NBC Faces Backlash for Publishing Claim That Christianity Is Used to 'Prop Up' White Supremacy

NBC News received much backlash on social media after it published an op-ed on Easter Sunday that contended that the Christian faith is being used to "prop up" white supremacy.

As Christians across the world celebrated the resurrection of Christ on Sunday, NBC News published an op-ed written by Christian author Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, titled "Christians must remember how easily and often our faith is used to defend white supremacy."

"As a white evangelical in America, I can't celebrate Easter in 2018 without working to reclaim the concept of redemption," a subheading for the article states.

Wilson-Hartgrove, who authored the 2018 book Reconstructing the Gospel: Finding Freedom From Slaveholder Religion, warned that Christians must "reclaim redemption from those who would use it to prop up white nationalism and bigotry."

Although faith played a major role for abolitionist and civil rights heroes throughout United States history such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Frederick Douglass, Wilson-Hartgrove explained that history shows that stories of faith have also been used for "evil in our world."

"Any serious attempt to grapple with American history must acknowledge that faith has played a role on both sides of our major struggles — among the abolitionists and the defenders of slavery in the 19th century; among civil rights activists and segregationists in the 1950s and 1960s," Wilson-Hartgrove wrote.

In his op-ed, Hartgrove mentioned the Colfax Massacre of 1873, where over 150 black men were killed by southern White Democrats in Colfax, Louisiana. Wilson-Hartgrove stated that the Christian "redemption narrative" was pushed during the 1876 election to capitalize on white fear in an effort to suppress black political power.Wilson-Hartgrove continued by arguing that "Christianity's redemption narrative" is being "deployed again toward disparate visions of what kind of nation America should become."

"As a white evangelical in this land, I can't celebrate Easter in 2018 without working to reclaim the concept of redemption from the forces that attempt to use my faith and its founding stories to defend white supremacy," Wilson-Hartgrove claimed as he railed on white evangelicals for supporting President Donald Trump in large numbers during the 2016 election.

"Trump's own slogan — 'Make America Great Again' — is a redemption story in a nutshell. It assumes a fall from which must now be saved. It may be tempting for some to point to 2008 and hang this white anxiety on America's first black president. But Barack Obama, as a person, remains too popular among all Americans for this theory to be true," Wilson-Hartgrove added. "No, the redemption narrative that gave us Trump is not so much about Obama as it is about the black, brown and younger white coalition that made Obama's presidency possible."

American political writer and editor of Commentary magazine John Podhoretz also responded to the op-ed in a tweet.

"Yes this is the perfect Easter oped. Good work, NBC Think. Or should I call you NBC Schmuck?" Podhoretz wrote.

Popular Fox News Todd Starnes columnist called the Wilson-Hartgrove op-ed "low even for the Christ-haters at @NBCNews."

Caleb Howe, editor-in-chief of the conservative political blog Red State, seemed to imply a double standard in NBC News' coverage of Easter versus that of its coverage of the Muslim holy month.

"[M]an I can't wait to see what you're supposed to remember on Ramadan," he wrote in a retweet of the op-ed.

It should be noted that many white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump in 2016 after supporting other presidential candidates in the Republican primary election.

Faced with the realistic choice of Democrat and staunch late-term abortion supporter Hillary Clinton or Trump (who promised to appoint pro-life justices and protect religious freedom), many evangelicals voted for Trump for political reasons, not racial.

This attack on white Christians is a "large population mind control" tactic.

It's been used here before...

This tactic is subtle.

It starts with an insult - something outrageous - and we (traditional Americans) “jump to the insult with anger, hurt feelings and debate the insult.

That's the reaction they want - they want the debate.

The goal is to create the illusion there are TWO SIDES and both have to be considered. It's the same tactic used with gay marriage, transgener ‘rights’, and all the other major cultural changes shoved on us over the last 40 years. It's a tactic. It works.

Insult the majority

Start a discussion of the issue

Create the illusion there are two equal sides

Identify the traditional position as ‘old’ and ‘not cool’ ...

Name-call and denigrate people against the change as ‘haters’...

Home grown American Communists WANT to insult us to get a rise out of us. That starts the process. This tactic works.

It's also why they are so thin-skinned about criticism... with the smallest ‘slight’ called a dog whistle. They DO NOT want us using the same tactic against them. They shut down all discussion of any disagreement we have with them and switch the discussion away from them and to our 'being haters' ...

