiocy, it’s hard to top quoting Galatians 3:28 to show that God approves of interracial marriage. The verse also says there’s no longer male or female, so how can Bradley and others then oppose gay marriage?
And because approval of interracial marriage is nowadays considered progressive, inclusive, nice, and tolerant, and because being seen as progressive, inclusive, nice, and tolerant are important to contemporary Christians (they just don’t want to be quite as progressive, tolerant, etc., as “liberals”), they tend to approve of interracial marriage, or at least say they do. So they find approval of interracial marriage in their Bible. But for hundreds of recent years, Christians didn’t value tolerance, being progressive and nice, etc.. They had other values, and lo and behold, they found in the Bible that God hates interracial marriage and they banned it from their churches, taught their kids against it, and even outlawed it, in some cases making it a capital crime. And they were “following Jesus” when they did that. Truly the Bible is an amazing thing. We go from Christians making interracial marriage a capital crime from reading the Bible, to Bradley encouraging interracial marriage as a positive good from reading that same Bible.
There are valid reasons for opposing interracial marriage, and doing so doesn’t make a person a racist or evil, no matter what Jehovah/Jesus says on the matter. It’s not only not a sin, it’s part of our wiring, our nature, to mate with a partner of the opposite sex from our own racial group. It’s part of the survival instinct. Bradley seems to be saying that every church should have several interracial couples, that interracial couples glorify God more than all white couples. Well, if interracial marriage is such a positive good, then why shouldn’t every marriage be interracial? Don’t we want God’s best? If an all white church doesn’t reflect “our interracial future heavenly reality”, then how in the world does an all white marriage do so? What Bradley is really saying when he calls for more and more interracial marriages is that he wants fewer and fewer white kids to be born.
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I would also like to see more interracial couples, so that the next generation will make those check off boxes on all those form unworkable.
My Grandaughter is Norwegian/Irish/German/Hispanic/Italian/Native American. She gets to mark 3 check boxes. If she should marry an Asian/Black guy, her kids will get to mark them all.
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night train post 27,
what a fascinating post.
Note, I did not say the Bible, I stated Jesus specifically to address one of your concerns.
The reality, however, is that the argument is not that inter-racial couples are “good”. Rather, what is the point of even worrying about the “inter-racial” in “inter-racial” couples?
My daughter has been dating a black fellow for several years (we are nominally white, but that is another amusing story). He is a delightful person, and my wife and I enjoy getting together with them regularly.
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Christians like Bradley and KRM and almost everyone else on here won’t be happy until everyone in the world looks like Hugo Chavez.
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27-
Neil Warren of eharmony writes that it is best to have as much in common with your mate as possible for the best possible relationship.
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The reality, however, is that the argument is not that inter-racial couples are “good”.
No, the reality is that is THE EXACT ARGUMENT BRADLEY IS MAKING.
Go back and read it a bit more closely.
There’s nothing in there at all saying we shouldn’t care if every couple is interracial, or none, or a few, we should just let people marry who they want.
His argument is that interracial marriage is a good thing, it glorifies god more than an all white marriage does, and that it’s a sin to oppose it.
Can anyone on here read?
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night train post 31,
no actually, my sense is we will not be happy until we no longer care what anyone looks like (certainly in the sense you seem to mean it).
You continue to paint an interesting picture of yourself. You might want to consider the shaving test (admittedly a non-PC men only test, but what the hay).
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Night train:
The Bible is not the only document to be interpreted in various ways. The fact that it has been does not lead to the conclusion that there is no correct interpretation. I see no Biblical prohibition to interracial marriage, and you have supplied none.
There are many factors that determine how we choose a mate. Choosing someone like us may be one of them, but choosing an opposite may be also. I don’t see your survival instinct, I could argue that there could be an instinct to avoid inbreeding.
You end with a straw man. I don’t think anyone is saying that interracial marriage is best – if so, I would disagree. We are saying that it is good, not that it is best.
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night train post 33,
I believe the operative quote is:
“These men weren’t promoting interracial marriages as necessary. They simply communicated that God smiled when seeing a white Christian and black Christian, for example, enter the covenant of marriage.”
You do seem to have difficulty being able to distinguish between a concept which is not bad and should be accepted and a concept which is, to use your metaphysical word, “good” and should be pushed.
Last I checked, no one was suggesting that people be “forced” into interracial marriages (read the quote carefully).
You hyper-sensitivity here is telling as well.
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Anthony Bradley
This time I agree with you. It’s a shame that many people from the south still don’t accept mixed marriages. It’s a problem which the south doesn’t want to admit.
I have had many conversations with Christians over this issue. One time I was sitting in my youth group (California) talking to a friend of mine about black people. She became very indignant about the fact that they weren’t like her. My next remark was “they are just as good as you are” which brought about an angry retort of “don’t you dare tell me that black people are just as good as I am” ……. I then said “I just DID” with that she was so angry she couldn’t see straight. She was from Alabama.
I grew up in a home where we were taught to love everyone. My parents best friends were Japanese, we are white, if that makes any difference.
We have traveled a great deal in the south (business and pleasure) there is a noticeable attitude among some of the cities. South Carolina is one which I won’t forget. Charleston is a beautiful place, but when you visit the big homes and see the ‘cottages’ where the slaves once lived on either side of a tree lined drive, it makes your HEART ACHE. As a westerner, I have a problem with that kind of picture. We were near the Slave museum, and as I gazed at the entrance, I just couldn’t go in, my heart was so sad. Later we were driving down a road and a lovely black woman was selling baskets which she had made……we stopped the car and I looked at the grouping she had with her. It was obvious that African design was evident on the baskets, they were soft with cream and dark colors. The woman was very kind, she was someone anyone would have loved for a friend.
Anthony, things are changing………. Churches should be the FIRST to step up to the plate. Also remember NOT EVERYONE has these deep seated attitudes. Blacks need to accept the hand of friendship when its offered too. I have met several wonderful women in some of the stores that I shop in, they are from Cameroun. They worked in three different stores not knowing one another, I gave them the other’s phone number’s and names and ….. guess what?…. two of the women were from the same town, never knowing one another in Cameroun,…. got together and now are great friends. I see one of the women frequently, we have such fun, she’s never forgotten how she met her friend. I know this story is a bit off topic…..SORRY!
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You end with a straw man. I don’t think anyone is saying that interracial marriage is best – if so, I would disagree. We are saying that it is good, not that it is best.
Really? So Bradley didn’t actually write the last paragraph? Was is a demon who inserted this? Are Lynn and/or Alisa adding stuff to Bradley’s posts to make him look bad? Or maybe I just hallucinated this last paragraph and it’s not even there at all.
Musing, I have no idea what the heck you’re talking about. Start making sense or go harass someone else. Thanks.
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Night, Bradley is arguing against a prohibition, not for a mandate. He is assuming that there are couples that would want to get married who are being prevented by the church. These couples should be supported, not discouraged.
He also wrote this:
These men weren’t promoting interracial marriages as necessary. They simply communicated that God smiled when seeing a white Christian and black Christian, for example, enter the covenant of marriage.
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By the way, I agree that we can go to the other extreme and exaggerate the significance of these marriages. It would not be good to pressure them, or any others for that matter.
Also, the cultural issues can be substantial. Every couple has to deal with them. I married a girl from a French Canadian Catholic background. No two families are the same. When you have children is usually when the cultural differences bite.
These differences must be faced head-on before marriage and not brushed under the carpet. We must make sure not to act as though they are not there. Wishful thinking does not keep couples together.
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Anthony,
I missed this part Anthony…..only after reading Night Train’s post did I go back and take a CLOSER LOOK.
People meet, they are attracted to one another or they aren’t, this would mean any color.
Your pronouncement regarding marriage, sounds very much like a decree, handed down to settle a dispute. Marriage doesn’t work that way. GOD has a plan for each of us, as to who we marry as Believers.
Were you implying that all races make an EFFORT to date, and marry from other races, other than their OWN. If this is what you meant, I don’t agree with it. If were not married, I would NOT make an effort to date any special race, that’s ridiculous, I would date those who are Believers, and those I was attracted to.
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STUBOB at #9 is spot on.
As a rule, if a jounalist goes public with a stereotype and presents it as fact, then he/she better have some specific facts to back it up. And let the chips fall with the truth. I am not meaning to pick on Anthony in specific here, but in general: Let’s demand more specific courage, homework and intellectual honesty from journalists, please.
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RR,
In my view, to say that “eleven o’clock Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America” is simply to traffic in an irresponsible and false stereotype.
I know you did not say that yourself. I am just adding my opinion.
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night train post 39,
actually I think you do know exactly what I am talking about.
It would seem that you did not read the discussion lead in clearly.
I provided a quote from the leadin which suggests that you are seriously confused in your posts.
Under this level of clarity, it is probably your only viable strategy to pretend that you don’t understand what I am saying.
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Night Train,
We’ve discussed this before and your views on slavery and the Bible’s teaching on it are unbalenced and misleading.
I think Jesus killed the future of slavery when he laid down the “Golden Rule.”
The Bible represents real history in the real world, in which slavery was universal. It reveals a God who meets humans where we are and works with us gracefully.
God does not just lay down laws to fix everything from the start. He walks with us as a parent walks with a selfish, or rebellious child. He loves us even condones our weaknesses and our failures to learn his will.
The Bible was not written to evoke social or political revolutions, but to inspire spiritual re-creation in people. This calls for more than mere dos and don’ts. It calls for patience on God’s part and responsiveness from us.
Jesus sets men free from the worst slavery of all–slavery to sin. Jesus left a world that was still terribly imperfect, socially and politically. That was not his mission. After Jesus died, people still got hungry and sick and wars continued. His mission was not to lay the ground rules for a perfect society. It was to call you to repentance and do what you and I cannot do to attain forgiveness of sins and a restored relationship with God.
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and once again Victoria you are stereotyping the south. Haven’t you read what I have written? Haven’t you read that kbells is white raising a biracial child in the south. You are basing your opinion on ONE person from Alabama that you met in California. And as far as Charleston? That is history. Accept it. Deal with it.
Prejudice exists everywhere.
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actually I think you do know exactly what I am talking about.
Well, Musing, I think I do, but I’m not 100% certain. I’m responding to what Bradley wrote. Near as I can figure, you’re responding to the voices in your head.
It would seem that you did not read the discussion lead in clearly.
True, I don’t hear those same voices and so I’m unable to follow the discussion you’re engaged in.
I provided a quote from the leadin which suggests that you are seriously confused in your posts.
Really? I don’t remember seeing any “quotes” in your post. Did you quote me, Bradley, or who? What was the quote again and who said it originally?
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Night Train – I am not promoting anything. I just look forward to the day when race is irrelevant.
As that day approaches, we will have more interracial couples and thus more mixed race children. When we gets lots more mixed race children, the categories will break down so as to be meaningless – and I will be happy for that.
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night train post 48,
so lets be clear.
I believe I can make these statements within the context of allowed speech in this blog.
Your comments suggest a level of antipathy based on race (in the comments mind you, I make no claims about you) which is interesting to observe.
You have been called on it by myself, llama, and amphipolis.
I do note that this type of posts does not appear to be restricted to this discussion group.
Given your apparent metaphysical position regaridng racial issues expressed int he comments, it would seem (as all these posters noted) that you have misunderstood Bradley’s comments. I provided quotes from Bradley to demonstrate your misunderstanding here.
Since the issue is straightforward, and you suggest that you do know what we are talking about, the parsimonious assumption is that you are deliberating misunderstanding the challenge raised to you by the other posters.
And I suggest, the nature of you comments is so twentieth century.
P.S. based on these most recent primaries it does appear that Obama’s support spans much of the electorate!
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night train post 48,
You noted:
“Really? I don’t remember seeing any “quotes” in your post. Did you quote me, Bradley, or who? What was the quote again and who said it originally?”
Musing post 36:
“I believe the operative quote is:
“These men weren’t promoting interracial marriages as necessary. They simply communicated that God smiled when seeing a white Christian and black Christian, for example, enter the covenant of marriage.””
The quote is clearly delineated.
I must assume then that you have a vision problem. Opthamologists may be of assitance here.
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krm post 49,
a very good insight!
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Kim – 47
Let’s settle this one.
We have traveled extensively, IN the south. It’s obvious that there is still a great deal of discrimination. You can’t hide it, or more importantly YOU CAN’T SEE IT ANYMORE, because you don’t want to.
I could give you many instances of those who moved from the south, be it Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, etc. I went to school with these people, they were just about the most prejudice we came in contact with, in fact they still are. Making fun of the way black’s talk, mimicking them, its sickening. Why would I fill up this thread with a hundred stories, that doesn’t make sense,…….. I told one to give an example,……. DEAL WITH IT!
The south stereotyped itself, it didn’t need any help from the north or the west. Charleston isn’t history, unless you want to wear rose colored glasses. We as northerners and westerners, don’t accept it, and we don’t deal with it, WE SEE IT FOR WHAT IT IS.
I’ve had black friends, their good people. I spent a lot of time with one of my friends from Church at a ‘women’s retreat’ she re-dedicated her life to Christ one night about 1 AM in the morning. We had lots of fun together. She came to visit me at my apartment before I was married. I had made a big ‘brunch’ for us on a Saturday, she needed to do her washing, and I told her to bring it over and use our washers and driers, she said, “how can I do that, what will your other neighbors think” I was dumfounded, but I told her “there won’t be any problem” She was afraid that the white people in my apartment wouldn’t want her clothes in their machines. She came to these conclusions because of the way she had been treated. Oh, and by the way, she was a teacher, a very educated woman.
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The world isn’t that much ahead Go back and watch “The Next Generation” or “Deep Space Nine”. There is hardly any bi-racial romance. Apparently Gene Roddenberry didn’t think we would have gotten over this by the 24th century. Speaking from the suburban Deep South. It is no longer a big deal.
#27. “Thankfully, my observation is the same. Maybe even to the point of being delighted when I see a mixed-race couple, and marvelling at how beautiful their children tend to be.”
Call me bias because I have one, but yes, biracial children are unbelievably beautiful.
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Musing, I can’t read? You may not know this, but #33 comes before #36. When I told you I had no idea what you’re babbling about, you hadn’t given that quote.
Did you forget to take some pills or something?
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NT and Musing, please both of you go to your corners. It’s wearing everybody out.
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Joel Mark:
We’ve discussed this before and your views on slavery and the Bible’s teaching on it are unbalenced and misleading.
No, they’re not. I’ve simply stated the truth about the Bible. There are a great many places where God gives his people the right to own slaves, and beat them severely, and pass them on to their children. There are no passages that say that it’s a sin to own slaves. You can settle this once and for all, Joel. Show us a verse where God calls slavery a sin. Just one. I’ll be waiting.
I think Jesus killed the future of slavery when he laid down the “Golden Rule.”
