Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world ...
This is the first sentence of the Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.
Article 1 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)[14]
Like other cultures, Western Culture is founded on shared beliefs. but, in contrast to most others, Western beliefs privilege the idea of equality. and, it is this privileging of equality - of a premise that excludes permanent inequalities of status and ascriptions of authoritative opinion to any person or group -which underpins the secular state and the idea of fundamental or ‘natural’ rights. Thus, the only birthright recognised by the liberal tradition is individual freedom.These two paragraphs begin Larry Siedentop's Epilogue and final Chapter of his 2014 publication Inventing the Individual. See the Guardian review.
Christianity played a decisive part in this. yet the idea that liberalism and secularism have religious roots is by no means widely understood. Evidently, the separation of church and state - the first great objective of the liberal tradition - has itself drawn attention away from these roots of secularism. But so too has a ‘civil war’ that long raged in Europe, and now may be spreading to the United States. What is this civil war? It is a war in which religious belief and ‘godless’ secularism are understood as irreconcilable opponents, . . .
He continues . . .
Of course, the last two hundred years have overlaid the hostility between the two camps. The religious camp has come, by and large, to accept civil liberty and religious pluralism. The anti-clericals have - with the exception of hardline Marxists and writers such as Richard Dawkins - given up on the attempt to extirpate religious belief. But the old antagonism still lurks under the surface. the visceral reaction of the French left to the prospect of acknowledging the Christian roots of Europe has its counterpart in much church rhetoric deploring the growth of ‘Godless’ secularism. Even Benedict XVI, a most learned pope, was not free of this habit. he called for an understanding between religions in order to combat secularism.
God in the EU Constitution?
Indeed . . .
The Irish Times reported in 2003 . . .
In the EU the discussions and debates continued . . .
Christianity bedevils talks on EU treaty
Concerns at the Vatican continued . . .
Reuters reported . . .
World News
March 24, 2007 / 1:20 PM / 11 years ago
Pope criticises EU for excluding God
And, in August the year before . . .
Merkel backs more Christian EU constitution
Nicholas Watt in Brussels
Tue 29 Aug 2006 00.07 BST
Europe's "Christian values" should be enshrined in a new version of the EU constitution, the German chancellor declared yesterday after meeting the Pope.
In remarks which will reopen the debate on religion in the EU, Angela Merkel threw her weight behind Pope Benedict's campaign to recognise Europe's Christian heritage. "We spoke about freedom of religion," she said after talks at the Pope's summer residence near Rome. "We spoke about the role of Europe and I emphasised the need for a constitution and that it should refer to our Christian values."
Mrs Merkel will take charge of efforts to revive the constitution when Germany assumes the EU's rotating presidency next January. Any attempt to mention Christianity - or simply God - in the text will be met by stiff resistance from secular France, from Britain, which treads carefully in this area, and from northern Protestant countries such as Sweden and Denmark. During the tortuous negotiations on the constitution in 2004 there were concerns that any religious reference could upset Europe's Muslims and Jews.
But Mrs Merkel, the daughter of a Protestant pastor, is determined to reopen the debate when she tries to revive the constitution, a controversial move in itself because many EU leaders want a slimmed down document after last year's no votes.
The chancellor is leader of the strongly Catholic CDU party whose most senior figure in Brussels is determined to include a reference to God in the new constitution. Hans-Gert Pöttering, currently leader of the EPP-ED group in the European parliament, is on course to become the assembly's president next year.
There is a strong relationship between a number of European political parties and this ideology found within what is termed Christian democracy. An overview of this relatively modern political phenomenon is well summarized in Why is there no Christian Democracy in Poland (and why does this matter)? by Tim Bale and Aleks Szczerbiak.