This is a large population mind control tactic.

This is a coordinated attack ... here’s a few examples showing the coordination:

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/04/03/prestigious-university-hosting-student-training-seminar-on-how-to-combat-christian-privilege-in-america.html

Christians and white people get ‘unmerited perks,’ live ‘easier’ lives, George Washington University seminar says

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_privilege

Christian privilege

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10665680600788024?src=recsys&journalCode=ueee20

Christian Privilege and the Promotion of “Secular” and Not-So “Secular” Mainline Christianity in Public Schooling and in the Larger Society

https://everydayfeminism.com/2016/01/believing-christian-privilege/

Don’t Believe in Christian Privilege? These 15 Examples Will Leave No Doubt

https://www.thecollegefix.com/post/43577/

University event aims to combat ‘Christian Privilege

https://projecthumanities.asu.edu/content/christian-privilege-checklist

Christian Privilege Checklist

“Community Organizers” aren’t just ‘on the streets’ anymore...

Mind control——Obama and his wife were into that bigly.

alt-market.com

Obama Authorizes Behavioral Experiments On U.S. Citizens
Saturday, 19 September 2015
By Mac Slavo originally published at SHTFplan.com

President Obama has signed a new executive order authorizing Federal agencies to perform behavioral studies on American citizens. The studies, which will be performed without express permission from participants, are designed to advance government initiatives by “nudging” citizens toward certain behaviors and choices. “A growing body of evidence demonstrates that behavioral science insights — research findings from fields such as behavioral economics and psychology about how people make decisions and act on them — can be used to design government policies to better serve the American people,” reads the executive order, released on Tuesday. The new program is the end result of a policy proposal the White House floated in 2013 entitled “Strengthening Federal Capacity for Behavioral Insights.”

…

The initiative draws on research from University of Chicago economist Richard Thaler and Harvard law school professor Cass Sunstein (husband of UN Amb Samantha Power), who was also dubbed Obama’s regulatory czar. The two behavioral scientists argued in their 2008 book “Nudge” that government policies can be designed in a way that “nudges” citizens towards certain behaviors and choices. The desired choices almost always advance the goals of the federal government…

…

In its 2013 memo, which was reported by Fox News at the time, the White House openly admitted that the initiative involved behavioral experimentation. “The federal government is currently creating a new team that will help build federal capacity to experiment with these approaches, and to scale behavioral interventions that have been rigorously evaluated, using, where possible, randomized controlled trials,” the memo read.

Source: The Daily Caller-—Other recent Executive Orders authorize the President and Federal Government to, among other things, shut down the internet in the event of a cyber attack, as well as to seize personal stockpiles of food and other supplies during a nationally declared emergency. Thus, it makes complete sense that the Federal government has now given itself authorization to perform experiments on the American people. Such ideas used to be restricted to the realm of fringe conspiracy theory. Now they’re official policy.

Michelle Obama Instructs Children of Oceania: Monitor Your Parents For Thoughtcrime
PJ Media ^ | May 19, 2014 | Ed Driscoll / FR Posted by 2ndDivisionVet

“There can be no aspect of your daily life that’s removed from politics,” Jim Treacher writes at the Daily Caller, “Now you will be monitored by your own children for expressing unapproved opinions. You’d better watch what you say at the dinner table, Mom and Dad.”

Jim links to this post at The Blaze:

First lady Michelle Obama is encouraging students to monitor their older relatives, friends and co-workers for any racially insensitive comments they might make, and to challenge those comments whenever they’re made.

The first lady spoke on Friday to graduating high school students in Topeka, Kansas, and in remarks released over the weekend, Obama said students need to police family and friends because federal laws can only go so far in stopping racism.

“[O]ur laws may no longer separate us based on our skin color, but nothing in the Constitution says we have to eat together in the lunchroom, or live together in the same neighborhoods,” she said. “There’s no court case against believing in stereotypes or thinking that certain kinds of hateful jokes or comments are funny.”

And you never know what sorts of hateful jokes or comments you might hear at church. Churches like Trinity United in Chicago, to pick one entirely at random:

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)

Of course, it’s not all that difficult to program children to snoop on their parents and adults in general for thoughtcrime:

‘Have you got a spanner? -said Winston, fiddling with the nut on the angle-joint.