Of course you think that, because you think slavery is evil, and you don’t want to worship a god that allows his followers to own slaves. But there’s nothing in the Golden Rule that prohibits slavery. It doesn’t abolish sex, age, authority, position, station in life, etc. If you do something wrong do you want someone five times your size to beat you with a whip? Of course you don’t. But Christian parents do that to their kids all the time, never mind the Golden Rule. So how do you square whipping small children with “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”? Would you want your kids to physically assault you for what they thought was “your own good”? No? Then, according to your view of the Golden Rule, you shouldn’t do it to them.
The Golden Rule is hardly original to Jehovah/Jesus. Confucius taught the same thing; so did the Buddha. Jehovah/Jesus was simply summing getting at the essence of the law. Like when he said there are two great commandments – love God, and love neighbor as yourself. That was simply summing up the two tables of the 10 Commandments. And in the 10 Commandments, God write the protection of slavery into his moral code, when he said don’t covet your neighbor’s slaves. So we know from the mouth of Jehovah/Jesus that owning a person doesn’t violate the command to love your neighbor as yourself.
And if anything can be twisted to make it mean whatever you want it to mean, it’s the Golden Rule. Joel, what you say to a homosexual activist who says that since you wouldn’t want homosexuals telling you that you can’t marry the person you love, you shouldn’t tell them they can’t marry the person they love?
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night train,
oh please.
I provided the quote. It was in the leadin to this discussion. You did not read it. Several posters have called you on it.
You can squirm all you want, but your posts stand nicely on their own.
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Sorry Musing, but I have to get back to planet earth now. Been nice chattin’ with ya.
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1 Corinthians 7:21 establishess that freedom is better than slavery – if you can gain your freedom, do so. But this thread is not about slavery, it is about interracial marriage, which has no Biblical ambiguity at all.
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Maybe some of you will remember not all that long ago there was a debate on one of the threads regarding ‘higher education’. The statement was made by a few, and then a number of posters chimed in. It was regarding their ‘belief’ that Presbyterians were better educated than others from different denominations. When I read the remarks I couldn’t help laugh at the stupidity and prejudice, which reeked from those posts. Many were from the south, and made that clear as well, saying that those in their churches were far more educated…… and because they said it, that made it fact, no matter how irrational or unfounded the claim was.
It’s just these kinds of ‘mind sets’ which make the rest of laugh. Most of the people making the claim above are Presbyterian, and they live in the south, they made that clear as well, as I am doing now. I think there is a very IMPORTANT POINT here, one that might be examined by those who claim they are not prejudiced. Self importance without grace and knowledge is easy to spot, it sticks out like jeans and t-shirt at a wedding.
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Victoria, I will confess that I know people from the South who are bigots. I also know people from the North, West, East and Canada who hate somebody for not looking like them. As a matter of fact the last time I heard the “N” word it came out of guy from New York, the time before that from a guy from Maine who was telling me about his cousin cussing out an elderly black janitor for being two minutes late, the time before that from my uncle. No society is perfect but we are making progress.
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1 Corinthians 7:21 establishess that freedom is better than slavery – if you can gain your freedom, do so.
No one ever denied, that I’m aware of, that freedom is generally better than slavery. That doesn’t make slavery a sin. The Bible also makes clear that being married is better than being single, (generally), but that doesn’t mean it’s a sin to be single. And, if slavery is a sin, please explain this passage:
Why didn’t Paul just tell the Christian slaves with Christian owners “tell your owner it’s a sin to own another human being and to let you go. If he balks, tell him to talk to me”? And if slavery is a sin, how can a Christian slave owner be “faithful”?
it is about interracial marriage, which has no Biblical ambiguity at all
Really? Then how is it that 99% of Christians today think interracial marriage is fine according to the Bible, while for hundreds of years tens of millions of Christians opposed it based on their reading of the Bible?
But this thread is not about slavery,
No, it’s about Bradley claiming that the Bible wants churches to push (”champion”) interracial marriages, and that churches with such marriages are better than churches without them. Whether he’s right or wrong, there’s no denying that this flies in the face of what almost every Christian in this country believed for centuries. Which brings up the topic of people finding whatever they want to find in the Bible. And since people claim with a straight face that according to the Bible, Jehovah/Jesus thinks it’s a sin to own slaves, when it says no such thing, and says the exact opposite many, many times, that’s quite relevant to this discussion.
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Kbells,
You are right there are bigots in every walk of life. But when it comes to downright discrimination, the south wins.
I have lived in the west all my life, and I’ve never witnessed anything like the south, or those who come here to live from the south, its shameful.
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The personal opinions of a few people you know is not discriminations.
Remember, the two worse race riots in the history of this country happened in Los Angeles.
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I never said slavery was sin. I said there is no Biblical passage condemning interracial marriage, and you have not been able to contradict me. Slavery is a distraction. You have not demonstrated a shred of Biblical ambiguity on the subject of interracial marriage.
For about a millennia people thought Moses had horns, so what? They were wrong.
People find whatever they want in the Bible, but you are unable to find that interracial marriage is condemned.
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Ampipholis, where did I ever claim the Bible condemns interracial marriage?
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I never said slavery was sin.
No, you want to have it both ways. On the threads where it’s the main topic, and I point out that slavery is not a sin, you keep silent, even as other people twist clear teachings of the Bible.
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Kbells
You are right about L.A…..however one race riot was over 40 years ago and the other one was over a trial. It wasn’t the same thing.
You are wrong about the many people I went to school with, it was no “no small few” and our travels in the south and the reminders that the ’south still’ has BIG problems isn’t lost on those who observe it first hand.
The war in the south was far more than 40 years ago, and was won to free the slaves, but the south still keeps that flag flying, no matter how much pain it causes Black American’s. Strange how the south can’t part with that flag. The southerners who come here make plain their beliefs, its not lost on us, just how much the old southern beliefs still live on, the flag flying to remind everyone of the past, and how much it meant to them.
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night train post 59,
it would be good to get back to earth.
I included the quote in post 36.
You challenged that I had not provided the quote in post 48.
I guess you can’t see and can’t count. Opthamologists work for vision. At this point, I am unsure hwo can help you with counting.
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You can no more compare traveling through the South to living in it than you can compare a few people being offended by a piece of cloth to the deaths of 53 people. The Rodney King riots were racial, plain and simple.
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Kbells ..
tell that to those who were lynched 3,587 by 1930. That piece if cloth that flies should be disposed of in the toilet.
How many young black girls were molested by their owners? How many children were born from these dishonorable molestations?
How many deaths and beatings, how many feet were chopped off so that slaves wouldn’t run away. How many years did this go on before the Civil War, and how many years did it continue…..
How many lynching’s took place after the Civil War? Here’s some history. “Lynching grew each year from 1866 through the 1880s, peaked in 1892, and gradually declined, except for an upsurge during the Red Scare of 1919-20. By 1900 the punishment was reserved almost exclusively for blacks. From 1889 through 1918 mobs lynched 129 persons in the Midwest, 9 in New England, and 2,915 in the South and Border South. The nation reached a total of 3,587 by 1930.”
And the south can’t dispose of:
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28 – Right on, Train. Interracial marriage is a revolt against the different peoples that God made. And it’s actually slow genocide. We don’t have a right to make a new race. God made the races. If he wanted us to all be the same, he would have made us that way. And don’t go calling me a bigot, because I know black brothers and sisters in Christ who BELIEVE THE SAME WAY. And I say, good for them.
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#2 Joel Mark,
I believe both of wthe ives chosen by Moses were Cushites. This was one of the things that got his siblings into hot water with God. They spread the word that they thought Moses believed that Jewish girls just weren’t good enough for the almighty egomaniac Moses. I believe they learned their lesson handed to them directly by God.
I personally am thankful I am not reading that these preachers were hanged, like they might have been a few years ago.
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Victoria, can’t you see that you are being a bigot in your opinion of the south. When people start stating things and telling us how backward and “hickified” we are, we shut down and no longer listen to them. It is our “old southern, passive agressiveness” coming out in us. As far as I have been able to figure out none of my people owned any slaves and most weren’t even here when the dang war was fought. Now I do have one great grandparent that qualifies me to belong to the Daughter’s of the Confederacy, but luckily I married a man who has the geneology to get my daughter in the Daughter’s of the American Revolution. Which do you think would be more important?
How would you like it if I based my entire opinion of people who live in the west by watching LA Ink on TLC?
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Night -
So you can’t make the Bible say whatever you want after all? I like how Bradley stated it – why do our standards for marital unions go beyond what God sets forth for union with his own son? Unless you can supply a contrary Biblical viewpoint, his point stands. You can’t hide behind a malleable Bible, especially when you fail to provide an applicable example. Slavery is another subject. We know Moses did not have horns. We know interracial marriage is not prohibited. You are arguing with us, not with Robert E. Lee.
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Bianca are you aware that Moses married a black woman? An Ethiopian woman is black. I would suggest you read the entire chapter of Numbers 12. Very enlightening!
1 And Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married: for he had married an Ethiopian woman.
2 And they said, Hath the LORD indeed spoken only by Moses? hath he not spoken also by us? And the LORD heard it.
3 (Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth.)
4 And the LORD spake suddenly unto Moses, and unto Aaron, and unto Miriam, Come out ye three unto the tabernacle of the congregation. And they three came out.
5 And the LORD came down in the pillar of the cloud, and stood in the door of the tabernacle, and called Aaron and Miriam: and they both came forth.
6 And he said, Hear now my words: If there be a prophet among you, I the LORD will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream.
7 My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all mine house.
8 With him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches; and the similitude of the LORD shall he behold: wherefore then were ye not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?
9 And the anger of the LORD was kindled against them; and he departed. Numbers 11
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#2 Joel Mark,
Both of the wives that Moses chose were Cushites I believe. The rumor/gossip that his siblings started that Moses had a thing for black women and that Jewish girls just weren’t good enough for the almighty egomaniac Moses is what got them into trouble with God. Aaron and Miriam payed a heavy price just for for gossiping.
It is a shame that God doesn’t punish these churches in a similar fashion today.
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No, you want to have it both ways. On the threads where it’s the main topic, and I point out that slavery is not a sin, you keep silent, even as other people twist clear teachings of the Bible.
I am not the Biblical policeman. I am not responsible to correct every error, and you all are not responsible to correct mine. I post when I want to post, when I have time or inclination. You can not argue from silence – I have never heard you condemn the Nazis, or Ghengis Khan, so you must approve of them!
You manufacture Biblical ambiguity and hide behind it. Show me the ambiguity. I don’t care what people have said, I care about what is right.
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I give up trying to post on this thread.
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Moses and his wife were both Egyptians. Egypt was where Moses was born, correct? Cush was part of Egypt in the south. So they were pretty much the same people. It would be like a Korean from Pyonyang marrying someone from Seoul. Ruth was a Moabitess, but remember that she still came from Abraham because she came from his nephew Lot. She was brought in spiritually. In Moab, they served idols. And she was anxious to learn about biblical Israelite worship and was saved.
It’s the same concept with the Judeans and Pharisees getting all bent out of shape about the Samaritans. When Jesus asked the woman at the well for water in Jn 4, he was showing her his salvation, but at the same time showing the Judeans and especially the Jewish Pharisees that the Samaritans are still Israelites, albeit from the Northern Kingdom. God saves people from all tribes and nations. But that doesn’t give us permission to erase borders and intermarry. Solomon did that in I Kings 11. You can say it was simply spiritual, but foreign means foreign as it did back then.
I’m still studying this, but this is how I understand it thus far.
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Kim – 74
Speaking about the south in general is not a direct comment to you personally, obviously you can’t see this. If you shut down, that’s your loss.
You’ve got your bigot mixed up according to this post. No one called you “hickified” don’t put words in my mouth, which you have done before, it’s not TRUTHFUL, its distorting what is TRUTH, and makes your comments ‘of no effect.’
TV programs? ……….. certainly you jest? My opinions are first hand, they are traveling to the south many times, staying and observing. My opinions are ‘first hand’ of those who move here from the south. That’s FIRST HAND Kim, its not a TV program, and its not someone else’s idea or view, it’s mine, seeing and hearing it for myself, that is the difference which has eluded you.
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I wrote to Night Train, your views on slavery and the Bible’s teaching on it are unbalanced and misleading.”
Night Train claimed that “Jehovah/Jesus repeatedly gave his official sanction to slavery…”
Where did Jesus give his sanction to slavery? he didn’t.
Night Train does not seem to realize that the Bible was fully inspired by God but written by humans in a human context. It is not really very scholarly or academically sound to quote Bible for polemical purposes as if it is God literally talking. The Bible is the product of God’s inspiration, but within the context of muddied humanity. It tells of God’s love coming down to met us where we are. And to meet humanity in the ancient world is to meet a very flawed and corrupt world and system–including the universal ancient reality of slavery.
Night Trian has not stated truth but a skewed opinion. He apparently thinks his opinions are truth incarnate.
The reality of slavery is recognized in the New Testament, but that is by no means a “sanction,” let alone an “official sanction.”
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No Victoria, the only Western states I have been to were New Mexico, Colorado, and a guess to the far west Hawaii. I found the people to be quite nice in all three of them.
Apparantly the saying “You can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar” eludes you.
And for the record I have lived in Maryland, stayed with family in Virginia and travelled all up and down the East coast. New York, Delaware, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas, Kentucky, Oklahoma…people are pretty much people wherever I have been.
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Bianca
Moses was a Hebrew.
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I wrote that “Jesus killed the future of slavery when he laid down the ‘Golden Rule.’”
In his response, Night Train made it clear that he thinks I think that because I “think slavery is evil, and [I] don’t want to worship a god that allows his followers to own slaves.”
Dead wrong, Night Train. The Golden Rule stands against the notion of slavery on its own merits as a principle for life. My preference has nothing to do with the menaing of that rule.
Night Train wrote; “But there’s nothing in the Golden Rule that prohibits slavery.”
I didn’t say it did include a specific and literal prohibition, did I? But this reveals your profoundly shallow understanding of the Bible and Christian faith. There is more to understanding the Bible and living a life of faith than finding prohibitions. Ever heard of “principle?”
I’m not sure I can find a specific and literal prohibition of pedophilia either. But it’s still evil, auite obviously.
Night Train, your micro linear literalism is crippling your understanding. Good Bible students can actually think on the macro level too.
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Kim – 82
The FACTS of all the lynching’s in the south hasn’t escaped those in the north or the west. The FACT that the flag flies which offends not just the blacks of this country but white alike, should be reason enough to take a teaspoon of honey, for southerners, and dispense with the ‘flag’ which causes pain for those who’s ancestors have been murdered, molested, and beaten.
That ‘FLAG’ no matter how one tries to express other ideas, still flies as a disgrace to those who’s hearts are not set on making peace with black American’s! All the honey in the world won’t make a difference until the south, comes to grips with the past, and makes the step to TAKE DOWN THAT FLAG!
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Again, Mark, show me anywhere in the Bible that says slavery is a sin. Just one place. Quit talking about human error muddling the Bible. If the Holy Spirit really inspired that book, he could’ve made sure that “slavery is a sin” came through loud and clear. He’s omnipotent, remember? Or are all those passages about God’s unlimited power hopelessly muddled?
