The Christian Right - Founded upon honoring God and opposition to slavery

[ataraxia]

Leftists have too frequently accused the Christian Right of hating blacks and loving slavery. That is a lie.

Who knows what secular schools and universities are teaching kids nowadays but if they are teaching that Christian conservatives in politics are racist against blacks then they are teaching a lie.

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Christian Conservatives:


"[Slavery] was established by decree of Almighty God...it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation...it has existed in all ages, has been found among the people of the highest civilization, and in nations of the highest proficiency in the arts."
-Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America.

"There is not one verse in the Bible inhibiting slavery, but many regulating it. It is not then, we conclude, immoral."
-Rev. Alexander Campbell

"The right of holding slaves is clearly established in the Holy Scriptures, both by precept and example."
-Rev. R. Furman, D.D., Baptist, of South Carolina

"... under the same protection as any other species of lawful property...That the Ten Commandments are the word of G-d, and as such, of the very highest authority, is acknowledged by Christians as well as by Jews...How dare you, in the face of the sanction and protection afforded to slave property in the Ten Commandments--how dare you denounce slaveholding as a sin? When you remember that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Job--the men with whom the Almighty conversed, with whose names he emphatically connects his own most holy name, and to whom He vouchsafed to give the character of 'perfect, upright, fearing G-d and eschewing evil' (Job 1:8)--that all these men were slaveholders, does it not strike you that you are guilty of something very little short of blasphemy?"
-MJ Raphall, 1861

 

[ataraxia]

Why yes, yes it could be; speaking in tongues, snake handling etc. The US is so advanced in many ways yet with a strong undercurrent of 16th century beliefs and religious practise. Those are some seriously weird people.

I think there is also the legacy of the cold war. The US got so involved in fighting the Soviets, for so long, that they started to see and define themselves as the exact opposite of everything they stood for. If the Soviets were atheist, we were going to put "In God We Trust" on our coins (something that got put there only in the 1950s- the height of the cold war). Or if they were communists, we were going to embrace a complete social Darwinist version of capitalism, etc...