This is Siedentop's view of the European and Christian origins of 'secularism', and how our misunderstanding of these origins results in an unnecessary conflict:
This is Europe’s undeclared ‘civil war’. And it is as tragic as it is unnecessary. It is tragic because, by identifying secularism with non-belief, with indifference and materialism, it deprives Europe of moral authority, playing into the hands of those who are only too anxious to portray Europe as decadent and without conviction. It is unnecessary because it rests on a misunderstanding of the nature of secularism. Properly understood secularism can be seen as Europe’s noblest achievement, the achievement which should be its primary contribution to the creation of a world order, while different religious beliefs continue to contend for followers. Secularism is Christianity’s gift to the world , ideas and practices which have often been turned against ‘excesses’ of the Christian church itself.He continues . . .
In Europe, massive immigration and the growth of large Muslim minorities have widened the range of non-Christian beliefs dramatically. And such beliefs have consequences. quite apart from the acts of terrorism which invoke - more or less dubiously - the name of Islam, Muslims are frequently encouraged to look forward to replacing the laws of the nation state with shariah ‘law’. Islam seems to sit uneasily with secularism.It is hardly surprising, therefore, that questions about the relationship between religious belief and secularism have re-entered public debate. When referring to the Christian roots of Europe in a proposed constitution for the European Union became an issue in 2001-2, there were strong voices in support, for example from Poland. There were also strong voices opposed, notably from France. Yet far the most widespread reaction was one of embarrassment, an uneasy wish that the question would go away. With defeat of the proposed constitutional treaty in referendums, the question has gone away. but the embarrassment remains. And it is an important phenomenon, something which merits closer examinations. for when examined, it throws light on on why Europe does not project a more coherent identity onto the world today. It throws light on what I have called Europe’s ‘civil war’.In several ways, then, Siedentop gets to the heart of the question of the origins and substance of shared European values and ideas. The example he references above, the debates concerning the "Christian roots of Europe" and the constitution of the European Union, continue to this moment. However, when it comes to belief systems and values, there are a set of growing demographic divides across Europe.
A Europe divided between Christians and non-Christians?
What are the demographics?
Two pilgrims hold candles at World Youth Day in Krakow, Poland
'Christianity as default is gone': the rise of a non-Christian Europe
Figures show a majority of young adults in 12 countries have no faith, with Czechs least religious
All this means that a shared understanding of the values of the secular and the religious is more critical than ever in the European Union.
A Union divided?
Is the refugee crisis prompting a crisis of identity among European societies?
Opinion: The EU is divided by refugee policy
The issue of migration is deepening the rift between east and west in the EU. But for a long time now, more fundamental issues such as legal integrity and solidarity have been at stake, says DW's Bernd Riegert.
The secular domain is weakening allowing 'Christian democracy' to be used by populist and authoritarian politicians to validate hostility to immigrants and refugees while stoking the fires of hatred, nationalism and Islamophobia!
Illiberal democracy?
Viktor Orbán: our duty is to protect Hungary's Christian culture
Ahead of re-election as prime minister, rightwinger talks of building a ‘Christian democracy’
One week later . . .
Viktor Orban promised ‘revenge’ against his enemies in Hungary. Now they’re preparing for it.
The end of liberal democracy?
Viktor Orban: Era of 'liberal democracy' is over
The EU should give up "nightmares" of United States of Europe, said Hungarian nationalist leader Viktor Orban while starting his fourth term as prime minister. He won a landslide victory in a recent parliamentary vote.
Ungarn Viktor Orbans Amtsantritt (Getty Images/AFP/A. Kisbenedek)
Read more: Satire one of few remaining bastions in Orban's Hungary
Read more: Opposition supporters chant 'Vik-tator' as tens of thousands protest in Budapest
Read more: Opinion: Viktor Orban twists the facts
Read more: Opinion: The EU is divided by refugee policy
Issues such as immigration have caused a divide between Hungary and the EU, due to compulsory quotas of asylum seekers that member states were required to accept. Orban has also faced massive protests in the weeks since the election day.
Protesters have accused Orban and his right-wing nationalist Fidesz party, which won two-thirds of parliamentary seats at the polls, of taking control of state media and using them to gain an election advantage, as well as opaque campaign funding.