Jehovah/Jesus gave his sanction to slavery repeatedly in the Old Testament. Jehovah and Jesus are one, remember? Or is that taking the Bible out of context. Or is that one of those hopelessly muddled parts?
And why did Paul instruct Timothy to tell slaves whose owners were Christians to serve them ever more wholeheartedly because they were faithful brothers? Why didn’t he tell Timothy to tell the Christian slaveholders to free their slaves? And if owning slaves is a sin, why did Paul call the slaveholders “faithful”? Oh yeah, that’s another one of those passages that’s “muddled” by fallen human.
What your argument boils down to is this: The Bible is, in a way, the inspired word of God, but in parts that inspiration got muddled in transmission. The parts I approve of are error free and reliable; the parts I don’t approve of are muddled, unreliable, and can be ignored.
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Victoria you still don’t get it. Yelling at me in bold type will not win your argument. Being kind and understanding and showing me the error of my ways in a gentle and loving way will. I have no particular attachment to the Confederate Battle Flag. I truly could care less if I ever see it flying again or not. But let’s do stop and think of ALL the American’s who died in that war and let us also remember that slavery was only the rallying cry. The true war was fought over states’s rights versus Federal government rights. I am not saying that the right the state fought for was right but the thought process behind it was the most “American” of thoughts. Individualism without “big” government and no the irony of individual freedom is not lost on me when they were fighting to keep there slaves as well.
Confederate soldiers, until Vietnam, were the only Americans to ever lose a war. The devastation the south was under lasted well into the 1900’s and yes, understandably there was bitterness on all sides. Individually we always liked black people it was collectively that we didn’t. History is history and cannot be changed. We can only change the future and your attitude about the south is not helping change it.
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That’s two, now. Peter Leavitt and Joel Mark have both admitted that they believe the Bible contains significant errors. It’s the only honest way around the Bible’s slavery problem. And it just goes to prove the point I’m making, that people can find in the Bible pretty much what they want to. If they can’t find it, they talk about principles. If it teaches they exact opposite of what they want it to teach, those parts are “muddled by fallen humanity” or they’re “time bound moral fossils” which have no moral authority. Pretty soon most evangelicals will take this same approach in dealing with the Bible’s homosexuality problem.
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Joel Mark post 84,
excellent post.
You and I are in profound agreement!
Say what??? Mark the calendar!!!
Thanks for your points here.
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Kim – 87
Please don’t try to teach me American history, it doesn’t flatter you. Maybe you don’t understand, but people who are educated have already studied. I’m sure you get the idea now…….
So “Individually we always liked black people it was collectively that we didn’t.” That doesn’t make sense. So “collectively” you have a problem? OK……….! That’s interesting….
My attitude and that of millions of other people, stepping up to the plate in defense of our Black brothers and sisters is going to make a difference. What won’t ‘wash’ is hiding behind “honey” and giving “vinegar” to those who have had enough of it.
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kim post 87,
but I suggest your statement here:
“The true war was fought over states’s rights versus Federal government rights.”
while true, is incomplete.
And what was the issue which brought this focus on state rights vs. federal rights? I suggest that a dominant theme was slavery and which states were going to be admitted to the union as slave states and which would be free.
My reading of this period suggests, as you may point out, that the South was not interested in slavery per se, but was interested in maintaining its position of influence within the union. Slavery was merely a talisman arond which their power was arranged.
However, at root it was slavery, and that the South apparently considered it the showpiece for maintaining their power strikes me as a profound statement in itself.
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I missed this.
I’m not sure I can find a specific and literal prohibition of pedophilia either.
That’s not the situation at all. It’s not merely a case of the Bible not calling slavery a sin; that would be bad enough. The Bible may be silent on pedophilia; it is most certainly NOT silent on slavery. The problem is not that the Bible doesn’t address slavery, it’s that it does so over and over and shows God’s clear approval of the practice. In the NT, when Paul instruct the preacher Timothy on how to deal with Christians slaves and Christian slave owners, he doesn’t instruct him to command the Christian slave owners to set the slaves free, on the contrary, he tell him to instruct the slaves to serve their masters even more diligently, because their owners are “faithful” followers of Christ. In the OT, God himself, no matter how much you hate it, is quoted as telling the Jews that they may own slaves, that they may pass them on to their children like any other property, etc. You can call that “micro literalism” all you want, and say that Moses screwed up when he said God was talking to him, but it’s all there in the Bible. It’s intellectually dishonest to pretend that the Bible is “silent” on slavery, and you know it.
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Kim,
Read the book Why Does He DO That? and insert she for all the he’s. Or read FoolProofing Your Life on chaos and strife. For some, it is just not fun to be nice.
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Kim – if its any consolation, Victoria bases her opinion of Canada on her “extensive travelling and numerous friends”. Her opinoin of Canada was wrong and I’m sure her opinion of the South is wrong
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You know, Victoria, slavery was legal much longer under the American flag than it was under the confederate flag.
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Kbells – 95
Well isn’t that something to be proud of? It didn’t need to be legal at all did it, under any flag!
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Night Train That’s two, now. Peter Leavitt and Joel Mark have both admitted that they believe the Bible contains significant errors.
This is a twisting of my view of the Bible, which is that it is essentially the Word of God.
The Bible for the most part is written by humans with the aid of the Holy Spirit. It is true that, having been written by humans who are to some extent time and space bound, parts of it can be questioned including slavery and stoning. These parts are very minor and don’t detract from the great truths of this profound book.
Personally, I try every morning to read a chapter from both the New and Old Testament. This book when read in the right way is Holy and True. Lincoln in fact over time came to regard it practically as his life’s blood and of great solace during his terrible time in the White House during the Civil War.
You apparently read the Bible to find fault with it. Your insidious purpose on this Christian blog seems to be to sow seeds of doubt and to malign serious believers.
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As i said, Peter, you believe the Bible contains significant errors. Saying God told the Jews they could own other people as property is pretty significant. So how did I “twist” your views?
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Night Train:
Once again, if people can find what they want to in the Bible, where does it say that interracial marriage is prohibited?
Your slavery distraction is paying off – here we go again.
shows God’s clear approval of the practice
You have NOT shown any explicit passage in the New Testament that shows God’s approval of the slavery. Paul was addressing slaves, not their masters. To see him address masters, see Philemon. Paul intercedes with Philemon to obtain Onesimus’ freedom – see Philemon 12-16. I have shown how Paul stated slaves should try to be free – which implies that slavery is not good.
Your intention is not to determine what the Bible teaches, but to obscure it. As with interracial marriage.
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One more time, Amphipolis, I’ve never claimed the Bible forbids mixed marriages. I’m not looking for that in the Bible. I’ve simply pointed out that millions of Christians for hundreds of years justified their banning of the practice with the Bible. You can look up their arguments for yourself if you wish.
No, Paul was instructing the preacher Timothy, on what to preach to the Christian slaves in his area. And that was they should be even more diligent in serving a Christian owner than a non believer, because Christian slave owners are “faithful” followers of Christ. I guess you missed that part. He never said a word to Timothy about telling the Christian slave owners in his area to knock it off. In fact, in case you missed it, he said the Christian slave owners were “faithful” followers of Jesus.
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Slaves from Africa
1619
First Africans arrive in Virginia.
1640-1680
Beginning of large-scale introduction of African slave labor in the British Caribbean for sugar production.
1774
Connecticut and Rhode Island prohibit further importation of slaves (although Rhode Island merchants remain in slave trade to other colonies).
1776
Society of Friends (Quakers) abolishes slavery among members.
1777
Vermont Constitution prohibits slavery.
1780
Massachusetts Constitution adopted with freedom clause interpreted as prohibiting slavery.
Pennsylvania adopts gradual emancipation, freeing slaves born after 1780 upon their 28th birthday.
1784
Connecticut and Rhode Island pass gradual emancipation laws.
1788
Connecticut prohibits residents from participating in slave trade.
1789
U.S. Constitution ratified with clause equating slaves to 3/5ths of a white citizen and provision that slave trade would end within 20 years.
1793
Eli Whitney’s invention of cotton gin sets stage for expansion of slavery in American South as short-staple cotton becomes economical product.
1798-1808
Decade of greatest importation of African slaves into U.S., totaling approximately 200,000.
1799
New York passes gradual emancipation law.
1800
U.S. citizens prohibited from exporting slaves.
Gabriel’s conspiracy in Richmond, Virginia, seeks to overthrow slavery in Virginia.
1802
Slave boatmen plot rebellion along Roanoke River in Virginia.
1804
New Jersey passes gradual emancipation law.
1807
Great Britain abolishes slave trade.
1817
The American Colonization Society is founded, espousing the return of African Americans to Africa.
1819
U.S. law equates slave trading with piracy, punishable by death.
1820
The Missouri Crisis paralyzes national politics, as southerners and northerners argue over the admission of new slave states to the Union. Eventually, Missouri is admitted as a slave state, balanced by the admission of Maine as a free state. The Missouri Compromise also includes an agreement to bar slavery from northern federal territories — a compromise that holds until 1854.
President James Monroe orders first U.S. Navy patrol against slave ships on West African coast
1822
The first settlers found the colony of Liberia, for freed African American slaves returning to Africa. Over the 1820s, some 1,400 blacks immigrate from the U.S. to the colony.
Denmark Vesey slave revolt plot uncovered in Charleston, South Carolina, and conspirators executed.
South Carolina passes Negro Seamen Acts requiring imprisonment of black sailors while in port to prevent their inciting slave revolts. Similar acts later passed in Alabama, Louisiana, and Cuba.
Pedro Blanco, former Spanish slave-ship captain, establishes slave factory at Lomboko on the Gallinas River in present Sierra Leone
1825
The Antelope Case: The U.S. Revenue Cutter Dallas seizes a slave ship, the Antelope, sailing under a Venezualan flag, with a cargo of 281 Africans, claimed by Portuguese and Spanish owners, in international waters. The U.S. Supreme Court hears five days of arguments before packed courtrooms.
March 16: John Marshall delivers a unaminous opinion declaring the slave trade a violation of natural law, meaning it can be upheld only by positive law.
But the ruling sets only 80% of the Africans free. U.S. law by this point defined the slave trade as piracy, but the court held that U.S. could not prescribe law for other nations — and noted that the slave trade was legal as far as Spain, Portugal, Venezuela were concerned. Vessel was restored. Those Africans designated as Spanish property (numbering 39) the court recognized as property and sold into slavery on behalf of claimants. Portuguese claims the court found shakier, setting those Africans free.
1827
Jim Pembroke, a slave in Maryland, escapes and begins making his way northward, where he will rename himself James W.C. Pennington and rise to prominence within the African-American abolition movement.
1829
David Walker, a free African-American, publishes Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, a radical pamphlet attacking slavery and the colonization movement. The Appeal invokes the rhetoric and spirit of the American Revolution, demanding: “See your Declaration, Americans!!! Do you understand your own language?”
Copies of the Appeal soon begin turning up in Southern ports, probably secretly distributed by free African-American seamen.
A year later, Walker is found dead near the doorway of his shop in Boston.
1830
The first annual Convention of the People of Colour assembles in Philadelphia to organize African-American opposition to slavery and to discrimination in the free states.
1831
January 1: William Lloyd Garrison begins publishing the Liberator.
August 22: In Southhampton County, Virginia, Nathaniel Turner leads a small slave uprising that quickly spreads to neighboring plantations and within a few days kills some 60 whites before local militia contain the revolt. In reprisal, scores of slaves are interrogated, tortured, and killed by panicked slaveholders. Turner himself eludes captures for a few months, but is eventually jailed and executed.
December: The Virginia legislature begins debating emancipation — the last viable movement for abolition coming from within a southern state until the Civil War.
1833
William Lloyd Garrison and others found the American Anti-Slavery Society.
Connecticut passes the “Black Law,” barring blacks from attending private schools outside their resident towns without permission from town leaders. In Canterbury, CT, Prudence Crandell, a white school teacher, is prosecuted several times under this law.
1834
An anti-abolitionist mob sacks the home of prominent New York abolitionist Lewis Tappan, part of a savage riot that also destroys the home and church of African-American Episcopal Reverend Peter Williams.
1836
May 25: in response to petitions calling on Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, the House of Representatives implements the “gag rule,” automatically tabling abolitionist petitions. The policy is repeatedly renewed over the coming years.
1837
Abolitionist and editor Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy is murdered by an anti-abolitionist mob in Alton, Illinois.
An Antislavery Convention of American Women meets in New York City with both black and white women participating.
African-Americans lose the right to vote in Pennsylvania (by amendment to the State Constitution) and Michigan (by state law). In New York, African-Americans petition the state legislature for voting rights.
1838
August 18: The U.S. Exploring Expedition sails from Hampton Roads, Virginia.
September: Frederick Baily escapes slavery, making his way from Baltimore to New York City, and from there to New Bedford, where he takes on a new name, Frederick Douglass.
A Philadelphia mob destroys the Pennsylvania Hall, where abolitionists have held meetings, then goes on a rampage burning and terrorizing African-American neighborhoods. Municipal authorities do nothing to halt the carnage.
Joshua R. Giddings of Ohio is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, the first avowed abolitionist Congressman.
Rev. James W.C. Pennington, who would minister to the Amistad Africans, pastors an African Congregational Church at Newtown, Connecticut. In 1840 he moves to a new congregation in Hartford. In 1841 he publishesA Textbook of the Origin and History of the Colored People, the first history of its kind.
1839
June 12: HMS Buzzard escorts two American slave ships into New York, the brig Eagle and the schoonerClara, to be tried by American courts. Two weeks later, several more slavers arrive in New York, the Butterfly and the Catharine, manned by British naval officers as prizes of another royal ship on the Africa squadron. The British had already attempted to try the vessels in Sierra Leone before a mixed Anglo-Spanish commission adjudicating alleged slaving, but that commission had refused to try the vessels on the grounds they sailed under the American flag. At this point the British had escorted their prizes to New York, trying to force the Americans to enforce their laws against slave trading.
August 27: The Amistad is taken into New London.
November 13: The Liberty Party holds its first national convention in Warsaw, New York, proclaiming its anti-slavery program and nominating James C. Birney for President.
Among the Liberty Party’s leading supporters is African-American abolitionist Henry Highland Garnet.
Theodore Dwight Weld publishes American Slavery as it is, a powerful indictment of slavery.
Garrisonians take control of the American Anti-Slavery Society and radicalize its platform, demanding the immediate abolition of slavery.
President Martin Van Buren orders U.S. Navy to resume West African patrols.
1840
January 19: The Wilkes Expedition claims part of Antarctica for the U.S.
Richard Henry Dana, Jr. publishes Two Years Before the Mast.
The Amistad Africans spend the year in jail.
Division in American Anti-Slavery Society over role of women weakens abolitionist efforts
1841
March 9: The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the freedom of the Amistad Africans.
