The South is like 30% black — majority black where I live — and the black churches organize around civil rights and charity. Jamelle Bouie recently noted that his religion professor once said, “In the black church tradition, Christians worship a Jesus who has been lynched. In the white church tradition, Christians worship a Jesus who could be forgiven for lynching"
I’m personally secular but actually living in the South, it’s more complex than election maps make it seem. People doing work in Georgia against the odds flipped it blue.
Why on earth would he need to be forgiven? He was clearly doing his father’s work: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_Ham
Grew up in the south, I just have 0 tolerance anymore, there is so much unabashed evil, we had black GIs come back from fighting to liberate concentration camps, only to be lynched at home.
My personal experience is that redemption of the south is no more possible than redeeming the nazi party, at least not without very hard and direct work like we needed to do during reconstruction.
In the meantime this corruption is spreading and destroying the rest of the country, the cancer is metastacizing and it’s too late to amputate the limb.
First of all, I have no respect for fascists. Most of them are afraid to drive into a city. They clearly own guns for fear reasons. These men are Nihilists, Donnie, there’s nothing to worry about.
But second of all, the south is not monolithic. Atlanta, New Orleans, Memphis, Birmingham, Houston, etc. are not the same as the state governments that have disenfranchised people for more than a century. Most people aren’t scum.
And you know what? They literally founded the southern baptist convention because the national triennial convention wasn’t pro-slavery or racist enough, they needed Christianity to be pro-slavery racist first and foremost because it was their only true core moral value, and I haven’t seen that change one whit.
Hitler wrote explicitly about Jim Crow in the south as a model and inspiration for the genetic policies Germany needed.
We have been too gentle for too long, if the south had shown any interest or intention in seeking redemption that would be one thing, they constantly double down in their pride and arrogance and demand others respect their perversion.
It’s gone too far. Georgia in 2020 was not something we can rely on to keep our secular democracy. If they had shown an ounce of contrition in 160 years, but they aren’t capable of that because they’re incapable of imagining ever being wrong about anything.
I don’t live in the Bible Belt part and I agree with your views but there are more good people in the South than you’d think. It’s not like any party wins 99% to 1%. In New Orleans, I consider us more Caribbean than Southern. South Florida too. Everywhere is complex.
I’ll give you those points, and there were many good people in the south.
But the people who rule the south are so unimaginably corrupt and use the evil to cover it. They’re using bigotry and hatred as a weapon for their economic purposes and that’s a big problem.
Southerner here. It’s this kind of carte blanche thinking that had left the liberals and progressives of the South fighting an uphill battle. When the major party most aligned with our values throws up their hands and withdraws all support, we are left only with our metropolitan counties trying to lead by example, however flawed we may be. I want to help my rural statesmen get the help they need so that they’re above water long enough to realize the true opponent, the 1% aka the new age plantation owners. But when we only have 2-3 counties per state trying to stem the tide while weathering the onerous rulings of a gerrymandered state legislator, it’s slow going. I almost left once, but that’s accepting defeat. I’m not leaving this country if we take a significant rightward turn, because I’ll lose any ability to right the ship. Same goes for the South.
From a Blueberry in a Raspberry pie, with love.
