The Presiding Bishop (chief cleric) of my Christian denomination (The Episcopal Church) just released an incredibly strong op-ed against the current US administration.
(RNS) — The reckoning, if we are honest, is long overdue.
Some choice quotes:
"When religious institutions like ours enjoy easy coexistence with earthly power, our traditions and inherited systems can become useless for interpreting what is happening around us. But our recent reckoning with the federal government has allowed us to see clearly the ease with which the Protestant tradition of patriotism can lead Christians to regard our faith more as a tool of dominion than a promise of liberation."
"The reckoning, if we are honest, is long overdue. Every July 4, our prayer book reminds us of our failure to stand against the enslavement of Black Americans with a prayer for Independence Day claiming that “the founders of this country won liberty for themselves and for us.” But not all of us. The Episcopal Church did not make a moral stand against slavery, and some of our eminent leaders were pillars of the transatlantic slave trade. Our church ran residential schools for Indigenous children at which they were denied their culture and God-given humanity. And in the mid-20th century, our foreign missions aligned with U.S. foreign policy in Asia and the Pacific, and in Central America and the Caribbean."
"...when we are awash in propaganda, even our resistance can be bound by its definitions and incline us to see the world in the same categories — foreigner and neighbor, cisgender and transgender, white and people of color, Christian and Muslim — that we seek to transcend."
"We are now being faced with a series of choices between the demands of the federal government and the teachings of Jesus, and that is no choice at all."