November 7: African American slaves aboard the brig Creole revolt en route from Virginia to New Orleans. The rebels force the captain and crew to sail them to Nassau in the Bahamas. There British authorities take nineteen of the rebels into custody but free the remainder, England having abolished slavery in the British West Indies in 1833.
Frederick Douglass is hired by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society as a full-time lecturer.
1842
January 18: Senator John C. Calhoun proposes a resolution calling on President Tyler to protest the British handling of theCreole incident. January 29: U.S. Secretary of State Daniel Webster issues a dispatch to the ambassador to Great Britain demanding indemnification for the freed slaves.
August 9: The U.S. and Great Britian sign the Webster-Ashburn Treaty, adjusting boundaries between the U.S. and Canada, and agreeing to cooperate on suppressing the slave trade.
In Boston, escaped slave George Lattimore is captured by bounty hunters — the first in a series of confrontational fugitive slave cases. Abolitionists raise funds to purchase Lattimore’s freedom.
In Philadelphia, a parade commemorating the abolition of slavery in the British West Indies is attacked by a proslavery mob.
1843
Sojourner Truth, an African-American woman who escaped from slavery, begins lecturing for abolitionism.
Rev. Henry Highland Garnet delivers a “Call to Rebellion” at the National Negro Convention in Buffalo, New York, exhorting African-Americans to resist slavery by means of armed rebellion (and holding up Cinque, among others, as heroes in the cause).
At the party convention for the Liberty Party in Buffalo, African-Americans participate directly for the first time, with Henry Highland Garnet serving on the nominating committee and two other black clergymen, Rev. Charles B. Ray and Rev. Samuel Ringgold, also playing prominent roles.
1848
Slavery entirely prohibited in Connecticut by state law.
1850
Compromise of 1850 admits California as free state, eliminates slave trade in District of Columbia, establishes Utah and New Mexico without restrictions on slavery, and requires return of fugitive slaves.
1854
Kansas-Nebraska Act repeals Missouri Compromise, allowing popular sovereignty to determine slave- or free-state status of territories seeking statehood, which increases sectional division within the U.S. and breaks down traditional two-party system, giving rise to Republican Party.
1857
Dred Scott decision by Supreme Court denies any possibility of citizenship for African Americans, imperils fugitive slaves, and sets back cause of abolition.
1859
John Brown’s unsuccessful Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, raid to incite slave rebellion heightens tension over slavery.
1860
20 December, South Carolina secedes from the Union after Abraham Lincoln’s election as president, followed by 10 other states through May 1861.
1861
February, seceding states establish government of the Confederate States of America and create constitution endorsing slavery but prohibiting slave trade.
April, When Confederate forces fire on U.S. troops at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, President Lincoln calls for troops to put down “insurrection” in the South, beginning the Civil War.
1862
September 22: President Lincoln issues Emancipation Proclamation, granting freedom to slaves in areas of the South in active rebellion on 1 January 1863.
1865
Slavery abolished in the U.S. by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution.
1866
14th Amendment to the Constitution defines a citizen as anyone born in the U.S. (except Native Americans) or naturalized, thereby extending all rights of citizenship to African Americans.
American Missionary Association founds Fisk University, among other black colleges established by this successor of the Amistad incident.
1875,
Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination on juries and in public accommodations, except schools.
Blanche Kelso Bruce of Mississippi elected as first black U.S. Senator.
1883
Supreme Court Civil Rights Cases overturns Civil Rights Act and rules that 14th Amendment does not apply to privately owned facilities, including hotels, restaurants, and railroads, leading to segregated “Jim Crow” laws, especially in the South.
1919
As part of his Universal Negro Improvement Association, Marcus Garvey establishes Black Star shipping lineJ.H. Rainey and former sailor and Civil War hero Robert Smalls of South Carolina are among first African Americans elected to U.S. Congress.
1944
First black officers commissioned in U.S. Navy.
1964
Congress passes Civil Rights Act.
1967
Thurgood Marshall appointed as first African-American Supreme Court Justice.
1971
Captain Samuel L. Gravely, Jr., promoted to become first African-American rear admiral in the U.S. Navy.
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If God doesn’t approve of slavery, then how can a Christians slave owner be a “faithful” follower of Jesus?
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Night Train wrote; “What your argument boils down to is this: The Bible is, in a way, the inspired word of God, but in parts that inspiration got muddled in transmission.”
Wrong again, Night Train. That is a total misunderstanding and mis-statement of my argument. You’ve missed my points completely. In fact, since I did not say anything like that, there is some intellectual dishonesty in your twist.
I understand the Bible beyond the rules & regulation level. I understand the mission God undertook on your behalf and mine and stand in awe that He loves slave, master, rich, poor, young, old, weak and powerful alike. Jesus came for all of the above. The forgiveness we all needed was essential. That’s why God did not send Jesus to become a politician or mere social institution reformer. That is left for others to pursue and well they should. But Jesus had a deeper mission on His hands.
Jesus was offered the kingdoms of the world by Satan. Just think of how well Jesus could have ruled the kingdoms of the world. Imagine poverty being wiped out, sickness overcome, slavery abolished, war made obsolete! But Jesus turned Satan’s offer down. His kingdom was not of this world and his mission was not merely social or political.
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Night train misrepresented me, as usual, at #88. He wrote: “Peter Leavitt and Joel Mark have both admitted that they believe the Bible contains significant errors.”
Wrong again, Night Train. I don’t believe that nor have a said I did. You really have a hard time with comprehention, sir.
Either that or you are lying.
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Vixtoria, I guess that MASTER’S DEGREE I have in history is worthless. You, who know oh so much more than I ever could. But then I did choose to focus on American History 1870 to Present. Would you care to discuss Robert Openheimer and the Manhattan Project?
I would refer you to an excellent book on Southern History. New Men New South. It was written by one of the professors I had in college. It is a study of Mobile, Memphis, Atlanta, and Birmingham.
Victoria, you happen to be one of those people that are so open minded your brains are falling out. I do want to go ahead and apologize for saying this to you, because generally I am nice on this site. Why don’t you take everything you have said about black people and insert homosexual everywhere you said black and see where that leads you.
Kbells: We live in the same state and one day I hope to meet you and your wonderful child and who cares what color skin his birth parents had. YOU are his mother and he is precious in God’s sight and if the rest of the country can’t understand the New South, well then, that is their loss not ours.
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Night Train asked, “If God doesn’t approve of slavery, then how can a Christians slave owner be a “faithful” follower of Jesus?”
First, there is much that God does not approve of that He mercifully overlooks in the process of redeeming sinners throughout history. His aim is not primarily to make heaven on earth (that’s not the plan).
Second, in the ancient world, many who lived as slaves found far more security and peace in that role than they would have found as freed men. It was a harsh world, to say the least.
Third, a slave owner could be a faithful follower of Jesus by bringing all the principles of Jesus to bear on how he treated his servants.
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Musing #91 Look at the fact that southern cotton was being sent to England for processing into cloth and bypassing the Northern mills where I might add, CHILDREN were working in horrid conditions.
Slavery was wrong and having children work in northern mills was wrong. But we are looking at it with enlightened 21st century eyes. We cannot possibly know the mindset of the average Joe in the 19th century. Actually the value put on ALL human life was not that much. Almost everyone lost a child or two before they reached adulthood. Many women died in childbirth, and that was just her just deserts for feeding Adam that apple way back in the Garden of Eden. People had large families to have more to contribute and because they didn’t expect them all to reach adulthood.
Just as we are a product of our times, and future genetations will not understand us, they were a product of their times and did the best with what they had. Gradually things changed. To continue to beat any area of the country over the head with it’s history serves no purpose. Look to the future and do what we can in the present.
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Night Train said, “…people can find in the Bible pretty much what they want to. If they can’t find it, they talk about principles.”
That is profoundly shallow, Night Train. We talk about principles because, dear sir, that’s what the Bible talks about. You are missing its entire thrust.
But if you cannot swim in the deep end, go ahead and stay in the shallow end.
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Kim – 105
I wouldn’t know whether its worthless or not, perhaps you can get a teaching position.
I’m not here to listen your history lesson, as I don’t need one.
Dear Kim, as you are having problems distinguishing from sin and the color of ones skin and slavery, I will help you along.
Comparing homosexuality to black people is more than ignorant. It isn’t a sin to be black, but it a sin to to live a homosexual lifestyle. Brain’s falling out? …… how clever, but what would I expect from someone who compares blacks to homosexuality? ……….. I would expect next to nothing!
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Also I would like to add that I spent last weekend at the beach. It is “snowbird season” I always find it funny that snowbirds are always somewhat shocked that a total stranger would walk up to them and start a conversation about the weather or the beach or the fact that our local paper has “News From Home” and a section for Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, etc. I also find it amazing that the same people who always thought we were so backward end up retiring down here and loving it and not wanting any more “Yankees” to invade paradise.
We have a joke down here. YOU are here and we can’t do anything about it but please don’t tell any of your friends.
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Night Train demands; “Quit talking about human error muddling the Bible.”
1. I did not say that human error muddles the Bible itself. Nice try, twisting my words. Muddled is a word that describes the human situation, and the Bible often tells us about that muddling process perpetrated by humans, quite accurately and flawlessly I might add.
2. The Bible is fully engaged in the problem of “human error.” To quit talking about that is to quit talking about the Bible.
The Holy Spirit did not inspire the Bible on your terms, Night Train. If He had, it would have never held it’s grip on the human race throughout millennia.
The level of evil that the Bible addresses goes right to the human heart, not necessarily to social policies and particular institutions.
The genius of the Bible is that it applied to people in all walks of life in the ancient world.
Serving others is actually not a horrific thing to a Christian, Night Train. Jesus washed the feet of others. He was selfless in his love for us, all the way to the cross. And it was Christianity in the first century that gave dignity to slaves, a dignity beyond their social status and beyond this world too. Many were attracted to Christianity for the bigger picture grasp it gave to them in life.
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Kim
It’s just those kinds of remarks, that make you who you are.
Yep, nothings changed except the date on the calendar.
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Third, a slave owner could be a faithful follower of Jesus by bringing all the principles of Jesus to bear on how he treated his servants.
Huh? You’ve asserted repeatedly and insistently that the “principles” of Jesus condemn owning slaves.
Oh, how I love to watch them contradict themselves.
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73. by Bianca 02.13.08 at 6:46 pm
Ah Hah!
It took 73 posts, but I knew I’d find someone who looks at it like I do.
Musing,
You know from our discussion on the big evolution thread that I have Biblical grounds for claiming a difference between adam (man), and ha adam. (The Man, Adam)
You’ll also recall that I made the case for there being separate group(s) of people(s), identified by their being hunter/gatherers, as opposed to Adam being a tiller of the ground.
You’ll also remember that according to my reading of it, man(kind) was created on the 6th day.
(As opposed to Adam, created after the 7th day)
At the end of the 6th day, God looked, and he saw that it was good.
Now…IF..I’m right about the separate creations, and that God thought it good. Then, who am I to want to change what God set up, racially?
I realize that many cultures are basically a result of two (or more) cultures that have mixed over long periods of time. And I realize that we are who we are. We don’t get to choose our parents.
But there are solid Biblical grounds for choosing someone of your own race to marry and procreate.
And we have the example of the word mamzer, rendered “bastard” in the KJV. This word means one born of a Hebrew, and someone of another race.
Personally, I don’t care who marries who.
But someone who feels Biblically compelled to marry someone of the same race can make a legitmate case, from what I can tell.
As far as Ruth, She was a Moabite, who was an offspring of Lot, Abraham’s brother. This would make her racially the same as Abraham.
Moses was not married to an ethnic Ethiopian. He was married to a woman who was a daughter of a priest of Midian, (Ex. 3:1) who obviously lived in the region of Ethiopia, thus an Ethiopian.
Midian was a son of Abraham, (Gen 25:2) which would make Moses’s wife the same race as Abraham.
The Bible is (among other things) a record of one man, (Adam) his offspring, and events mainly surrounding one branch of this family.
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Bianca, This God who made the races separate and designed to be separate, how exactly did He do that? My Bible says that all of us–ALL of us–are descended from one human couple. Yes, we have different skin colors. So what? Those who are in Christ are brothers and sisters. That’s far more important than skin color or cultural background. To try to portray God as putting an uncrossable line between “races” is slandering my God.
Victoria, I’m a Presbyterian from the South, so I guess I’m a pretty bad girl in your estimation. But I’ve lived in the Midwest and the Southwest, and I don’t see the South as being notably worse than other areas. I see ignorance more than I see racism–and I’ve seen plenty of ignorance in other areas of the country. And BTW, I lived for seven years in Chicago as the only white person on my block, attending a church that was about 60% black (about 30% white)–I’m not at all oblivious to racial issues or inclined to overlook racism. Your bigotry against the South is as clear as any bigotry you’re accusing Southerners of, however. You’re subjecting a large region of the country to charges that are true of only a tiny percentage of people here–and also true of a tiny percentage of Americans in all other regions of the country. As a Southerner who is decidedly not a racist, I do protest.
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Mr Meaner,
Wow. I don’t usually read your posts, but that one’s a doozy. Your “logic” is about as bad as your biblical interpretation, and both are sorely lacking. So black people aren’t human? (Humans are descended from Adam.) Or is it white people who aren’t human? Either way, we aren’t really even the same species, and perhaps intermarriage is as bad as bestiality? (You didn’t say that, but it’s an obvious extension of what you did say.)
Whew. That post ought to go into some kind of hall of shame.
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Your “logic” is about as bad as your biblical interpretation, and both are sorely lacking. So black people aren’t human?
What?
How did you get that out of what I said?
Have you ever read the actual words in Genesis?
Go back. read the first two chapters of Genesis, and show me where anything I just posted is wrong.
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Cheryl – 115
If you want to call me a bigot because I’m against a flag that has blood all over it, then go right ahead, because that’s exactly what the Confederate Flag represents, its HATEFUL, and harmful to those who live in a FREE COUNTRY, who are just as good, just as worthy as you or I. ……….. I am against bigotry, I don’t respect a flag which has been waved on a regular basis, which is a hateful reminder of death, lynching’s, molestation, foot amputations, etc. Prejudice and discrimination are born out of ignorance.
It takes a very large population to continue it’s cancerous spread. If there were only a “tiny percentage of people” who continued it would end. There would be NO NEED to fly a flag which represents the WORST of those who are able to hold power over others, who continue to support that flag. If there was no support for that flag, it wouldn’t fly, there would be none in windows, cars wouldn’t have bumper stickers of that ‘flag’- ……..but that isn’t the case.
Those who have a ‘blind eye’ towards something cruel, which is a reminder of a difficult and bloody past, and stay ‘SILENT’ are bigot’s even if they turn their backs and pretend it isn’t their problem.
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NT, the “principles” of Jesus do favor the abolition of slavery.
But until that social reality evolves or develops (over time), Christians, like others, (then and now) must live gracefully in an imperfect world, and they must do so guided by the principles of Jesus in their own lives, especially with regard to how they treat others, even those on the lower rungs.