Europe's 'civil war'?
Looking at old histories anew is what Siedentop is about in his study of the invention of the individual and the origins of Western Liberalism. His epilogue, as referenced above continues . . .
So let us try to get at the source of this embarrassment. For it seems to me that the widespread sense of discontinuity that Europeans at least tacitly acknowledge when reconsidering their past - and even more revealingly, their reluctance to embark on such a reconsideration - weakens Europe’s voice in the conversation of mankind. But not only that. It also helps to explain major differences between European and American attitudes. By what route have we got to where we are today? what is the relation of the secular state, liberal democracy and market economics to the European past? In answering these questions, we have become the victims of our own historiography - and not simply at a professional, academic level.
Christianity and secularism continued . . .
Europeans - out of touch with the roots of their tradition - often seem to lack conviction, while Americans may be succumbing to a dangerously simplistic version of their faith.
On neither side of the Atlantic is there an adequate understanding of the relationship between liberal secularism and Christianity.
Failure to understand that relationship makes it easier to underestimate the moral content on liberal secularism. In the Western world today, it contributes to two temptations, to what might be called two ‘liberal heresies’. The first is the temptation to reduce liberalism to the endorsement of market economics, the satisfaction of current wants or preferences without worrying much about the formation of those wants or preferences. In doing so, it narrows the claims of justice. This temptation reduces liberalism to a crude form of utilitarianism. The second temptation is best described as ‘individualism’, the retreat into a private sphere of family and friends at the expense of civic spirit and political participation. This weakens the habit of association and eventually endangers the self-reliance which the claims of citizenship require. Both of these heresies focus on the second word of the core liberal value - ‘equal liberty’ - at the expense of the first word. They sacrifice the emphasis on reciprocity - on seeing ourselves in others and others in ourselves - which we have seen to be fundamental to inventing the individual and which gives liberalism its lasting moral value.
If we in the West do not understand the moral depth of our own tradition, how can we hope to shape the conversation of mankind?
So, what good is secularism?
Even in modern Republican France, where the concept of la laïcité holds sway, the limits to expression on religion is a question that is raised again and again.
France: March 2005, Marithé François Girbaud, a brand of women's clothing, had a billboard—40 metres long—placed on a building on the Avenue Charles-de-Gaulle in Neuilly-sur-Seine. The billboard featured a photograph of twelve beautiful, well-dressed women and one shirtless man posed round a table in the manner of the characters in the painting Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci. A Catholic organization complained that the billboard insulted a group of people because of their religion. The court of first instance convicted Girbaud, and ordered the billboard removed. In April 2005, a higher court upheld the conviction. In November 2006, the Supreme Court of Appeal annulled the conviction.
There is an article on Limits to expression on religion in France by Esther Janssen, published in: Agama &Religiusitas di Eropa, Journal of European Studies, Volume V – nr. 1, 2009, p. 22-45, and produced in cooperation between the University of Indonesia and the Delegation of the European Commission, that deals with this question.
It places the relevant provisions in French law and national case law concerning expression on religion within the context of the strict separation of the state and the church in France, known as la laïcité. Subsequently, it analyzes whether French case law complies with the relevant case law of the European Court of Human Rights.
This is the Abstract . . .
During the last decade conflicts about expression on religion have increased globally. Generally, these conflicts are regarded as a conflict between freedom of speech and freedom of thought, conscience and religion. In France there are many active religious interest groups that aim to protect a certain religion in society. They often initiate judicial proceedings seeking to prohibit certain kinds of speech on their religion. This practice has resulted in a rich case law on the limits of expression on religion in films, film posters, advertising, satirical cartoons and literature.
