Other than a spoken line in our prayer and the silent cries I carried in my heart on Sunday, I wasn’t ready to say much about the shooting that took place in Buffalo last Saturday.
Typically in the wake of tragedies like this, we’re left wringing our hands wondering what could have made a person commit such a horrific act of violence. But in this case, we don’t have to guess. The shooter posted a lengthy diatribe online spelling out his racist ideology espoused by right-wing media personalities and some legislators.
It’s the same ideology that prompted by violent terrorists to target a Hispanic community in El Paso, two mosques in New Zealand, synagogues in Pennsylvania and Texas, an AME church in South Carolina….sadly the list could go on.
While the shooter said he wasn’t a Christian, he did say he tried to uphold and follow Christian principals, which is appalling to those who humbly seek to follow Christ. But it also sadly makes sense because the sad truth is that Christianity has a long and sordid history of fostering a superiority complex while at the same time holding on to a victim mentality. It’s a dangerous combination and a corruption of the faith we hold and the gospel we proclaim.
Many scholars have tried to trace and untangle the threads of Christianity, white supremacy, and white nationalism that have come together to form the dangerous force of White Christian Nationalism, a force that we’ve discussed before and our friends at the Baptist Joint Committee have been working to raise awareness about through the “Christians Against Christian Nationalism” (Click HERE if you’d like to learn more about this campaign).
But the questions remains, what can we as individuals and a congregation do to curtail the violence this hateful belief system can lead to.
First, we can examine and work to become aware of the subtle and small ways we perpetuate harmful stereotypes. That’s part of our project in looking at Jesus’ parables that are all about questioning and overturning stereotypes.
How we read scripture matters. And the sad thing is we may not even be aware of how some of the lessons and interpretations of Scripture we’ve inherited from beloved Sunday School teachers or pastors might have racists and anti-Semitic overtones. I try to name these problematic interpretations when they come up. One example was in our most recent look at the parable of the Samaritan who helped the person who had been robbed and how the critiques leveled at the priest and Levite became unfounded judgments of Jewish purity laws which then become harmful stereotypes and prejudices about Jewish people in general. All the while, Christians are encouraged to see themselves as the compassionate and heroic Samaritan superior to those who didn’t help.
Another thing we can do is not turn away from the ugly truth that calls White Christians to acknowledge how our privilege has sometimes made us blind to the discrimination and violence suffered by our brothers and sisters of color. We need to heed Christ’s call us to confess our own culpability in ways that are not mired in victimhood of self-defensiveness, but rather in healthy humility that opens us up to deeper understanding and communion across ethnic, racial, and religious lines.
As with most things that matter, this is not easy work, but it’s imperative. Lives are at stake. So let us continue to do the hard but holy work of weeding out the hate that harms, sowing the seeds of hope that heals, and tending to the fields that bear the fruits of peace.
In Love
Pastor Annette