Jesus came to change hearts first and foremost, not just social institutions. The good thing is that the principles of Jesus ultimately helped to also, in time, erode the institution of slavery. So in Christ, we get salvation of souls (his top priority), and also as a by-product, social reform in a healthy direction this side of heaven.
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Victoria,
I don’t fly a Confederate flag and don’t even own one (very few in the South do–one of your stereotypes), and didn’t say anything about the Confederate flag. I was speaking about your assumption that the South is largely racist, much more so than the rest of the land. But if you want to discuss flags, the Stars and Stripes has more blood on it. I’ve never thought about it that way before, but since the blood of the War Between the States is on the stars and stripes, we ought to refuse to allow it to be flown, based on that understanding.
For the record, I’ve had black foster kids, and didn’t see anyone in the racist South blink an eye. But I have a friend who has black adopted children who are really struggling in their school in the North. “Bigotry” is stereotyping people, whether those people be blacks or Southerners. Can we focus on people who actually are racists, and not on groups of people we stereotypically assume to be?
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Cheryl – 159
The south had the most slaves, it took a Civil War to BEGIN to END slavery, that would be considered racist by almost anyone’s standards, except those who believed slavery was right and fair. Bigotry, prejudice and hatred fueled this war. If Lincoln hadn’t stood his ground, the south would still believe they had the right to own people, to work their fields, fuel their dreams with sweat and hard work. It was GROUNDED by Abraham Lincoln, who had the courage to stand up to the south for what they were doing. After all Cheryl, that’s what we are celebrating this weekend, his (Lincoln’s) Birthday, …… maybe that makes some blanch……. nevertheless, we continue to press on, waiting for the day when those who are lagging behind now claiming those who speak up for black America aren’t called RACIST, it’s one of those trite, glaring, and uneducated transference comments which continue to mark the south as ‘prejudice’.
Of course the South can whine and compare slavery, beatings, lynching’s, cutting off half of a black mans foot/feet so that he couldn’t run away with the “Stars and Stripes” the American Flag which represents FREEDOM for those in this country whatever their color, versus the Confederate Flag which represents those who used people as slaves, and felt it their right to do so …………….. just how many states in the US, and people would compare those two flags as having the same meaning?. . . . . . . . This is just an EXCUSE to hold some sort of fake DIGNITY to a flag that insults a whole race of people.
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Mr Meaner post 114,
your logic reagrding two creations would seem resonable, and I agree with it up to this sttement:
“IF..I’m right about the separate creations, and that God thought it good. Then, who am I to want to change what God set up, racially?”
does not seem supported by the texts of Genesis 1 and 2 as written.
I suggest that you can indeed make some tribal arguments (all though be careful here based on your own model).
The text explicilty do not state race however, and my sense is you have overstepped the data.
If you look carefully you are struggling to introduce a concept of race which is apparently not there which is of a similar problem with inntroducing species, which is not there.
There are kinds and there are discussions of tribes, but I find no discussion of race.
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Cheryl D post 116,
actually if you carefully read Genesis 2.3, consider the surrounding material including the details regarding Adam, many find sound logic in Mr. Meaners interpretation of two creations.
Adam is quite specfically focused on cultivation. Humans in Genesis 1 have no such focus.
As savedbygrace notes, the transition occurring in 2.3 does not have any time information in it. As written it does not define how long the events in Genesis one were separated from the the Adam creation in Genesis 2.
So Mr. Meaner’s interpretation is quite sound on this point.
As I noted, I believe his introduction of race is not supported by the texts, however, which would seem to undermine support for his comments on race.
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night train post 88 and others,
night train is raising an interesting and important observation. If one interprets the Bible in a strict literal sense, then:
1) there are many contradicitions
2) the Bible contains many examples and adonitions which would seem to be unacceptable in the modern world or by modern Christians
Peter Leavett post 99 and Joel Mark are making resaonble responses. I suggest, however, that to demonstrate night trains error, they perhaps need to express greater conviction in their argument.
What is more interesting, however, is the logical slight of hand by night train in introducing slavery into a discussion on inter racial marriage, I suggest because night train realizes that this will side track an argument on inter racial marriage which he is losing on the facts and evidence.
From a Biblical perspective, slavery is not a racial concept. As such, introducing slavery into an inter racial marriage discussion is logically irrelevant and introduces no supporting information.
night train correctly realizes, however, that based on U.S. history, slavery and race are confounded in the U.S. psyche, and he would appear to be cleverly using this to obfuscate his logical failures on inter racial marriage.
And the posters are, of course, letting him get away with this.
But then as has been noted several times, the irrelevancy of night train’s argument or the illogic in night train’s argument has never stopped night train before.
If we do examine night train’s irrelevant slavery arguments and are willing to derail the discussion to an off topic theme, then I suggest that the Biblical questions suggested by Peter Leavett in post 99 are critical but perhaps need more explanation.
So I suggest first that we are exploring this argument from a Christian perspective. If we accept that then the following points suggest themselves:
a) we have accepted progressive revelation (Christ’s teachings are latter than Moses)
b) arguably Christ is considered the final revelation (although this point is perhaps debatable)
c) certainly since we are examining this from a Christian perspective, we would presumably give more weight to the teachings from Christ
d) while most will argue, as Peter Leavett explains, that the Bible is divinely inspired, I find no scriptural basis to support a strict literal inerrancy of the strong form as say the Chicago statement. It is worth noting that all written support for such strong statements of Biblical inerrancy post date Christ (an easily dmeonstrated point which savedbygrace and most other biblical scholars have noted)
The challenge here is that, much as I am presently discussing with savedbygrace, Biblical inerrancy is often, as it is now by night train, posed in a strong form with a large excluded middle problem.
The logical flaw is when you accept this highly incomplete logical statement and do not have confidence in one’s own more nuanced approach.
Under any degree of examination of the deep logical and religious questions posed in interpreting the Bible, night train’s observations disintergrate as grains of sand and get blown away in the wind.
night train’s arguments only stand if we let the false premises behind his points go unchallenged.
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Victoria, would it help if I told you I didn’t have a confederate flag… or a slave.
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Studying the Bible only in a strct literalist sense is clearly not sufficient for understanding it. Otherwise, people would be cutting their arms off and plucking out their eyes. The Bible was inspired to call us to think and reason on a much higher level than that.
I would also say that slavery was universal until it was challenged legally and abolished in the Christian West–in English speaking Christian rooted nations. And in general, Christian sensibilities and principles (the Puritans and Quakers in the Colonies and Wilberforce in England) originally lad the way in that reform process.
Good points too Musing.
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Joel Mark post 128,
nicely written.
I do believe you correctly capture the predominantly Christian backing for the elimination of slavery both in the U.S. and around the world.
I suggest, that this is large meaure due, as you point out, to an increasingly deep understanidng of the teachings of Jesus and how they influence the interpretation of the Bible.
Thanks for your observations here!
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I posted this once before, but I think now is as good a time as any to re-post it. I did not write it myself, but oh how I wish I had.
MY SOUTH:
Thirty years ago I visited my first cousin in Virginia. While hanging out with his friends the discussion turned to popular movies of the day. When I offered my two-cents on the authenticity and social relevance of the movie Billy Jack, one of the boys asked, in all seriousness, “Do you guys have movie theaters down there?” To which I replied, “Yep, and we wear shoes too.” (Apparently I wasn’t the first to think of this line)
Just three years ago, my wife and I were attending a food and wine seminar in Aspen,Colorado. We were seated with two couples from Las Vegas. One of the Glitter Gulch gals was amazed, amused, and downright rude when I described our restaurant as a fine-dining restaurant. “Mississippi doesn’t have fine-dining restaurants!” she demanded, as she snickered and nudged her companion. I fought back the strong desire to mention that she lie d in the land that invented the ninety-nine cents breakfast buffet, but resisted. I wanted badly to defend my state and my restaurant with a fifteen minute soliloquy and public relations rant that would surely change here mind. It was at that precise moment that I was hit with a blinding jolt of enlightenment, and in a moment of complete and absolute clarity it dawned on me – my south is the best-kept secret in the country. Why would I try and win this woman over? She might move down here.
I am always amused by Hollywood’s interepretation of the South. We are still, on occasion depicted as a collective group of sweaty, stupid, backwards-minded, and racist rednecks. The South of the movies and TV, the Hollywood South, is not my South.
My South is full of honest, hard-working people.
My South is colorblind. In my South, we don’t put a premium on pigment. No one cares whether you are black, white, red, or green with orange polka-dots.
My South is the birthplace of blues and jazz and rock and roll. It has banjo pickers and fiddle players, but it also has B. B. King, Muddy Waters, the Allman Brothers, Emmylou Harris, and Elvis.
My South is hot.
My South smells of newly mown grass.
My South was the South of the Partridge Family and Hawaii 5-O, and kick the can.
My South was creek swimming, cane-pole fishing, and bird hunting.
In my South, football is king, and the Southeastern Conference is the kingdom.
My South is the home to the most beautiful women on the planet.
In my South, soul food and country cooking are the same thing.
My South is full of fig preserves, cornbread, butter beans, fried chicken, grits, and catfish.
In my South we eat foie gras, caviar, and truffles.
In my South, our transistor radios introduced us to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones at the same time they were introduced to the rest of the country.
In my South, grandmothers cook a big lunch every Sunday.
In my South, family matters, deeply.
My South is boiled shrimp, blackberry cobbler, peach ice cream, banana pudding, and oatmeal cream pies.
In my south people put peanuts in their bottles of Coca Cola and hot sauce on almost every thing.
In my South the tea is iced and almost as sweet as the women.
My South has air conditioning.
My South is camellias, azaleas, wisteria, and hydrangias.
My South is humid.
In my South, the only person who has to sit on the back of the bus is the last person who got on the bus.
In my South, jpeople still say “yes ma’am, no, ma’am, please and thank you.
In my South people wear shoes – most of the time.
My South is the best kept secret in the country. Please keep the secret. It keeps the jerks out.
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Night:
Saying a slaveowner is faithful is not the same thing as an explicit approval of the institution of slavery. See Philemon, which you have been ignoring. And Paul says a slave should obtain his freedom if possible – in a passage about contentment – why is that? It is clear that Paul wants slaveowners to free their slaves, but that he will not call it sin. Night, there were slaves who chose to stay with their masters – see Deuteronomy 15:12-18. Also note that all slaves were to be freed every seven years – strange for a God who suposedly approves of slavery.
You say that people have argued that the Bible condemns interracial marriage, but you refuse to cite chapter and verse. You have no such restraint on your slavery tangent! If the Bible can say anything, why don’t you state your case and let’s consider it?
You don’t want to consider it, because you have no case. The problem is not the Bible, but people (like you) who twist the Bible, who falsely claim it says things it does not say. You are a hypocrite – you condemn those who say the Bible claims slavery is sin, and yet you say the Bible can be used to condemn interracial marriage. I have found that these bogus issues are often quickly resolved when the actual Bible is opened, and the one you have made up is closed.
You have repeatedly stated that the Bible can say anything, but you come up empty on the very subject of this thread. It’s not up to me to look up what those people believed – you brought it up, not me. Until you can show how the Bible itself is ambiguous on this issue, you have no argument – people can say any number of things about the Bible, but we have it right before us, why not consider what it says, as you are eager to do with slavery?
I call your bluff, again. If you argue that Christians have misinterpreted the Bible, I would agree with you. But you argue that the Bible itself can say anything, as if there is no direction there – that is a cop out. There’s you, and me, and the Bible – state your case and we will consider it.
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Night – you have said that the Bible does not condemn interracial marriage. I heard you. But you also said people use the Bible to condemn interracial marriage. It is this claim I am challenging. Show the Biblical argument against interracial marriage, or drop your argument that the Bible itself can be made to say anything about this subject.
It is one thing to say that people have said different things about this subject. It is quite another to say the Bible has.
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kim post 130,
the following is perhaps instructive here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-miscegenation_laws
so I agree with everything you said about your south BUT it appears that South Carolina did not repeal its anti-miscegenaton law until 1998 and Alabama did not repeal its anti-miscegenation law until 2000, even though these laws were made invalid by the 1967 Loving v. Virginia case. It is worth noting that apparently the voters in both states overwhelming approved removing these laws.
Likewise it appears that the Stars and Bars is controversial in certain areas south of the Mason-Dixon line:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flags_of_the_Confederate_States_of_America
with South Carolina only reluctantly removing the Stars and bars from over its capitol in 2000, and Georgia removing aspects of the Stars and Bars in 2001.
As you seem to suggest there is a strong sense of tradition in the South and it seems at times that this can cloud the clarity of the discussion. Certainly, however, this suggests a relucatance in parts of the South to formally accept the social changes which were occurring during the twentieth century.
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I suggest that you can indeed make some tribal arguments (all though be careful here based on your own model).
The text explicilty do not state race however, and my sense is you have overstepped the data.
“If you look carefully you are struggling to introduce a concept of race which is apparently not there which is of a similar problem with inntroducing species, which is not there.
There are kinds and there are discussions of tribes, but I find no discussion of race.”
I’m just making the natural assumption that the creation of man, prior to Adam would naturally be of varying races.
We have stark differences among the various peoples today. I find it much more likely that we all started out in groups of various skin-tones.
In fact, I think I remember making that point in our evolution thread discussion.
If everyone started out from the same couple, how is it that there are such obvious physical differences in peoples around the world.
Isn’t it odd that there are subtle variances in the appearance of different Asian peoples, for example, yet the differences between all of those various tribes of Asians, and the other cultures of the world are extreme?
That’s just one example.
One of my employees is an African American who knows that his ancestry is Kenyan.
He has made the remark to me that he can tell someone who is Kenyan, because “we look different than other black folks”
An argument can be made (judging by appearances)that most peoples are a combination of a few “base” races. But there are huge differences among some peoples of the world, yet similarities in the various groups themselves, and usually their neighbors.
But I appreciate your defending the plausibility of my other point.
But I’m going to obviously have to limit contributing my thoughts on most subjects covered by this site.
Getting called a shameful racist by people who are involved in catty exchanges with other Biblically confused people…all for discussing God’s Word, is a turn-off, personally.
Politics is one thing, but if we can’t discuss religious opinions without being attacked, then I think I’m at the wrong site.
Now that I know some of us intentionally skip other’s posts, I’ll just limit my religious chats with people who can be civil while discussing God’s Word. And I’ll just start skipping the catty people’s posts.
(They usually either don’t have anything of substance to say…or the opposite…42 paragraphs of nothing to say)
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Thanks Musing. You are right we do like our traditions. Sometimes we even leave laws on the books so that we can laugh at them. The last time I checked it was still illegal for women to wear high heels in downtown Mobile. It came from women in the early 20th century catching their heels in the grates on the sidewalk. I just wish people would realize that people are people no matter where you go. I grew up in the south. My father was quite opinionated about people who lived in house trailers. They were trash and that was his final word on it. I went to college in Maryland. Imagine my surprise to find a mobile home park in Millersville, Maryland. In my 18 yr old world view I thought it was something we only had in the south and it was something to be ashamed of. Now I realize differently. There are good, hard working people who live in mobile homes and keep them up and they are nice. There are also lazy, no good bums who live in nice houses and let them go to waste. There are prejudiced people in the south. They are also in the East, the North, and the West. No one has a corner on the market.