In France special emphasis is placed on the neutrality of the state and the public sphere. The strict separation of the state and the church, la laïcité, originates in La loi de 1905. Accordingly, in cases concerning expression on religion the French judge clearly distinguishes different degrees of the public nature of speech. However, even for French judges it is difficult to remain neutral. In past case law, the judiciary seems to have attempted a reintroduction of the offence of blasphemy and to have taken into account the point of view of the Catholic Church for the assessment of the insulting character of speech. What is more, in the famous Giniewski case the French judge protected catholic citizens that felt offended by certain speech, but the European Court of Human Rights corrected France and gave priority to a free historical debate. In its recent case law the European Court of Human Rights increasingly discerns unprotected attacks on a religion from protected critique on religious dogmas and institutions. Recent French case law, including the national affair of the Danish cartoons ‘Charlie Hebdo’, in which the judge allowed critical speech on religion as part of political and public debate, is in line with this European development.
Vandalization of Immersion (Piss Christ by American artist and photographer Andres Serrano)!
On April 17, 2011, a print of Piss Christ was vandalized "beyond repair" by Christian protesters while on display during the Je crois aux miracles (I believe in miracles) exhibition at the Collection Lambert, a contemporary art museum in Avignon, France.FEMENThe AGRIF organization lost a case in a tribunal court in Avignon against Collection Lambert where AGRIF had demanded that Lambert removed a print version of the photograph Piss Christ as well as an internet version.
AGRIF was instead ordered to pay Lambert 8000 euros for filing a prejudiced lawsuit. The poster had been vandalized by unknown persons before the case was decided.
Femen (Ukrainian: Фемен), stylized as FEMEN, is a Ukrainian radical feminist activist group intended to protect women's rights. The organization became internationally known for organizing controversial topless protests against sex tourism, religious institutions, sexism, homophobia, and other social, national, and international topics. Founded in Ukraine, the group is now based in Paris.
The organization describes itself as "fighting patriarchy in its three manifestations – sexual exploitation of women, dictatorship and religion" and has stated that its goal is "sextremism serving to protect women's rights".
In 2016, a Paris tribunal court acquitted Femen on accusations of causing harm against Christians after they interrupted a demonstration against same-sex marriage with slogans saying "Fuck Church" among other things.
Le Manif Pour Tout (Demo for all)
Le Manif Pour Tout ( LMPT ) is the largest collective of associations behind the most significant opposition to the law opening marriage to same-sex couples (known as "marriage for all" ). Since the enactment of the law in May 2013 , the demands of the collective have widened from the opposition to same-sex marriage and homosexuality ( adoption , PMA , GPA ), to the defense of the "traditional family" and rejecting the teaching of " gender theory".
Described by Le Monde as a grouping of associations. whose main characteristic is that they are almost all confessional and mainly related to Catholicism, and supported in its calls to demonstrate by many members of the political right and extreme right. Given this background the collective presented itself as apolitical and non-confessional, before becoming itself a political party in April 2015. This coalition has experienced many disagreements and divisions with successive departures of Béatrice Bourges , Frigide Barjot or Xavier Bongibault. The Demo for all is also the subject of various criticisms including that it is homophobic and racist.
The origin of the collective goes back September 5, 2012 when some fifty association leaders, officially representing 37 associations, meet in Paris with philosophers, psychiatrists and senior officials, to define a strategy for the bill on same-sex marriage and legal status for same-sex couples.
These 37 associations are often ghost associations (empty shells) where the Christian religion is very present, on recent and often anonymous sites, and where the Emmanuel Community which is not on the list often comes back, and surrounded by sometimes radical organizations, such as the Le Monde analysis in 2016.
What are the campaigning aims of these LMPT demonstrations?
NO to Homosexual marriage!
NO to same-sex unions
NO to same-sex parenting
NO to the "theory of gender"
Manifestation à Paris (France) contre le projet de loi ouvrant le mariage aux couples de personnes de même sexe, 13 janvier 2013, à 15 h 45.
Child exploitation?
