He’s still alive and writing letters from Birmingham Jail! Who knew?
Letter to white American evangelicals
h ttps://baptistnews.com/article/letter-to-white-american-evangelicals/
By Joel Bowman Sr., 17 January 2022
This’ll entertain. He couldn’t go three words before invoking racism, even including the title. Bowman is the founder & senior pastor of Temple Of Faith Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky and a credentialed social worker with mental illness.
What follows is a creative imagining of what Martin Luther King Jr. might say to white American evangelicals today. It was written by Joel A. Bowman Sr. in the spirit of King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”
No, it’s written in the CREDIBILITY of MLKjr. Who himself was a false Christian. Bowman could celebrate the MLKjr holiday by writing in his own name,or he could write nonfiction about the guy. Instead of either, he chose to dress up as MLKjr and lecture us about all the social justice initiatives that his idol would surely have supported were he alive today, because King was a GOOD Communist. GOOD Commies don’t let even death stop them!
This is a central tactic of Socialist debate. They present themselves as the representatives of someone else, without their consent or even knowledge, in order to gain credibility that… as you will soon see… they do not deserve.
Dear white American evangelicals:
Stop being rayciss, you whiteys! You whites are all alike, keeping the Man down for centuries while insisting it’s our fault for not respecting our fathers! Could you racistly stereotype us any harder?
In 1963, the sweltering heat of injustice could be felt in Alabama as Gov. George Wallace delivered his speech in which he declared, “I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever!”
Smart man. Here we are without segregation and it sucks in every ghetto.
That same year, I sensed a divine call to travel to Alabama, to initiate nonviolent protests.
Nonviolent protests for Communism > Violent protests for Christ?
What I have to say will be extremely difficult for you to receive. But, know this, all I have to say is being said out of my love for you and all of humanity.
In keeping with the Apostle Paul’s words to the church at Ephesus, my aim is to speak the truth in love. Please resist the temptation to immediately dismiss, deflect or defend your position.
Because I’m about to blame you for ALL of my problems! in 3… 2… 1…
Brothers and sisters, you piously claim to have a high view of Scripture. However, you are among the most prolific purveyors of racism and white supremacy in America today. Lest you think I embellish, consider how you have perpetuated the evil of racial injustice all throughout American history.
…Zero.
In fact, many of those whom you consider “great” theologians and academicians were slaveowners. These include men like Jonathan Edwards, George Whitfield, James Boyce and John Broadus, to name a few.
Textbook social justice. All of a man’s accomplishments mean nothing if 150 years after his death, he violates the Narrative.
Yet, many of you are so very proud to have their books in your libraries and their names on your buildings and institutions. Prior to and during the Civil War, many of your leaders misused the Bible to justify slavery, standing squarely on the side of the Confederacy.
We still do because Scripture has not changed. Slavery is not banned by Scripture, in fact, it says that we should count ourselves slaves of Christ. Or even worse, living sacrifices.
Even some of the abolitionists whom you hold up as heroes of the faith did not have clean hands or hearts when it came to their view of Black people who, just like them, were created in the image of God.
Charles Finney, leader of the Second Great Awakening, did not believe in Black equality. Although he advocated the abolition of slavery, he did not want someone who looked like me preaching from his pulpit.
You are not equal to us. Every chance you’ve had to be our peers, you’ve squandered it. No group in history has tried as hard as Southern Whites to coexist with blacks, and you repay their efforts with black-heh-hearted hate that would rewrite Scripture itself were we to drop our guard like you demanded. You’re already rewriting history by tearing down our statues and writing our imagined sins into history books.
Nothing is enough for you parasites. Even abolitionism is no longer enough. You bite the hand that feeds you and lick the boot that kicks you.
Many of you have wholeheartedly accepted the myth of the Lost Cause. This is the erroneous belief that the Civil War wasn’t fought over slavery, but over what you call “states’ rights.”
A bald-faced lie.
Many of you accused me of being a communist or communist sympathizer to justify your callousness toward our struggle for freedom. Now, suddenly, some of you quote [MLKjr] as if you have always imbibed [his] values.
The Gramscian Long March is NOT a lie. Congratulations, I suppose. You’ve eliminated all possibility of peaceful coexistence just like you wanted. Behold Glorious Marxist Revolution!
