Books
Currently reading: Naming the Powers by Walter Wink 📚
I think this is a good book (series of books actually) for those who desire to follow Jesus to read at this time. The quote below is just one example:
The Weather Underground correctly criticized the U.S. government for its barbaric violence in Vietnam and then mirrored the very barbarism it condemned by adopting violence as its means. Whenever we let the terms of struggle be dictated by the Power that we oppose, we are certain to become as evil. Nothing about this insight is new. It is written for anyone to read in Rev. 17:15-18. There the Beast on whom the Harlot (Roma) sits turns against her and shifts his allegiance to the ten enemy kings. These will hate the harlot and burn her up with fire. The Beast can shift loyalties precisely because he knows that the means employed to overthrow the Harlot will make the kings every bit as much the children of hell as she. (Emphasis added)
I assume that in the above Wink is referring to the Weather Underground as known as The Weathermen. The Weathermen emerged from the campus-based opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War and from the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Wikipedia
The Debate Never Resolved.
Currently reading: Democracy in Chains by Nancy MacLean 📚
Yesterday I read an article about James Buchanan that is inspired by this book, which I remembered I had in my Amazon library but not yet started reading. Consequently, I started reading and once again reminded of how the United States was founded.
The narrative taught when I was in school is that most people who immigrated to the new world did so to escape persecution, which was true for many people who came to the continent AFTER it was discovered. The motives behind the discovery of the continent was driven by wealth, whether through a shorter trade route to the east or the appropriation of land or gold.
Common folks who left Europe for a better life where not too much involved with the government or the decision to declare independence from England. The people who formed the United States did so to preserve their wealth, much of which starting to be generated from the plantations of the south.
Once the revolutionary war was over the people who sought independence had to decide how the new world was to be governed. Eventually what we know as the U.S. Constitution was drafted, but there was strong debate over whether there should be a single entity and a strong federal government or a federation of sovereign states. Advocates of a federation, who became known as anti-federalists, were fearful of a central government impinging upon individual rights, which honestly had much to do with the right to become as wealthy was one wishes in whatever manner one wishes, including enslaving others.
History says a compromise was reached with the Bill of Rights and the Federalists won the day, but the Federalists/Anti-Federalist debate, which was about power, continues. It lead to the Civil War and it is the root of the Dobbs Decision, and as this book chronicles, the Anti-Federalist cause has been systemically been carried out over the last five decades. I am convinced their success is in large part due to the profound lack of knowledge about history.