By Frank Schaeffer
As we have seen, time and time again, White Evangelicalism is Misogyny wrapped in the Velvet Glove of Jesus.
The Bible’s lies about sex and evangelicals’ love of guns: bad mix. It’s not “sex addiction” it’s bad theology and lies that kill. Jesus and the gun lobby combined are lethal. Of course the shootings were racially motivated. Of course they were motivated by gender. Of course a White evangelical was involved. The Bible and guns: bad mix.
He chose businesses where the employees were not just women, but Asian women, not just Asian women, but lower-wage Asian women in a profession hated by White evangelicals. Evangelical’s and Trump’s misinformed racist misogyny pulled the trigger. The investigating officer says the shooter was attempting to end the “temptation” that “these places” presented — a victim-blaming farce. They won’t admit it but most White evangelical Trump fans will see this as a 2 for 1 good thing: “God judging whores” and what “China virus foreigners” deserve.
The Evangelical suspect’s bible says “If no proof of the young woman’s virginity can be found she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death”(Deut22:21) Racism, misogyny, guns, God, sex guilt-what could go wrong when the entirety of American culture that says it’s okay to treat Asian woman as objects to be disposed of?
Robert Aaron Long confessed told investigators he had “a sexual addiction” told the police spas were “a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate.” This is the guilt about sex evangelicals spread. Southern Baptist sexual theology killed those people. Long, a white man who was described by those who know him as a devout evangelical Christian, told investigators he did not have a racial motive. He was eliminating sin and temptation. This was evangelical theologically-motivated mass terrorism.
Long killed the “other” “wicked” Asian temptresses. He was trying to follow the Bible- ‘eliminate sin’ from his life. Combining White racism with White evangelical sex guilt long targeted Asian ‘whores’ the Bible says ‘sinful women’ must die. This is evangelical illness in action. Long was active at the Crabapple First Baptist Church in Milton, another nearby Atlanta suburb where he’s been taught from birth that sex “outside marriage’ is sinful and from a Bible that singles out women for death who lose virginity before marriage. Evangelicals are dangerous.
In a statement to The Washington Post, church elders said they were “heartbroken” about “the tragic news about the multiple deaths in the Atlanta area.” So then why do evangelicals like them lay “sex is dirty” guilt on their young people? Long killed to ‘eliminate temptation.’
“Trump clearly stoked the flames of xenophobia against AAPIs with his rhetoric,” Rep. Judy Chu (Calif.) said at a Capitol Hill news conference. “What we saw yesterday is the result of that” BUT combined with sex guilt imposed by evangelical leaders.
When White evangelicals aren’t attacking the Capitol to take the presidency back for Trump and Jesus one of them shoots up massage parlors to ‘eliminate sin’ from his life because Asian women tempted him. Evangelical Christianity is a mental illness with fascist tendencies.
It’s race, gender and class, together: the killings are everything wrong with White evangelicals dramatized.
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6 Comments. Leave new
Frank, you have something in common with the killer – you both misunderstand the Bible. People often misunderstand the Bible and when they find a verse, like Deuteronomy 22:21, that they don’t agree with, they quit reading the Bible. I have a brother who did the same thing – he’s a professor at a well known university, but he also has a masters degree in Theology and, like you Frank, he thinks he knows better than the way you and he read Deuteronomy 22:21. Did you quit reading the Bible, Frank? If you would have kept reading the Bible maybe you would now understand it better than you do.
Obviously you don’t know anything about Frank’s spiritual journey. He knows everything in and about the Bible and understands what it says perfectly well. Perhaps if you just opened your heart and mind to what your brother and Frank are saying you would understand.
*Holds up finger* A couple of things:
I read recently on some blog on Patheos (can’t remember precisely which, but in the Progressive Christian section, I think it was Keith Giles) about how a lot of the Bible we get has been mistranslated and specifically in some of Paul’s words about the role of women, English translations leave out an Ancient Greek word roughly meaning “WHAT?!” – As is, Paul (or writer naming himself as such) might have actually been doing a rhetorical / sarcasm thing that later church-fathers oh so “conveniently” left out. I came away from the blog-reading wondering “If the scholarship he’s citing is correct, I wonder how Western society and history might have been different if the “What the EFF is with this making women be silent?!” sarcasm was taught instead of the “Women must be silent!” stuff we got…
It doesn’t change what American Evangelical churches teach, but it’s an interesting what-if musing.
The second thing, and more important: I want to caution you to be careful in referencing mental illness. It is depressingly easy to go from raising a concern to going into abelism.
What I mean by this is that one of my absolute pet peeves is when I meet braggart atheists who love to talk about how “religion is a mental illness!.” I happen to *be* mentally ill. I have bipolar disorder. It is a lifelong chronic condition with no cure. It can only be managed. Much like clinical depression, schizophrenia, or post-traumatic stress-disorder, it’s nothing that is the sufferer’s “fault” for getting, is not a choice and is not something they can “just get better” from. It is also not the same, no matter what media and society try to sell us, in any way the same as moral illness. (Maybe I’m breathing a sigh of relief that the media is focusing on THIS mass-murder’s religious trappings instead of going to their go-to of trying to figure out what mental illness he *must have* had, even if he had none)?
In any case, whenever I hear people going “Oh, religion is a mental illness,” I think “Great, jerkwad, you aren’t exactly convincing me to ditch the last of my latent spirituality.” I’ve been getting much less religious over the years (ex-evangelical / Baptist, haven’t been to church in over a decade, currently identify as a Progressive Christian / Universalist/ maybe a little bit non-formally animist with a big heaping dose of agnosticism) – whether I call myself “still marginally Christian” or “an agnostic” seems to depend on the audience and the day, but you know, if I need to ditch it *all* to become “fully human” or whatever in someone’s eyes, the moment they compare belief in anything to mental illness is the moment that I know that even if I became the staunchest of atheists, I’d still be subhuman in their eyes because of the damn bipolar disorder, which I take medication and counseling for and DID NOT ASK FOR. I have to watch how I’m feeling, do techniques to get myself out of panic attacks, talk to trusted people when I’m having one of my “I wanna die” days, but I manage and I’m still a human being, dammit.
This contrasts with religious trappings sharply. While I don’t think that we entirely choose whether or not we have spiritual leanings either (some of us have “naturally superstitious brains” for lack of a better term while, conversely, I’ve had atheist friends who desperately wish they could believe in a Heaven and just resume the Catholicism of their childhood to please Mom and Dad), people DO have choices in expression thereof, what religions / paths / temples and churches to go to, who to listen to, how to cherry-pick their holy texts (and we all do), etc.
From experience, yes, churches can exacerbate mental illness in those who already have it, but they aren’t entirely equivalent.
So, please, please be careful with your words, how you frame things.
Good comments Shadsie. Notice also that Paul sometimes gave his opinion about matters. And Paul was a man and not a perfect man. Paul states very specifically at 1 Corinthians 7:12: “… I say, not the Lord…” We cannot take every word that Paul said as a command from God. That is true with what every Christian teaches, even the great Francis Schaeffer. We must read the Bible ourselves to understand it. And one will never understand it completely because it is a very complex document.
I left my church because it got political and would not let democrats take communion. In fact they considered Democrats are evil and and that Satan has a strong hold on them. Since I’m a Democrat I got treated like a Leper and left. I then sent a letter to our bishop telling him why I left the church and how I thought that this church was misinterpreting the Bible and bullying people they did not worship Trump
I left my church because they got polical and I was told to repent, Become a Republican because Democrats are evil