You cynically imply that I would have been against affirmative action. Nothing could be further from the truth!
Further from… this truth? “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by their character.” -MLKjr.
I clearly was not advocating colorblindness, but racial equity. If you’re going to quote me, at the very least quote me in context!
The thing about skinsuits is they’re never used by their original owners.
In my estimation, present-day white evangelicalism is not much better than the version we saw in the antebellum South. Its racism is just more subtle and sophisticated, and it shows in the policy positions you hold, rather than in the whips you wield. It shows in the people you vote for, rather than any slaves in your fields.
Any question as to who you are as a people was answered with the results of the 2016 presidential election. Most of you voted for Donald Trump. Many wondered how people who said character mattered in a political leader could be so critical of Bill Clinton, yet so accepting of Trump, a man with no moral compass.
“No moral compass” was an improvement over a marriage to Hillary… or in 2016, the beast herself.
Over the course of decades, Trump has shown himself to be a narcissist, misogynist and a racist. Yet, most of you still voted for him, twice, and you continue to enable his pathological lying. Well, for you, it never really has been about character, as you claimed. The truth is you have always been primarily motivated by power — political and economic power.
Wut dat? “We” clearly voted for Biden the second time. How dare you blame us! We F’d that curve!
You are big on “law and order” rhetoric but never stopped to consider the history of its dehumanizing impact on Black people. You demonize Black men like Colin Kaepernick who have peacefully protested injustice. However, you sanitize white men like Kyle Rittenhouse who have used violence as a means of exerting control.
Jingle bells,
Biden smells
little kids all day
Criminals
Get sprung from jails
but Kyle showed the way!
Speaking of, which of Kyle’s attackers were black? None of them… yet?
You are eager to posit capital punishment as a deterrent to violent crime but don’t seem to care this would disproportionately and unjustly impact people of color and the poor.
This is why you must be deported to Africa. Don’t wave no ‘Murican passport at me, it’s just a paper like the Constitution you tore up.
You say “the real problem” in Black America is fatherless households, but the racist systems you have enabled and supported for hundreds of years have perpetuated this phenomenon. From the transatlantic slave trade to the mass incarceration of Black men, you’ve had your hands in all of it.
A white man would have stopped digging his hole by now. Just sayin’.
No, most of you are not truly “pro-life.” You are merely anti-abortion. If you were truly pro-life, you would show tangible concern for all human life, from the womb to the tomb.
Innocent human life only. Like babies and fathers. Did you ever read your Bible or was that just a paper, too?
Sadly, this has not been the case for most white evangelicals. Some of you have doubled down on your racism, and your leaders have been strangely silent. And the silence is deafening.
We don’t have leaders. Certainly not Trump.
The hysteria over what many of you ignorantly call Critical Race Theory has been manufactured by right-wing extremists. Critical Race Theory is the “boogieman” of the moment being used to mobilize white people who are afraid of losing their status in history. Those who are the most threatened by it are the ones most invested in white supremacy.
Curious how people targeted for extermination tend to band together and use their enemies’ thus-far-successful methods.
When you’ve heard the passionate cries of “Black Lives Matter,” many of you have offered the insensitive retort, “All Lives Matter.” All lives don’t matter until Black lives are valued equally in our society.
A Chicomm would have stopped digging by now. A Jew would have stopped digging by now. A troglodyte miner would have stopped digging by now.
Rather than joining your Black brothers and sisters in the struggle against racist policing, many of you have spent your time researching what you’ve been told are the “Marxist roots” of the Black Lives Matter organization. This is eerily similar to what happened to me when they called me a communist.
Do you mean, your critics being right?
Now, our democracy is under attack as never before, and you are complicit. This was so evident as those insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol on that tragic day.
Sitting in Pelosi’s chair is not an insurrection. It’s not a siege if it stops at dinnertime.
I implore you to be a true follower of Jesus who is loving, the one who cares about the powerless. The one who has been anointed to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
That much is true to MLKjr’s comprehension of Christ. He believed in Jesus the useful politician, not Jesus the Messiah. When the devil is weak, he preaches equality.
When the devil is strong, he preaches equity. Just like Bowman is doing. Nothing is sacred to him, not even his own idol. All must be Converged to the Narrative.