Oh what the hell, why not, once more unto the breach...
@CA & SC:
Since you're both responding to the "White Christian Community" comment, I suppose it's fair to give two answers for the price of one...
I would argue that there are, to be VERY broad and brief about it, two components of that White Christian Community I'm here positing--
The actual people who populate that Community, and the fabric and tradition which informs that Community.
Now, obviously, with any community, theoretical or actual, you will have generational turnover and, to that end, as CA points out, you'll eventually come to a point where a younger generation doesn't agree with the older generation, as as the case for some in the South during the Civil Rights movement. That's taking into account the first component of a community, the actual people which make it up.
The second component, however, is more ideological, and as a result is not as susceptible to turnover; it may wax and wane in terms of power and prominence in a community, but nevertheless, ideas not being subject to generational "death" the way human beings are, as long as there is a considerable amount of people who still hold a view, that view is preserved and passed on in the community and, as such, remains a part of said community, even if, again, the actual part it plays grows or shrinks over time due to new ideas and societal changes.
This is where I make the MLK/White Christian Community Appropriation Charge--
It'd be foolish and incorrect to say there were none of what we might traditionally imagine as the "White Christian Community" in the context of the then-Jim Crow South at the time of MLK's work; sure, there were younger people who took MLK's side, but there were also those who stayed the course and retained the ideas of that old racist guard, and those people, still, in whatever number, remain a part of the White Christian Community to this day.
To that end, then, I would again say that the same community which once charged MLK with being a communist and attempted to demonize him--even if we concede that it was a partial strain of this community--now attempts to invoke his image as a Christian in the theist/atheist, evolution/creationism battle that occurs in the US.
It's not the White Christian Community as a population, necessarily, that does this...
It is a thread of the historical fabric of this community that has done this and continues to be a part of that community to this day.
You may ask how it's fair, then, to say "the White Christian Community" when I say a thread of it; after all, one swallow does not a summer make, and if it's only one or two people out of millions, that hardly stains the whole of a community.
I would answer that question with a question myself--how large or prominent do YOU think such a thread, or a thread from that thread, is today?
I'm NOT asking how many out-and-out Klansmen or racists there are; such a way of putting it oversimplifies the matter.
Rather--consider the White Christian Community.
Now consider how many of them are as I describe, of that old, pre-1950s guard's mindset.
NOW consider how many are of an offshoot--religiously or politically--of that mentality.
REGARDLESS of whether or not you feel Voter ID laws are just or unjust, consider their implication.
Who is generally backing them but White Christians...
Who are generally opposing them but Black (and Latino) Voters.
AGAIN, I am NOT asking whether or not you feel that Voter ID laws are just or unjust, that's another debate altogether; rather, I'm simply pointing to the demographics of this.
I would take again, say, certain strains of anti-evolution Evangelicals.
Not ALL Evangelicals, mind you, but those who are leading the fight against evolution...
Who are THEY but, again, mostly of the White Christian Community with, again, ideas that are decidedly of the conservative, pre-1950 era of White Christendom in the United States?
You don't see many blacks or Latinos leading that anti-evolution fight...or the push for Voter ID laws...
For that matter, I'd go so far as to argue that you don't see as many prominent anti-abortion figures being Black or Latino either...again, it's White Christians and, again, they're generally conservative in the pre-1950s political sense of that term.
I mention Voter ID, anti-evolution, and anti-abortion as those are three things which, decidedly, pre-1950 White Christians would have overwhelmingly been on the side of, in one form or another. These are not the original breed of that thread of the White Christian Community, for sure, they are, again, an offshoot, separated by time and a country that's moved forward.
Nevertheless, these groups are STILL as I say overwhelmingly White, Christian, and conservative (I mention this not in an anti-Republican sense, but as an antithesis to the sort of social liberalism that was a prominent fixture in the Civil Rights movement and the 1960s in general.)
So we have a sort of continuity from the a considerable thread of people who demonized MLK in his time to a same or directly-related thread who now latch onto his Christian persona for their own ends in their own fights; after all, the integration and Jim Crow battles being lost on their part and being won by MLK, that's now a lost cause, and anyway, they have other battles to fight (again, against evolution and abortion) and as the old saying goes, If you Can't Beat 'em, Join 'em...Or Appropriate Them. MLK is of no political use to them as a demonized "communist" in a post-communist world (sorry, Putin) but he can be of large help (so they may feel) as an idealized example of a good Christian figure.
Even Christians will agree between the Westboro Baptist Church's well-publicized craziness and loathsome attitude, the Catholic Church's child molestation scandal, Creationist and Young Earth Christians dealing a further blow to Christianity in terms of its acceptance in certain intellectual circles, the rise of Feminism coinciding with the Abortion debate combining to create the stereotype of an Old White Male Christian Patriarchy that is decidedly anti-woman dealing Christianity yet ANOTHER blow, as well as the disastrous results we see of religion via terrorist attacks, and this coinciding with the sharp rise in the population of atheists (10% or so by the most conservative of polls, most put the figure somewhere between 15-22%, which would technically make atheists the fastest growing denomination or faith or, rather, in this case, anti-faith-based group in America)...