One of the stated priorities of Le Manif Pour Tout is the "best interests of the child" and the refusal of its " commodification " . For some detractors, there is a contradiction between these statements and the supposed tendency of protesters of La Manif for all to put forward their own children to denounce the homoparentalité . Thus, for Olivier Picard, author of the book Marriage, sex and tradition , these parents "do not feel any embarrassment to use their offspring to defend their values as adults on the Parisian pavement" . He adds that"They expose their offspring to the inevitable dangers of a large-scale political gathering" and engage in "conditioning" on young people "even before they have acquired a minimum of maturity to analyze their own sexual identity".
This debate bounced back with an interview of Mgr Di Falco, August 15, 2014 in the Dauphiné Libéré , claiming that children did not have to be in these demonstrations. The spokesperson for LMPT responded , stressing the importance of family engagement, and this was reported in the same newspaper 31 August 2014.
In the same vein and following the violence that followed the demonstration of March 24, 2013, some of the media (such as Le Plus, The Huffington Post and Rue89) suggested the use, by demonstrators, of children placed in the first line facing the CRS was hardly a responsible act. In a video posted by Rue89 , we hear a demonstrator from LMPT declare: "We put the children up front".
What's up with La Manif Pour Tout?
An anti-gay-marriage tea party, French style?
Last month, marchers filled the streets of Paris and Lyon to protest same-sex marriage, which became legal in France last year. The day after the demonstrations, François Hollande’s Socialist government announced that it would not be putting forward new legislation to make it easier for gay couples to adopt children or have them with the help of surrogate mothers. Although the government insisted that the decision had nothing to do with the protests, hardly anyone believes it. Hollande’s gay-rights retreat was a major victory for La Manif Pour Tous (The Protest for Everyone), the group that has organized a series of massive protests since November, 2012, when the government first introduced the gay-marriage law.
The right, said Fassin, the sociology professor, “is going to have to figure out how to articulate the sexual and racial question.” It may be getting closer. Christine Boutin, a Catholic conservative within the U.M.P., who had been relegated to the sidelines for the past few years but is returning to prominence on the wave of the anti-gay-marriage protests, recently declared, “The dam between the right and the extreme right has fallen.”
Manif Pour Tous demonstrators in Paris brought balloons bearing the motif of a 'traditional' family: a man, a woman, a boy and a girl.
France's future at risk from 'unnatural families', say conservative protesters
Interior minister Manuel Valls dismisses tens of thousands of demonstrators on streets of Paris and Lyon as 'anti-republicans'
Jessica, 24, was one of many to voice the wider malaise. "This government has nothing but contempt for us. Nobody is listening. We are not traditional, old, French Catholics; we are young and we want to be heard," she said.
The people in La Manif Pour Tout are being led by "goddesses of liberty"!
Liberty leading the people?
Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix (1830), which celebrates the July Revolution (Louvre Museum).
She was followed by Mireille Mathieu (1978), Catherine Deneuve (1985), Inès de La Fressange (1989), Laetitia Casta (2000) and Évelyne Thomas (2003). Laetitia Casta was named the symbolic representation of France's Republic in October 1999 in a vote open for the first time to the country's more than 36,000 mayors.
In July 2013, a new stamp featuring the Marianne was debuted by President François Hollande, allegedly designed by the team of Olivier Ciappa and David Kawena. Ciappa claimed that Inna Shevchenko, a high-profile member of the Ukrainian protest group FEMEN who had recently been granted political asylum in France, was a main inspiration for the new Marianne.
However, Kawena and his attorney later claimed that Ciappa was falsely representing himself as having had any level of creative input on the artwork. Kawena further stated that Shevchenko, or any other figure that Ciappa claimed to be an inspiration, was in no way the model for the work, and has sued Ciappa for violation of copyright on the Marianne artwork
What kind of liberty do these La Manif Pour Tout "Mariannes" represent?
Chickens have rights?
Animal abuse?
On December 4, 2013, La Manif Pour Tout activists decided to release chickens in front of the National Assembly to protest against the opening of the marriage to homosexual couples. Of the 450 birds that were to be deposited, only fifty are finally released by the militants, who manage hard to get them out of their van. However, four birds are crushed by motorists during the operation while about sixty others are abandoned in the Bois de Boulogne . This event provoked the anger of the Brigitte-Bardot Foundation, which lodged a complaint against La Manif for all for mistreatment of animals.