I did post a funny Southern joke on todays World Views about being from Alabama.
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Mr Meaner post 134,
there are a variety of potential comments here, but I will focus on being as rigorous as possible. Your statement:
“I’m just making the natural assumption that the creation of man, prior to Adam would naturally be of varying races.”
is not a scriptural based argument.
If you suggest this approach to sriptural based interpretation, then there are a number of amusing issues in the interpretational of the Bible which can occur if we overlay “natural assumptions” on top of the texts! Shall we discuss PI sometime?
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Mr Meaner post 134,
now on your comment:
“Politics is one thing, but if we can’t discuss religious opinions without being attacked, then I think I’m at the wrong site.”
I support you completely. Your, savedbygrace’s, vynette’s, and Peter Leavett’s not traditionally orthodox comments, to name a few, need to be explored and discussed deeply.
In fact, when these topics are discussed we have some of the most interesting and robust discussions in WMB.
What is unfortunate is that a few individuals do not seem to be able to understand that virtually all Christian positions are, within the context of Christianity, a minority position (Christians are such a fractious lot!
), and as such we should be respectful of everyone’s theological ideas here.
For example, to throw gasoline on the floor and hand out matches, vynette’s arguments against a virgin birth are very compelling just based on Old Testament theological arguments!
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kim post 135,
your comment:
“I just wish people would realize that people are people no matter where you go.”
is indeed the operative point.
One should judge individuals as individuals, not based on superficial characterization.
I suggest that the U.S. spent much of the twentieth century working through a series of these issues and, as you note, prejudice throughout the country is not gone, but the recent electoral results suggest that it is now a minority which is becoming increasingly irrelevant.
As njlawyer noted, it is becoming a grand new world!!
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Musing
Just got tyhe call to begin a job today, which will keep me away from the ‘puter for the rest of the day.
I will agree that Vynette does make some good points on his/her blog. But I can’t agree on the virgin birth.
And yes, it would be nice if differing opinions were expressed more often without ridicule.
I don’t think it’s going to happen, tought.
Have a great day, all
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One last thought from me on this. Maybe we need to look at how far we’ve come instead of how far we need to go. A couple of years ago my neighbor was sent home to die of lung cancer. One of his last requests was that I bring the baby over for him to see one more time. He knows my son is biracial and I’ve heard the rumor that he is a member of the KKK. People can change.
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Amphipolis at #131: Saying a slaveowner is faithful is not the same thing as an explicit approval of the institution of slavery. See Philemon, which you have been ignoring. And Paul says a slave should obtain his freedom if possible – in a passage about contentment – why is that? It is clear that Paul wants slaveowners to free their slaves, but that he will not call it sin. Night, there were slaves who chose to stay with their masters – see Deuteronomy 15:12-18. Also note that all slaves were to be freed every seven years – strange for a God who suposedly approves of slavery.
Somebody says this every time this topic comes up, and it’s just not true.
Hebrew slaves owned by Hebrews had rules on being treated well and freed at certain times. Those rules didn’t apply to slaves bought from foreigners.
Leviticus 25: 44-46: 44 ” ‘Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can will them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.
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Victoria – I can’t help noticing your shrill diatribes on more than one thread lately. You deliberately miss the point and you are becoming tedious.
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Night – you have said that the Bible does not condemn interracial marriage.
That’s simply not true. I’ve said no such thing. Show everybody where I’ve said that. You can’t. I didn’t say it. I merely said that I don’t make the claim that the Bible forbids it. I never said it doesn’t. I take no position on whether or not the Bible allows it or forbids it. The slavery thing is obvious, too obvious to ignore. I haven’t looked into what the Bible says about interracial marriage, if it says anything.
I heard you. But you also said people use the Bible to condemn interracial marriage. It is this claim I am challenging. Show the Biblical argument against interracial marriage, or drop your argument that the Bible itself can be made to say anything about this subject.
I don’t have to make a biblical case against interracial marriage in order to prove the plain, undeniable historical fact that for hundred of years Christians in America outlawed interracial marriage, beginning with the Puritans, who based everything they did on the Bible. No one outside of a lunatic asylum would dispute that Christians in this country and places like South Africa opposed interracial marriage and used the Bible to justify their beliefs. If you really want to dispute that, go ahead and prove me wrong. We’re all dying to read it.
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SteveG:
Yes, the Deuteronomy passage applied to Hebrews only. Slavery was not really allowed among God’s people – the slave, when freed, was paid.
There are numerous passages in the Pentateuch that command the people not to mistreat aliens, so the slavery that was allowed must be viewed in that context as well, Lev 19:33-34:
When an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him. The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.
The ancients did not deny the humanity of their slaves, unlike the 19th Century US.
The fact remains that there were slaves who chose to remain slaves, and that Paul was not pro-slavery.
If you all are going to say the Bible can say anything, you are going to have to do better than this.
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Night -
You haven’t looked into the matter, but you claim others have made the claim – your argument is hearsay. For all you know the Bible has said no such thing, but you claim the Bible can justify anything.
Post 102: I’ve simply pointed out that millions of Christians for hundreds of years justified their banning of the practice with the Bible.
How, pray tell?
Post 28: Truly the Bible is an amazing thing. We go from Christians making interracial marriage a capital crime from reading the Bible, to Bradley encouraging interracial marriage as a positive good from reading that same Bible.
You said they got it from reading the Bible. Please show me how they did that.
A claim that the Bible says something means nothing. The Bible can speak for itself. You can’t claim the Bible is ambiguous based on what other people say about it, you have to actually quote it, as you have attempted to do with slavery.
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Ampipholis at #144: There are numerous passages in the Pentateuch that command the people not to mistreat aliens, so the slavery that was allowed must be viewed in that context as well, Lev 19:33-34:
When an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him. The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.
The ancients did not deny the humanity of their slaves, unlike the 19th Century US.
The fact remains that there were slaves who chose to remain slaves, and that Paul was not pro-slavery.
If you all are going to say the Bible can say anything, you are going to have to do better than this.
I didn’t say the Bible can say anything. The Bible quite clearly says that, at least at the time of the writing of Leviticus, God thought it was jolly keen for the Israelities to purchase human beings from other tribes and keep them enslaved for life.
I also think God might have been a little bit confused, since what you quoted from Leviticus 19 doesn’t entirely square with what I posted from Leviticus 25.
It also seems to conflict with Exodus 20:20-21, in which God says its ok to beat your slave severely, as long as it’s not fatal, because “the slave is his property.”
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I made the 4th comment on this thread and from then on I couldn’t get in a word edgewise.
Man, this conversation was intense!
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Mr Meaner,
The problem with your speculation of separate creations is that Scripture is explicit that God made all people from one man, Adam–in more than one place this is said. C. S. Lewis makes this point in Chronicles of Narnia, where people from earth are referred to as “son of Adam” or “daughter of Eve” and the White Witch (who isn’t Eve’s daughter) is said to be making a false claim of being human.
Humans by biblical definition are descendants of Adam–who is explicitly called the first man. Again, if there are other people who aren’t descendants of Adam, and we aren’t supposed to marry them, then that would be saying those other people are non-human animals and marrying them is akin to bestiality. You may not mean to be being racist here, but the implications are completely racist–and completely unbiblical. It’s a problem Darwinism fell into (that black people are closer to apes than white people are), but it’s not a biblical position.
Also, those who are descended from someone other than Adam would not have original sin and would not need Jesus’ blood. Theologically, the implications cannot be limited; they leave ripples in all of Scripture and undermine its authority.
Check out Genesis 3:20; 1 Cor. 15:22, 39, 45 for biblical evidences of my statements above.
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SteveG: I think you mean Ex 21:20-21:
If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished, but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his property.
This does provide a measure of protection for the slave, a man could kill his ox. But I agree it is extremely harsh to modern ears.
God allowed slavery, and used it as an illustration of our spiritual slavery to sin. He saved his people from slavery in Egypt, and commanded Hosea to redeem Gomer.
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It’s hard to be upset with God for allowing slavery when he called himself our slave and allowed us to beat him to death, Matthew 20:25-28:
Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
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Victoria,
I think I’m going to just give up. You clearly know more about Southerners than we do. And you aren’t willing to see us as individuals. Oh well. Your loss.
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I think it’s best that the moderators close this thread now. It’s just causing dissention in the Body of Christ.
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Memorial Day this year is Monday, May 26, 2008. This is a day which as you know we honor those who served in our Military and those who died in battle. It is a day to remember anyone has died.
For all who insist that the Confederate Flag is not an issue, the South still believes they need a day to remember the war they fought to keep their slaves, and fight the North, which thankfully they LOST.
These memorial days are not a secret, everyone knows about them, just like the know about the Confederate Flag. Texas, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Louisiana when they ALL CELEBRATE Confederate Memorial Day. The National Memorial Day is not enough, they still insist on raising up the south!
Southern states observe Confederate Memorial Day, which is a state holiday, apart from the National Memorial Day which the rest of the country celebrates.
Texas – January 19 Birthday of Gen. Robert E. Lee
Alabama – Last Monday in April Surrender of Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnson to Union Gen. William Sherman
Florida, Georgia, Mississippi – April 26 Surrender of Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnson to Union Gen. William Sherman
South Carolina, North Carolina – May 10 Death of Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and the capture of Confederate president Jefferson Davis
Virginia – Last Monday in May Same day as Memorial Day
Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana – June 3 Birthday of Jefferson Davis
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Bianca,
The dissention started a long time ago, some people have never wanted to deal with it, and put it away.
I would be ashamed to celebrate or commemorate a Day which is a horrible reminder to my Black brothers and sister of their plight, their pain, their lives of ancestors of the past. What possible good can come from this rememberance?
As Born Again Believers, we should be willing to look at our country and try to make things better, not throw pain up in someones face for the sake of ‘tradition’-
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Victoria,
Do you have a source for post #103? Just asking. I like to have an idea where information comes from.
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Joel Mark,
Here is the link:
http://amistad.mysticseaport.org/timeline/united.states.html
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I grew up in the Los Angeles area (I recall the Watts riots and the Rodney King conflicts). I have also lived in the South and in New England.
In my experience, the Southern people have a certain charm and kindness that I just have not found elsewhere in the same degree. They also, for the most part I have found, grant the flaws in their history better than those on either coast seem to. I know there are many exceptions and I also know that this charm can be unfairly selective.
But the animosity and disrespect for the South that I saw in new England in the 1990s was excessive. It was sometimes snobbish and largely undeserved.
California is still in my haeart as my home of origin, but I treasure my years in the South with deep gratitude (but not blind gratitude). It helps that I was part of a wonderful church down there.
I came to Minnesota and at age 50, finally got married. So, as a single man who lived a long and full life with many friends on both coasts and in the South, I have to say that was treated with the most respect and dignity in the South (by far). I was the same person (basically) in all those places, but my life as a single was far less loney in the South and I felt deeply affirmed. Go figure. Women especially treated me with greater respect and kindness in the South.
These are my generalizations, I know. They are anecdotal. But I am only speaking for myself. While the South has a deeper history of racism from which they have struggled to emerge and are still struggling, I think it is wrong to fail to appreciate some of the endearing qualities and virtues that can be found in the South. We all have our points of shame and glory.
I just love this country, East, West, North, and yes very much the South too.
P.S. I think the confederate flag means different things to different people and if I had my druthers, it would just go away. I understand the ugly connections. But today, it is not worth creating animosity either way (which is why I could just as soon see it gone). No denial of anything there, but it was people who lynched other people, not a piece of cloth, and shame on those people for it. They were on the wrong side in the Civil War and they paid dearly too. I don’t think the South should be scorned for a distant past, nor should that past be denied. Let the states be united.
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Victoria,
When I lived in Connecticut, I saw a great Amistad exhibit in New Haven. I was there when the movie came out and I visited the historical society and learned a lot about the real story. Devoted Christians in New Haven had a big influence the Amistad Africans with their kindness. Several of those who returned to Africa clearly went back as Christian missionaries.
I loved living in New England because of the history I learned there.
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Cheryl D post 148,
I believe the critical verses are:
Genesis 1:26-27 [NIV]:
26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, [b] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
Note there is no reference to Adam in these verses. Nor the rib etc.
So lets look at Genesis 2:5-6 [NIV]:
4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created.
When the LORD God made the earth and the heavens- 5 and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth [b] and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth [c] and there was no man to work the ground,
Now the key that Mr. Meaner notes here is that there was “no man to work the ground” clearly suggests that Genesis 2:4 would appear to be referring to a creation regarding agriculture. This is not the case in Genesis 1.
Finally, we look at Genesis 2:2-3 [NIV]:
2 By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested [a] from all his work. 3 And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.
What savedbygrace notes is that the original Hebrew has simplified tense structures so that the transition from 2:3 to 2:4 has an indeterminate amount of time.
And with this analysis, Mr. Meaner’s position would indeed appear to be supported.
If you disagree, then you have a series of textual challenges in Genesis 2:4 on which you must resolve. We can explore if you like, but the issues are hinted at in this discussiion.
With Mr. Meaner’s analysis, these textual challenges dissappear.
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Joel Mark,
I’m sure you enjoyed your time among those in the south, you are a white male, which would make your time spent in the south very different then a black male. Taking that into consideration, the difference is vast. I’m sure you were embraced within social circles as a single man as I quote you …… “have to say that was treated with the most respect and dignity in the South (by far). I was the same person (basically) in all those places, but my life as a single was far less loney in the South and I felt deeply affirmed. Go figure. Women especially treated me with greater respect and kindness in the South. ” ……..
Joel I’m sure you enjoyed yourself as a single white male, but that’s not the issue, nor can your fond memories of your single days as a white man, being treated kindly by white women be compared in any way with those who are black.
Of course it is people who lynched others, however it was a FLAG which they used as their banner and ‘STANDARD’ to march against the North. It is that ‘STANDARD’ which is still used today, and then commemorated with a holiday which is Confederate Memorial Day. A day which commemorates their LOSS, and their loss to keep black slaves.
The south will continue to have a ‘past’ until they rid themselves of ‘Commemorating’ the past. No one can forget the past until the south refrains in every way of ‘reminding’ others in subtle and no so subtle ways, what it ONCE WAS.
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MUSING,
Since you mentioned me I just wanted to add that another take on Gen 2 is that it is a retelling of the creation of man (Adam and Eve) on the sixth day with more detail. But you are probably already aware of that side. Cheryl D. brings up a good point that 1 Cor 15 refers to Adam as the prwtos anthrwpos or first man and that sin came to all because of Adam. Of course this is complicated by Paul calling Jesus the second man which means the reference to first is probably positional rather than numerical. I’ll stop rambling here. No wonder so many books have been written about this.
