Christians and Jews both turn to the Bible for their inalienable and God-given right Right to do whatever they wish to “nonbelievers” and in particular Black people. Simply ask Ethiopian and Sephardic Jews together with converted Christian First Nation peoples and ask how they’re treated. Even when they’re far stricter and more devout practitioners of their religions.
This distorted Christianity is at the core of our nation’s deep history of racism. Starting from the very beginning of European settlement, colonists used the Bible to claim Christian explorers had a divine right to seize lands that were not inhabited by Christians. They also argued that they had a godly duty to bring the Bible to native lands. These “Biblical” missions left fields of blood and fire behind them.
Then, as colonists took over the South, Christianity became a lynchpin of slavery. Faith leaders and policymakers professed that the Bible contained passages that clearly supported enslavement. For example, they claimed that Noah’s curse on Ham in Genesis 9:20-27 justified the subjugation of Black people. In some areas, slaveholders also distributed tainted Bibles that removed mentions of freedom and equality.
olddogthoughts 