And fairly or not, Christians must acknowledge that the image of the White Christian HAS suffered a setback from the dominance and prominence it once had a near-monopoly over 100 years ago, indeed, even 50 years ago.
It makes sense, then, that Christians might want to search for heroes in their own ranks, and who better than a real, genuine hero--and an American hero to boot, to add the patriotism factor in--who can be used to cut across the racial divide and appeal to most White and Black/Latino Christians ALIKE to bolster numbers...
Hence a sect of the White Christian Community rallying around MLK where once the idea of it doing so would have been unthinkable.
Now, you ask, CA, "How do we reach this monolithic "White Christians" when we're talking about a span of nearly sixty years and people obviously didn't agree at the time?" and my answer is that, of course, not all White Christians ARE the same...
I'm talking about a sect here, but a sect influential in the group historically and currently to a large enough extent that I don't think they can be characterized as an out-lier.
Anyway, that's my best shot at that in an attempt to be concise, and it probably won't suffice, but I suppose criticism will draw out areas I can be more specific in my case...
In any case, again, I'm NOT saying it's the whole White Christian Community, just a sect and a large enough one that it cannot be considered a fringe group; this isn't me characterizing White Christians by the actions of the WBC (I WILL say that there's perhaps something to be said of the fact that radical sects like the WBC, KKK, Neo-Nazis and so on DO tend to be White and Christian more than any other combination of ethnicity and race in the US, but as most White Christians aren't like those disgusting groups and, after all, there *are* more Whites and more Christians than any other ethnicity or faith in the US, there is some probabilistic logic in that combination being the most frequent in these disgusting fringe radicals.)
@Socrates:
"Nothing wrong with Marx I'd say - I would argue Lenin too, but without getting too contraversial nothing wrong with Marx at all."
...Must...not...comment...Putin will explode...
Oh, what the hell--
Putin disagrees with me, but I find Marx to be an Anti-Semite, and there is some scholastic and textual evidence for that; in the object of fairness (and to again avoid a derailing, exhausting fight with Putin) I'll say that it's a matter of debate and there are certainly those that would argue against Marx being an Anti-Semite, Putin being one of them, so look into that is all I will say, and make of it what you will on your own.
I also find most of Marx's ideas reprehensible in some fashion, illogical, at odds with my own ideas as to how life should be, and so on, but 1. This is another topic altogether and we can (and have had before) post threads with hundreds of comments on this back and forth, so I'm not going there here, suffice it to say Putin and I disagree, and 2. I'd also again concede that it's a matter of ideological taste...I clearly feel it's abhorrent and I'd be glad to see states steer clear of Marxism, but Putin will offer you a different take...make of it what you will.
As for Lenin, I really don't have an opinion one way or the other besides my not liking the USSR as a society that arose (not a problem with Russians as a people, I again just don't like or agree with communism) so I naturally wish Lenin hadn't allowed for its creation, but I haven't looked into the man intensely, so I won't bash him, for all I know he might have had the best if intentions and might have been OK as a person, I don't know.
"Ayn Rand on the other hand is disgusting"
I'd again reiterate that I think Karl Marx and Ayn Rand belong in the same breath--
That is, two extreme radicals for their positions, Extreme-Left Communism and Extreme-Right Capitalism.
Both people and positions, in my opinion, are again reprehensible, and both represent the dangers of perverting or taking an idea to an extreme.
@Draug:
"Marx himself was fine. It was the people who tried to put his ideas into practice and murdered tens of thousands men of cloth in the process (the old Soviet Union under Stalin murdered more than 50,000 clergy).."
Again, I'd argue Marx was not fine, when your work calls for radical and possibly violent revolution like that, and then the murders you yourself mentioned occur...
Well, Marx was greatly and inextricably linked to the cause of the USSR's being and its ideology that allowed for and even encouraged such revolutionary violence, so I'd argue that blood is posthumously part-way on his hands as well.
Again, Putin will undoubtedly see it differently--how hard I am trying to avoid a Putin flame war over his sacred cow right now, lol--but that's my take.
And, again, while Putin will say otherwise--there is that Anti-Semetism charge that looms with scholarship behind it...and while everyone from Shakespeare to Dickens to Eliot all at one point or another wrote something that Jewish readers of English literature today read and say "Come on, guys, I liked you so much, why do you have to hate my people so?" it important to note that those three instances also provided at least a good voice for Jews as well/had Jewish friends and, more importantly, never advocated for any violence or discrimination against Jews the way, say, Wagner did.
Marx's comments, if they are taken to be Anti-Semitic, are necessarily in the latter category (he's writing prescriptive social philosophy, after all, not fiction, and he's calling for revolutions and entire classes and kinds of people--bankers, for one--to be drummed out, so when he equates Jews and bankers, then, well...)
But again, I know Putin says there's a way to rescue his hero from that charge and if he wants to make it, fine, we're REALLY OFF TOPIC AS IT IS.
;)
Paris Jackson (Daughter of Micheal)
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