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savedbygrace post 161,
possible, and again since as you point out, the tense issue would appear to make sequencing indeterminant.
I believe Mr Meaners point on agriculture now becomes active and challenges between Genesis 1:26-27 and Genesis 2:4 on become very exciting!
Yes, but of course we also then need to explore what is meant by man and as you note whether this also has some additional metaphysical issues besides being numerically first.
In any event, the point of the exercise is not to demonstrate that Mr Meaner is neccessarily correct, but rather to show that his interpretation can not be simply dismissed out of hand.
Now here we do have a metaphysical “true” question, with all the metaphysical “true” issues which you have raised earlier.
Thanks for your input!
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For the record, I’ve never heard of this Confederate Memorial Day, so it must not be a huge holiday. I tried to call my sister (who has lived in two Southern states, AL and SC, and has been here longer than I have), but couldn’t reach her to verify whether she has heard of it.
Insisting that someone not commemorate the past (or one’s ancestors) is ludicrous–as is refusing to forgive a nation or a region something done to other people decades before you were born, by people who’ve been dead for a century. It would be like holding today’s Germans accountable for the Holocaust and saying that nothing they can ever do will ever absolve them. Well, I’ve never held slaves, and don’t want to, and I do have black brothers and sisters in Christ whom I hold dear. But I’m very happy to be a Southerner–I moved down here because it was a more human region of the nation than any I’d lived in; I fell in love with its people, and started thinking of myself as a Southerner (and getting annoyed by the nation’s anti-Southern bias) before I ever moved down here. And I know Midwestern black people who long to move down South too–none of this is as simple as anti-Southerners might attest.
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I would like to mention that, as Bradley pointed out in his article, whites do not have a monopoly on this racist attitude toward interracial marriage.
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Cheryl D post 163,
I believe in Japan there is a similar contretemps regarding WWII Japanese war dead comemorations.
It would appear that in general the argument in Japan seems more complicated than you seem to suggest it should be.
Why should Japan and the Confederacy be treated differently on this issue?
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Victoria,
I think perhaps there is just too much category consciousness and stereotyping in your relpy.
You are not all wrong, but not all fair either. You too briskly discount the good aspects I noted. Plus, you don’t know the race of the people who I befriended and who treated me kindly in the South, making my personal experience so positive.
Just my take.
I appreciate your posts and points Cheryl. I also appreciate Victoria’s, but I don’t agree with them as much in this thread.
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Cheryl – 163
RE: The Holocaust
If the Germans bring out a Nazi flag, have a special day to MOURN the loss of the war, knowing what their ancestors did, (it makes no difference that many of their parents are dead, who fought for the beliefs of the Nazi regime) it would make the HOLOCAUST a constant reminder of their wicked past, in this way, NO ONE would consider them sorry for what their ancestors did. . . . . In fact, it would only prove that nothing had changed, they agreed with it, and hold a Memorial to grieve their loss.
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Those who fought and died, weather they were Japanese or Confederate were loved and missed by someone. Only a very small percentage of people in the south owned slaved. Most solders thought they were defending their homes. I’m sure that’s how the day started. But like Cheryl D. I’ve never heard of it.
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BTW my son is to a lot of people a black male and has so far been treated wonderfully in the South
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Joel,
If the the social engagements you were involved in were mostly black, or if the women you praise as being white or black ….in post 157 why not say so. Being vague as to who these people were isn’t making your point.
YOUR POST 157 …… “have to say that was treated with the most respect and dignity in the South (by far). I was the same person (basically) in all those places, but my life as a single was far less loney in the South and I felt deeply affirmed. Go figure. Women especially treated me with greater respect and kindness in the South. ” ……..
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Kbells – 168
Slavery in American grew so fast – by 1750, over 200,000 African slaves were here. Almost fifty years later, that number grew to 700,000.
South Carolina, had more slaves than the white population, they made up more than one half of the population in Maryland and Virginia.
Southerners were more than aware of the slaves, and the huge numbers of them everywhere. For anyone to plead innocence or lack of knowledge isn’t honest.
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Most white Southerners did not own slaves. In 1860 only ten thousand Southern white families owned more than twenty slaves, and only three thousand owned more than fifty slaves.
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I’ve been following the discussion and I’ve noted that it’s gotten heated. I’ve also received a couple of complaints.
Remember that racist comments are not allowed on World on the Web. Bianca’s comment in Post 73 falls under that category. Separate is not equal. This is my first warning to refrain from racist comments.
From what I understand from Post 116, Mr. Meaner says he agrees with Bianca. Mr. Meaner’s arguments were more hypothetical and he said he didn’t care who marries whom, but I do want to make it clear that people who feel “Biblically compelled to marry someone of the same race” are making racist arguments.
Please be careful.
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Kbells,
History says differently. 700,000 Black slaves is a lot of people, they weren’t free, they were slaves working for white land owners. One can hardly hide 700,000 people or pretend they weren’t working and sweating in those fields, or over stoves and cleaning up after their so called ‘masters’-
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Victoria,
You persist in thinking there was nothing good about the Confederacy and nothing worth mourning in its loss (even the hundreds of thoussands of teenage boys and young men who died in the brutal war that ended it, apparently). Oh well, they all died for slavery, so their deaths don’t count. No, they didn’t all die for slavery, the war was much more complicated than that, and their deaths do count. So does the destruction of the South and the fact that the way the slaves were freed doomed them to poverty. (And the North was definitely not known for its love for former slaves after the war, BTW!)
But why on earth are you equating the modern South with the Confederacy and at the same time insisting Southerners can’t even remember the Confederacy? We can hardly have it both ways! The South has much that is true and good and beautiful, and I cannot even tell you how much the rest of this land has lost by despising it. But it is bigotry, pure and simple, and it in no way makes us inclined to become less Southern and more like you in order to win your approval.
By the way, my sister had never heard of Confederate Memorial Day, either, after living in the South for 16 years and marrying a born-and-bred Southerner. Her husband had heard of it.
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Oh, dear. I’m politically incorrect. How do I fix this?
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Cheryl,
You persist in putting words in my mouth such as “Oh well, they all died for slavery, so their deaths don’t count.”…… I didn’t say that, don’t put words in my mouth. It’s false and dishonest.
If you or your relatives haven’t heard of Confederate Memorial Day, …… what can I say, most other people have, especially in the south. Don’t you read newspapers? I can’t imagine how you miss these things, its also part of history.
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Cheryl D post 174,
so let me muse on the civil war.
First, it should be noted that the South fired first. Lincoln tried to avoid war, but the South would not let him.
Second, as is suggested by the history leading up to the civil war, the South appears to have been primarily focused on their political power. Courtesy of the constitution, as well as some economic behaviors in the South, the slaves were critical to the power of the South.
Third, about 620,000 people died in the civil war, perhaps 260,000 in the confederacy and 360,000 in the union. And in the end, what was arguably an inevitable economic and social outcome occurred in the south despite their effort.
I find it hard to find any silver lining in this conflict, save perhaps that the union was strengthened in the end because of the war.
So are we to honor 260,000 confederates who died because arguably their leaders misled them in the causes and probable outcome of the war? Are we to honor an effort to keep alive an already dieing and moribund social and economic model?
I suggest that we must remember, but I find nothing in the civil war to either honor or feel proud about. It does not seem to me that the war was needed, and the initial aggression by the south seems in retrospect very ill advised.
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God bye, all
Have wonderful lives.
Musing, I left you a message on the Potomac primary thread.
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“Good Bye”
Lest I be accused of claiming that God has left
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Same goes for me as Mr. Meaner. It’s best I just don’t post anymore. As the song says, there ain’t no good guys, there ain’t no bad guys… there’s only me and ODD and we just disagree.
And as another more song says, I’m not ready to back down…
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Musing,
There’s speculation that Lincoln kinda worked to ensure that the South fired first. I think it’s highly unlikely Lincoln wanted to avoid war, though it was politically expedient to appear to. I do know that the South would have been more than happy to avoid the war. They simply wanted out. And since it was a voluntary union, getting out didn’t seem such a bad thing to do.
The strengthening of the union is the single reason I dislike that the North won–and I know many Southerners who agree with me on this one. Up to that point we’d had a voluntary coalition of states, with the states having more power than the central government. It was a wonderful experiment in government. And it ended with the War Between the States. We talk about such things as Roe v. Wade being overturned and the power being returned to the States–well, it was the federal government’s yanking of such power over the states that is the legacy of the War Between the States. Before that, states had freedom to have their own individual governments, basically their own mini-nations, and the federal government had a small bit of power (only in areas specifically granted by the Constitution).
Obviously I cannot wish for slavery to still be among us–I do think it would have soon died on its own, at much less cost in life and probably at less cost to the slaves themselves. But I hate that the South was largely destroyed, and along with it our form of government, when that evil war ended.
So yeah, here’s a Southerner who’s very much anti-slavery but cannot find it in herself to be anti-Confederacy or pro-big-government. When the Confederacy lost, the whole nation lost.
Victoria, I didn’t say you said that the Confederate soldiers’ deaths don’t count. But when you tell us we have no right to honor our dead, you might as well say that. And yes, when you tell us we can’t commemorate the past, you are saying we cannot mourn our dead, unless I’m completely missing something.
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Cheryl D post 182,
as I understand the history, Lincolnm did indeed try to avoid war and made a number of efforts to avoid it. I do believe it was he comander of Fort Sumter who was the determined one here.
The fact remains, however, and you have provided no data to refute it, that the South fired first, and reports are that they celebrated their firing on and eventual victory at Fort Sumter.
Now you admit that slavery would undoubtedly have ended anyway. And with the end of slavery we would also have seen the end of the plantation society.
So since the war ravaged the south, destroyed the southern way of life, and resulted in a political outcome which you apparenlty dislike, why was it a good idea to ensure that the Union had no alternative but to go to war?
Political compromise and legislative actions could have avoided war, they had avoided it for perhaps 20 years or more.
I suggest that it was a concern for power: the South did not want to be a minority in the U.S. government, and the addition of non-slave Western states was erroding their power.
And with immense hubris they went to war.
620,00 people died.
the south was ravaged.
the southern way of life was destroyed.
the union was strengthened.
And all because people thought it was a good idea to ensure that the union would be forced to go to war.
I see no cause whatsoever to celebrate a war which appears could have been avoided.
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Cheryl,
Your game doesn’t work, you can’t put words in my mouth and then try to do a ‘fix it job’ you blew it by not being truthful. You can’t use quotes, so you aren’t honest regarding my comments.
No one is stopping you from mourning anyone, The Confederate Memorial Day ceremonies will go on, and on, because they want them to. Many get all dressed up in old ‘gray uniforms’ marching about to a shameful past.
It would be no different if Germans dressed up in uniforms, some as SS . . . . Nazi Flag flying and celebrated their shameful past.
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So lets consider the Japanese example, see:
Yasukuni Shrine in Japan
We should note here that the Japanese are merely celebrating their war dead from among other wars, World War II.
And of course in World War II, while the Japanese did attack the U.S. first, it was only because the U.S. government made the attack a virtual necessity by first the steel and then the oil embargo.
And of course, it is sad that this destroyed the Japanese way of life, effectively destroyed Japan, resulted in 2.1 million Japanese dead, and resulted in what is arguably a mildly socialist government.
In short, it would seem that the Japanese honoring their war dead is not that different from your suggestions for honoring the confederate war dead.
So are these two cases different or not?
If they are not different, would you care to consider why there is such a strong response to the Japanese celebration?
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Well thanks. I remember being taught there was a Confederate Memorial Day in 4th grade Alabama History, but I have never seen or heard of it being celebrated. KBells, you have made excellent statements today. Cheryl, most of the time your arguments are terrific and today was no different. You defended your adopted home quite well.
Some things happened in my personal life today that made this conversation here even more real to me. My sister in law cut my hair today. When I got to her shop I had to wait on her. She pulled up in the Jeep she had bought for my 16 yr old niece. I asked what Molly had done to lose her car. As she was doing my hair the whole story unravalled and Miss Molly has been a holy terror the last couple of weeks. She told her mother she was spending the night with a friend and was actually with an 18 yr old boy. The pricipal at school called Robin the other day and had Molly’s cell phone and a bunch of text msgs. It turned out that the boy had taken Molly’s Jeep and gone to a nearby city. As it all came out it turns out that the boy is biracial. He and his brother are in foster care. Out of my sister in laws mouth came the words. I mind that Molly lied to me and that he is a bad kid. His brother is the total opposite. Why couldn’t she have fallen for him instead of this one. I’m not talking about hypotheitical people in the south being enlightened I am talking about my own family. It is a New South and to keep banging us over the head with the past serves no purpose.
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who made the mistake of bringing his blonde-haired girlfriend to church
Taking his girlfriend to church was a mistake? Because she was blond?
#183: destroyed the southern way of life
One day more of slavery was one day too much.
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rdean post 187,
ah you are jumping ahead in the story.
First step, can Cheryl D maintain intellectual consistency with analogous situations.
Once we have (or have not) established intellectual consistency here, I suggest the analogy arguably becomes very interesting.
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When Lincoln said, “With malice toward none…”, I always presumed he mainly had in mind asking the North not to hold malice for the South. Sounds like good advice to this day.
Here’s more of the quote:
“With malice toward none, and charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” A. Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address [Mar. 4, 1865]
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RDean, I don’t have a problem with the Japanese honoring their war dead. Like I said somebody loved and missed them.
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Kim – 186
What does this have to do with ….. The Confederate Memorial Day celebration? This isn’t about you Kim, its about the south and what it does and doesn’t stand for.
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Musing 183, Your reasons are why I tend to believe the South was “pushed” into war. War was clearly not in their best interests. Peaceful seccession was. Lincoln didn’t want secession, peaceful or otherwise. I agree, it was an unnecessary war. But I think the South was goaded into a first shot.
Victoria, I didn’t put words in your mouth. I was actually too gentle in giving you the benefit of the doubt and asking if maybe I was misreading something. And then you turn around and accuse me of not being truthful. You have lambasted the idea of a memorial of the soldiers who died for the confederacy (though all the Southerners on here have told you that your vaunted very important holiday and exceedingly important flag are in fact not big issues at all, or we’ve never even heard of them). So I suggested that those soldiers’ deaths were still worth something. Why do you keep speaking of your pet issues (the flag, a holiday most of us Southerners never heard of) as proofs of racism, and see stronger evidences on the other side as irrelevant to the discussion?
Victoria, we are all sinners. The South in past history allowed slave holding. (Why does no one ever highlight Northern sins?) A small percentage of Southerners owned slaves. Some of them treated them badly, some even brutally. Some raped and murdered their slaves. No one on here is defending any of this. We can’t exactly apologize for it, because we ourselves didn’t do it. But we can say it wasn’t a good idea, and we don’t support it. And we can say that neither we nor most of the people we know are racists and that in our experience other areas of the country have similar levels of racism. But none of this matters to you, because you’re bound and determined that the South is racist and cannot change. Well, I fail to see the grace of God in that, or any incentive to try to do better, either.
