Beginnings: The Early Christian Church
Emperor Constantine adopted Christianity for the Roman Empire, allowing those Baptized to engage in these for the expansion of Rome.
What are Holy Wars?
None of us are immune to this.
What is internalized bias and racism?
Even Black churches are affected and influenced by these.
What are Evangelical Christian and White Supremacist values?
This persists and thrives in the church universal because the church is the architect of it.
Dismantling racism and decentering whiteness is an exercise of confronting fear and loathing that is fueled by this.
What is miseducation?
The theology of European superiority saving "barbarous people" led to the creation of these.
What are Indian boarding schools?
These values were inextricably bound together before and after the civil war.
What are Christian values and White supremacist values?
The putting down of the voices of these groups is leftover from colonialism and White supremacist ideology.
What are homosexuals and women?
Many who profess Christianity continue to perpetuate this, maintaining the notion of a hierarchy of human value.
What is the myth of race?
For hope to flourish, there must be a long-term, unrelenting commitment to decenter this.
What is whiteness?
Reading the bible through this lens justified murder, torture, and the enslavement of human beings.
What is the lens of European superiority?
The evangelical emphasis on the individual dismisses the need for the church to confront this.
What is systemic racism and white supremacy?
SURPRISE! 5 SECOND COUNTDOWN!
yes or no? every team gets to answer.
yes: +100 points
no: -100 points
failure to answer in time: -200 points
The church remains a bastion of empire, ever enacting new forms of this.
What is colonization?
There is little hope for these people.
What are those who embrace a dehumanizing theology?
Pope Nicholas V authored the Papal Bull Dum Diversas, the blueprint for what would become this.
What is the Doctrine of Discovery?
By equating civil rights with this, Graham established the religious basis of the ongoing legacy of political and systemic opposition to the quest for equality and reparations.
What is communism?
The standard by which ministers of color are evaluated is this.
What is whiteness?
This is ongoing even at the hands of so-called progressive Christians.
What is racialized trauma?
What are churches?
The Bible verse used to support enslavement and murder instructing "Slaves obey your masters with 'fear and trembling'".
What is Ephesians 6:5-7?
With the emergence of what was called this, Billy Graham crafted a theology of personal salvation and piety that requires one to be born again to be saved, focusing on the individual.
What is New Evangelicalism?
Authors Watson & Twomey call the failure to properly contextualize the Biblical text this.
What is theological malpractice?
This type of Christianity is more beholden to the rugged individualism of the American empire than to the story of Jesus.
What is Empire Christianity?
Dismantling racism requires this.
What is profound self-awareness and a level of spiritual maturity?