‘A spanner,’ said Mrs Parsons, immediately becoming invertebrate. ‘I don’t know, I’m sure. Perhaps the children -’

There was a trampling of boots and another blast on the comb as the children charged into the living-room. Mrs Parsons brought the spanner. Winston let out the water and disgustedly removed the clot of human hair that had blocked up the pipe. He cleaned his fingers as best he could in the cold water from the tap and went back into the other room.

‘Up with your hands!’ yelled a savage voice.

A handsome, tough-looking boy of nine had popped up from behind the table and was menacing him with a toy automatic pistol, while his small sister, about two years younger, made the same gesture with a fragment of wood. Both of them were dressed in the blue shorts, grey shirts, and red neckerchiefs which were the uniform of the Spies. Winston raised his hands above his head, but with an uneasy feeling, so vicious was the boy’s demeanour, that it was not altogether a game.

‘You’re a traitor!’ yelled the boy. ‘You’re a thought-criminal! You’re a Eurasian spy! I’ll shoot you, I’ll vaporize you, I’ll send you to the salt mines!’

Suddenly they were both leaping round him, shouting ‘Traitor!’ and ‘Thought-criminal!’ the little girl imitating her brother in every movement. It was somehow slightly frightening, like the gambolling of tiger cubs which will soon grow up into man-eaters. There was a sort of calculating ferocity in the boy’s eye, a quite evident desire to hit or kick Winston and a consciousness of being very nearly big enough to do so. It was a good job it was not a real pistol he was holding, Winston thought.

Yes, parents love being told by their kids that they’re racists — and that they’re misogynists who hate women as well — women such as Gaia, as this infamous MasterCard commercial from a few years ago reminded TV viewers:

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)

The above post from Jim Treacher dovetails well with something Peter Wehner writes today at Commentary — or at least with my criticism of Wehner’s post, which is titled, “When the Right Turns on America.” Quoting a speech by Wayne LaPierre at the NRA’s annual conference, in which LaPierre asked, “Do you trust this government to protect you? We are on our own,” Wehner went on to write:

Mr. LaPierre is not the only one who describes America in dystopian terms these days. Earlier this year Dr. Ben Carson, a Tea Party favorite who is considering a run for the presidency in 2016, said America is “very much like Nazi Germany.” Michele Bachmann, a 2012 GOP presidential candidate, has said the Affordable Care Act is evidence of a “police state.” This kind of language–America is bordering on or has basically become a tyranny–is common currency within some quarters of conservatism.

Now it is one thing to believe, as I do, that in some important respects America is in decline and that President Obama is in part responsible for that decline. I agree, too, that there are some alarming problems and trends facing the United States just now, which many conservatives are attempting to address in a responsible fashion.

But it is quite another thing to describe America as the New Left did in the late 1960s, when America itself was spelled with a “k” (“Amerika”) in an effort to identify it with Nazi Germany. Among the young and left-wing academics there was talk about the need for revolution. The United States was viewed as fundamentally corrupt. Once upon a time conservatives fought against this. Today, however, some on the right are turning on America. They employ language you would associate with Noam Chomsky.

Read the whole thing and make up your own mind, but I think Wehner is ignoring a huge difference between the angry New Left of the 1960s and early 1970s, and today’s conservatives: The New Left was (and is) solipsistic; it believed that everyone, from the Founding Fathers to earnest New Deal liberals, Rockefeller Republicans and proto-Buckley-style conservatives were all the enemy. Its poisoned efforts can be seen today in an academic left that believes that history is nothing but Original Sin all the way down, discounting Columbus’ discovery of America, America’s founding, and virtually all of American prior to the JFK era (or FDR if they’re feeling generous) as invalid or evil. And in an MSM that feigns to believe that it is pure and without ideological bias; that only to those their right have an ideology.

In contrast, conservatives and libertarians are mindful of the statement President Reagan made in his first inaugural address that “We are a nation that has a government—not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the Earth. Our government has no power except that granted it by the people. It is time to check and reverse the growth of government, which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed.”

When Wayne LaPierre states, “We are on our own,” unlike the New Left of the 1960s, he’s not attacking America and its citizens, merely its elected officials and underlying bureaucracy, both of which increasingly believe themselves to be an isolated caste, removed from the rest of their fellow men, whom they were hired to serve.

Or to bring this post full-circle: BOOKS https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BcBETyxIEAAjTtK.jpg:large

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