The South has a lot to offer the rest of the country. A greater respect for life, for instance. A less rushed lifestyle. Greater hospitality. A distrust of big government. And proof that old sins really can be laid to rest. But you don’t have eyes to see, and so you insist the rest of us are lying.
Oh well. Have fun. Just don’t come visit us anymore, OK? We’d rather do without tourism dollars of people who see us as sociological exhibits and freaks.
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(Kim, Pssst. I’m whispering so no one overhears me. But the South really isn’t my “adopted” home; I was merely born elsewhere–the Southwest, which at least isn’t Yankee land. Both sides of my family came from South Carolina, as they entered the country from Scotland, according to my sister. My dad’s family then eventually settled in Arkansas and my mom’s, inexplicably, moved to Connecticut. My parents met and married in Nigeria–Mom was sent to the mission field from Georgia, and she and Dad spent some years in Kentucky. My mom’s second husband was a Georgia cracker. But here’s the real Southern connection–my great-granddaddy on my mom’s side was a spy for the Confederacy and printed Confederate money. Shh, don’t tell anyone, OK? Even his own family didn’t know about his being a spy till after his death. But I’m pretty sure that makes me a “real” Southerner. And, well, I’m pretty sure that would tar me as two steps from a slave holder, were the truth to get out on here–even though I’m family sure all my family were too poor to own slaves. So please keep it a secret.)
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Cheryl – 192
Cheryl your comment has grown old with ” I was actually too gentle in giving you the benefit of the doubt and asking if maybe I was misreading something.” It was BLATANTLY untruthful, nothing ‘gentle about being untruthful. I have said before, if you want to quote me go ahead, but don’t make it up Cheryl. Untruthfulness is NEVER GENTLE, its just not the TRUTH!
Do you know an exact quote ………from a quote you make up? …. if not, I would suggest you ……..think this through, without excuses, and use EXACT QUOTES,…..NOT what you suppose people mean, but EXACTLY what they post……………..WORD for WORD. Again not your words Cheryl, but the posters words……
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Cheryl – 193
Are you serious Cheryl……..this is an adult blog, and you think you are whispering to a poster? Maybe you read to many fiction tales, but this is truly ridiculous. If this is your idea of getting attention, it’s all negative.
Aren’t there fictional/novel boards or threads you might share these child like whispering’s with?
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Cheryl D post 192,
I suggest that the evidence is rather that the south went to warbased on emotion not reason.
If you suggest they were pushed into war, please provide the data.
I have provided the Fort Sumter story as best as I understand it. If you suggest the model is otherwise, I suggest we need data.
The south had been negotiating and arguably winning compromises for years. They need not have gone to war then.
So your data demonstrating that the south was pushed int war?
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kbells post 190,
and you do realize that there are Japanese War criminals in this shrine?
People who ruthlessly killed and tortured prisoners, Chinese, Brritish, and American?
People who forced Korean woman into what was arguably gang rape as “comfort women”?
People who were convicted and hanged for these crimes?
People who performed these merciless acts (whihc are well documented) in the name of a God emperor and with no regrets or human compassion because they believed that non-Japanese were inferior?
Are you saying that such acts should be honored?
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Cheryl D post 193,
and when you state:
“which at least isn’t Yankee land.”
I suggest ou are under cutting all the tolerance for the south which you have been arguing for, because you are demonstrating that you have no tolerance for the north (not the only time this came through in your posts).
I have no animus against the south, both because when I have been to the south, the people have been wonderful people AND because ojne should njot judge groups as a whole.
But when you argue for understanding for the south and provide good reasons why BUT then demonstrate that you have no tolerance for the north (yankee land) AND you appear that you have not integrated and understanding of what the failures of the past meant, then I suggest your defense rings hollow.
You need to demonstrate the attitude which you want others to show towards you (someone 2000 yuears ago said something like this). You obviously don’t.
I have no problem with individuals from the south. I have problems with individuals who think ill of others based on the region they come from, the color of their skin, their gender, and any other superficial characteristic. In the end we are all human, and I think ill of idividuals who don’t understand and express this key point.
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#197. And I’m pretty sure there is a memorial to Gen. Sherman somewhere.
Also are there any memorials to the U.S. soldiers who die died in the Indian Wars. Does that defend genocide?
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Cheryl – Your mom’s family “inexplicably” moved to Connecticut?! I can tell that your mom’s family was obviously the more intelligent branch, for choosing the beautiful state of Connecticut in which to live.
Musing – As a Yankee, I recognized Cheryl’s comment about Yankee land as humor, & playing in to the southern stereotype so many seem to believe.
Victoria – I think Cheryl’s “whispering” to Kim was merely a humorous little thing.
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Victoria, please don’t be angry at me for saying this – I write this as a concerned sister-in-Christ – but I notice that you often attribute dishonesty or untruthfulness to comments that could merely be mistaken or poorly worded.
I understand that you take the truth, especially of the gospel, very seriously, as well we all should (& I believe, do), & I respect you for this. But please try to give your fellow believers a little more “benefit of the doubt” (goodwill). As sinners & imperfect humans, we all make mistakes & such. And when others try to explain a mistaken or poorly worded comment, please accept their explanation & let it go, rather than accusing them of more untruthfulness.
Of course, you don’t have to take my advice, but I do hope you will consider it.
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Ok, I’ve gotten more complaints and I’m stepping in again!
This is regarding Victoria’s Posts 177, 184 and Cheryl D.’s post 192. Victoria, Cheryl D. wasn’t pretending to directly quote you. (If she was, she couldn’t get away with it because your exact words are there for everyone to see!) I believe she was paraphrasing you in a hyperbolic way to make a point. This may or may not be a good way to argue, but be careful about calling her “blatantly untruthful,” or “false and dishonest.” It borders on a personal attack.
Play nice, everyone!
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kbells post 199,
arguably, depending on the nature of the memorial.
It is not obvious to me that we should memorialize with honor that which is arguably dishonorable.
Do we honor Booth for killing Lincoln? He was acting as a southern patriot.
Buried in here is a series of deeper queston on how we think of historical actions both military and non-military.
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karen opost 200,
possibly it was humor, it is unclear from the context, but it contradicts what I understood to be the sense of Cheryl D’s message.
It is clear that there are a number of arguments down playing issues from the south’s past. I have no problem with individuals saying issues from the past are a mistake, I do have a problem with issues from the past being trivialized as a process for excusing them.
I also have a problem with someone arguing for tolerance, and then expressing intolerance, even in jest. There are many who would arguably find the joke sounding thin.
Looking forward is good. Evaluating individuals as individuals is good. Over generalizing is unfortunate on all parts, and trivializing past event to excuse them is, I suggest, itself inexcuseable.
P.S. I am still awaiting evidence that the South’s firing on Fort Sumter was “forced” on the south.
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Tensions were high on all sides in the days and months leading up to the firing on Fort Sumpter. Leaping forward four years. The worse thing that could have happened to the south was for Lincoln to be assassinated. His reconstruction plan was much more sensible. Once Johnson was in office, he was weak and was railroaded into “making the south pay” for the war. Reconstruction was a horrible time in the south. How would any of us like the government stepping in breaking up family owned land and giving it away. Booth did a disservice to the south when he shot Lincoln, so no I don’t think the south really honors him in any way. I think he goes into the category of all others who have assassinated or attempted to assassinate a US President.
It is easy for any of us to sit here in 2008 and say this should have happened or that should have happened. The truth is, we were there and all of these people were a product of their times.
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Victoria, my sincerest apologies and best wishes for you. There is a technique they teach in councelling when dealing with someone you cannot reason with and have a meaning dialogue and exchange…and that is to say “You might be right” and walk away. That is what I am choosing to do with you.
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Wow! I’m no longer the most unpopular poster on WoW.
Thanks, Victoria!
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Don’t worry, Night Train. I’m sure you can earn back that distinction real soon!
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Musing,
I suppose I should have used a smiley face when I said “Yankee land.” The fact is that I really don’t ever use the word “Yankee” as some Southerners do (meaning an outsider)–I came here from Chicago, so it would be rather hypocritical for me to do so! So yes, it was a joke–and one said to a fellow Southerner.
But I am glad that I can tell Southerners that I was born in Phoenix rather than, say, Boston; it’s easier to claim Southern ties when you’re from the Southwest (which is neither the deep South nor the North). Four out of seven of us kids have settled in the South; the other three (the four minus me) are married and raising their children here.
Well, Musing, I haven’t researched the War Between the States, though in past years I’ve read biographies of Lincoln. So I cannot give you evidence of anything. But I’ve heard theories that make sense: it was in Lincoln’s interest to go to war; it was not in the South’s. It was also in Lincoln’s best interest to have the South fire first. I don’t know whether or not there is any evidence that the South was goaded into war; I do know that as a theory it makes sense, and historians somewhere along the line have presented it as a likely scenario. If I were writing a book, I’d do the research and footnote that last sentence. Since I’m not, I’ll only say I heard it somewhere, have heard it more than once, and it makes sense. But I don’t know whether or not there is evidence.
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And post 195 suggests I used a stage whisper, which got overheard and has now been shouted. Sigh. I should have known better than to attempt to whisper on here.
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cheryl D post 209/kim post 205,
so I will revert on my point and accept the implied smiley face for “yankee land”.
If I look at the south (or for that matter any section of the country) I suggest:
1) in the main U.S. citizens are good people
2) the relatively high mobility of Americans makes it difficult if not impossible to generalize by region
3) all regions have, of course, their differneces (geographic, climate, culture) but these I suggest are in the main small with respect to the commonalities among the regions
So looking forward, I am very comfortabel that generalizations by region is in the main inappropriate.
When we look backward, however, I am more equivocal. The south has been on the table, so I will explore some of the backward looking issues surrounding the south:
1) the enumeration clause in the constitution making a slave worth 3/5 of a person
2) the continuing tension over new teritories entering as free of slave states
3) the actual triggering of the civil war itself
4) certain behaviors on the part of both the south and the north which were arguably “war crimes” although there was as yet no formalization of such a concept
5) the nature and form of reconstruction
6) the rise of Jim Crow laws or what was sometimes known (as they said in the news documentary I saw in elementary school) “the special arrangement” in the south.
- there are numerous collateral issues here which probably do not add to the story to enumerate at this time
7) the battle over civil rights laws
8 ) the post civil rights era political and legal trajectories
As one can see, these issues are quite complex, and understanding them is not suitable to being a superficial exercise.
If we are going to look backwards then at the south’s history (as opposed to looking forward to the south’s opportunties), we will need to explore these in detail.
My short summary, however, is that at best this is a messy and unfortunate set of occurrances, which, if everyone had had 20/20 hindsight, they probably would have preferred did not occur.
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Kim,
Many many times I have ignored your posts, and it appears I was right from the beginning.
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Good. Grief.
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Once again, she has to have the last word.
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Alisa,
I’m sorry you have been getting so many complaints about me. I have found many posts to be unfair, untrue or rude, however, unless someone uses profanity or makes a blatant remark against me personally, I wouldn’t be interested in ‘turning them in’ or complaining about their posts.
I don’t agree with you, because this has happened many times in the past with misquotes, etc ….. the real solution to this problem is that I don’t post to Cheryl any longer, as this problem won’t resolve itself by further contact. This should take care of the problem, and alleviate any further distress.
Sincerely,
Victoria
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Musing,
I’m “on deadline,” so I’ll only respond to one of your points. The 3/5 of a person was not a Southern idea. It was to keep Southerners from having extra people for census purposes because of slaves. Think of the electoral college and the Congress, for instance–they’re apportioned by the number of people. If you have slaves, you thus get more votes. So the three-fifths of a person worked against the South and was a compromise to give the South less power; it wasn’t Southern racism.
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Musing,
Looking at the whole list, I can see you aren’t saying all of these are the South’s fault (as certainly reconstruction was not). But many people blame Southern racism for the three-fifths idea, and that one wasn’t Southerners at all.
Your list is fair.
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Chreryl D post 216/217,
actually it is my understanding that the 3/5 was acutally a number used for adminsitration purposes already in the colonies. And indeed it was a compromise.
But an interesting compromise which had long term consequences, since it increased the southern political influence based on individuals who were not enfranchised. This skewing of political power was at least part of what I sense drove the civil war, and indeed with your comments on state rights, you wold appear to at least partially agree.
I tried very hard to make a fair list. My sense is that there were a series fo collateral issue and forces which were a cause of tensions between the states, and a reasonable argument can be made that these tensions could only be resolved by war, unfortunate as that may be.
My real intent is to point out that a looking backwards, and assigning blame on either side, probably does not help in focusing on looking towards the future, especially given the large amount of mixing which is occurring in the U.S..
Even were we to make an iron clad case that a specific region was culpable in some way, the heavy inmigration to all regions makes this issue moot.
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Victoria, I’ve lived in the South 50+ years. All that time I’ve heard of how Southern ladies, going to the graveyards to care for their loved ones graves would also care for the gravesites of “Yankees” while hoping and praying someone up North would do the same. That’s what I remember on Memorial Day. I will admit to being isolated. I’ve never heard anyone say the things you do. I live in area with very little black population. Our church probably has about the same percentage as the city. We have several families with adopted children of a different race along with interracial marriages. No big deal.
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I know this thread has long since jumped the shark, but I’ll share this anyway for the record.
Regarding the slavery tangent, 1 Timothy 1:20 lumps slave traders in with adulterers, murderers, and perverts. The Bible absolutely does call slave trading sin.
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Deb – 219
We all have different experiences in which we base our beliefs, coupled with education. The Civil War, is one area that many do not agree on, its a subject that still causes pain.
I have purposely refrained from posting on this thread, as I was ‘reported’ regarding my comments.
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Amphipolis
In what way is this verse in referrence to slavery?
Of whom is Hymenaeus and Alexander; whom I have delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme. 1 Timothy 1:20
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Oops, sorry – 1 Timothy 1:10. Here’s 9 thru 11, NIV:
We also know that law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious; for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for adulterers and perverts, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me.
Paul was imprisoned after helping a slave in Acts 16:19 (close to my personal reference in 17:1!). Note how the master is portrayed.
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The 1 Timothy passage apparently applies mostly to those who would kidnap people and enslave them. The almost universal practice (among most people groups until the last few centuries) of enslaving (as opposed to killing a la the Mongols) those captured in battle (the storming of a besieged city, for instance) is apparently not condemned. The NIV “slave traders” is probably too broad a term.
I have no problem calling slavery generally wrong, because it is almost always associated with cruelty and oppression. The fact that the Bible does not condemn it stronger is irrelevant. Slavery is not always cruel and oppressive, and ancient slavery was mostly a consequence of war, so the real issue is war, not slavery. Besides, there is plenty of sin already clearly delineated to condemn me. I am not looking to heap more sin on other people’s heads.
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