Alongside Marianne is the Gallic Rooster - another French national symbol!
Universalist politics are obviously in crisis!
A conversation with Camille Robcis illuminates the main features of this crisis.
Universalist politics and its crises
A conversation with Camille Robcis
Camille Robcis Aro Velmet
24 May 2016
Human emancipation was always a more complex issue than it might at first seem, and never more so than in today's France. Historian Camille Robcis discusses the evolution of French Republicanism since the 1980s in relation to controversies over same-sex marriage, integration and racism.
Aro Velmet: According to one facile, yet seductive reading of the current crisis in Europe, the source of controversy in Europe – on issues ranging from gay rights to the refugee situation – lies in the resurgence of an atavistic nationalism. This is seen to be the case particularly in eastern Europe, but also in western Europe in the form of parties such as UKIP, Front National and Pegida. This reading contrasts resurgent nationalism with the idea of a political community based on universal rights, where national, ethnic or religious identities are intentionally set aside in public life. The European Union very often draws on the language of universal human rights, to give one example of how such a community is forged. The prime example is, of course, France and its Republican tradition – summed up most commonly in the maxim liberté, égalité, fraternité.
Your work intervenes compellingly in this debate by taking a critical stance towards Republican universalism, and by showing the ways in which tensions within Republicanism itself have led to unequal treatment and discrimination. You’ve looked at the ways Republican arguments were used by the Right in debates on PACS (Pacte civile de solidarité, gender-neutral cohabitation) and on gay marriage, but also more recently, in how universalist arguments have troublingly shaped debates over race after the Charlie Hebdo shootings. What are your findings from your analysis of these events?
Camille Robcis: Since the 1980s Republicanism has become an important way to talk about French political culture. To be sure, Republicanism has a long history, it did not emerge in the 1980s and historically, it never meant just one thing – there was a Republicanism of 1789, 1792, 1848, 1870, 1905, 1945. In any case, since the 1980s, Republicanism has functioned as a tool for differentiating French political culture from two other forms of politics: liberalism and totalitarianism.
Within these debates around race and sexuality, liberalism – also described as the “Anglo-Saxon model” – is associated with individual rights, capitalism and multiculturalism. These are of course stereotypes, but the idea is that this mostly American vision of the social and the political leads to atomization and anomie: the state recognizes everyone’s particular little privacies at the expense of the public – literally of the res publica. On the other hand you have totalitarianism, which throughout the 1980s was embodied by communism and the Soviet Union, but with the fall of the Berlin wall, the concept tends to designate radical Islam. In this case, there is too much homogenization, not enough difference, a state that oppresses individuals for the sake of the public “whole”. Within this paradigm, Republicanism stands as a kind of middle ground between liberalism and totalitarianism with the right amount of freedom, the right amount of coercion and a society that it ultimately imagined to be cohesive, centralized and unified.
The conversation is set out in full on this Eurozine website page.
The conversation points to the way a partisan secularism and politically reactionary religious social movements undermine democratic values and block the pathways to actual and widespread political and economic emancipation.
An update:
Protesters gather outside a detention facility in south Texas, where hundreds of children wait away from their parents in cages created by metal fencing.
The US border patrol allowed reporters to briefly visit the site, where it holds families arrested at the southern US border. Melania Trump and Laura Bush have spoken out against the policy of separation and what they called heartbreaking scenes.
Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, invoked the Bible to defend the Trump administration’s immigration policy of separating mothers from their children.
She was speaking at Thursday’s White House briefing, in response to a question about comments made by the attorney general Jeff Sessions, where he cited a passage in the Bible to justify the policy.
“I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13 to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order,” said Sessions.He added: “Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves and protect the weak and lawful.”Sanders was asked about Sessions’ statement, and was challenged:
“Where does it say in the Bible that’s moral to take children away from mothers?”
Speaking at Thursday’s White House briefing, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders invoked the Bible to defend the Trump administration’s immigration policy of separating mothers from their children
When the attorney general used scripture to justify closing our borders, he operated from a playbook that dates back to slave master religion
Reverend William Barber and Dr Liz Theoharis
Tue 19 Jun 2018 12.00 BST
‘Sessions is using old tricks that go all the way back to slave master religion.’Last week, the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, used scripture to justify closing America’s borders to those in need of refuge and tearing children away from their families.
“I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13 to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order,” Sessions said.His remarks smack of theological heresy.
When the US government snatches children, it's biblical to resist the law
Daniel José Camacho
Read more
First of all, he’s misinterpreting the text. Paul was arrested by the government because Christians challenged the government. That’s one of the reasons Paul ends up getting killed. The rest of the text talks about how government should be used for good.
What’s more, the Bible is clear from the Old Testament to the New Testament that one of God’s primary concerns is we care for the stranger, that we do not rob children of their rights and mothers of their children, that we make sure the stranger is treated like a brother or sister. Nowhere does Jesus or the prophets say we should be taking children from their families.
Sessions is operating from the same playbook of biblical heresy that was used to support the genocide of Native Americans, lock black people in chattel slavery and segregate people under Jim Crow. He’s using old tricks that go all the way back to slave master religion.
He’s adding to this the sin of making children the prey – something the Bible clearly recognizes as evil.
And let’s not ignore the role race plays in this all. The separation of children from their parents goes back to slavery
And let’s not ignore the role race plays in this all. The separation of children from their parents goes back to slavery. The white supremacist Richard Spencer has said immigration is a proxy war and may be a last stand for white Americans who are undergoing the painful recognition that unless dramatic action is taken, their grandchildren will live in a country where they’re minorities.
We also can’t lose sight of the fact that while tearing children from their families is evil, Sessions has been against every form of immigration reform, even bipartisan proposals. Yes, the children part is evil. But Sessions has also backed voter suppression measures, attacks on the poor and giving welfare to corporations. All of that is wrong. As is written in Isaiah: 10:
“Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed.”We need a comprehensive response. That’s why the Poor People’s Campaign is fighting against the false Christian nationalism that is contrary to the gospel on almost every policy coming out of this administration. When you map out the states and regions that have the highest poverty rates and child poverty rates, lowest wages, most people denied health care, worst environmental protections, worst immigrant and LGBTQ protections, highest rates of voter suppression, these states also boast the highest number of people who profess to be Protestant evangelicals.
This battle over the Bible recalls the battle that took place in the Abolitionist movement. Slaveholders produced a Bible that did not include the Exodus, the prophets or the teachings of Jesus where he comes to release the slaves and preach good news to the poor. Abolitionists like Harriet Tubman and preachers and religious leaders like Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison referenced Leviticus and the jubilee, took up a resistance religion of the slaves, and would not concede the Bible and theology to extremists and bigots who defile the deepest values of love, mercy and justice.
We believe every policy decision is a moral decisionAs leaders of faith and co-chairs of the Poor People’s Campaign we believe that for too long the accepted moral narrative in America has blamed poor people for their poverty, divided people against each other, separated systemic racism from poverty and ecology and the war economy, and spread the lie of scarcity: the idea that there is not enough to go around. We believe every policy decision is a moral decision, especially when it deals with poor people, children and health care, living wages. We must have moral dissent and people willing to challenge the status quo.
D Martin Luther King, who helped lead the first Poor People’s Campaign 50 years ago, said we have a responsibility to challenge any law that’s against God’s law and the laws of justice. And so, instead of following Sessions’ interpretation of the scripture, we choose to follow Jeremiah 22:3:
“This is what the Lord says: Do what is just and right. Rescue from the hand of the oppressor the one who has been robbed. Do no wrong or violence to the foreigner, the fatherless, or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood.”The Reverends Dr William Barber II and Dr Liz Theoharis are co-chairs of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival
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