History repeats itself as radical Christians ignore their own historical failures.
The following Bible verses were used to defend slavery and to gin up support for the continuation of African American enslavement in the United States.
--Exodus Chapter 21, verse 20:
"If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished, but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his property."
--Exodus Chapter 21, verse 1:
"When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing...If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master's and he shall go out alone."
Ephesians 6:5-9:
"Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ."
In 1820, the Richmond Enquirer ran an editorial which used the Bible to justify slavery. The South claimed that God was on the side of slavery. They accused the Northerners who fought for freedom of being disobedient to God.
Fast forward to today. We've got the same religious zealotry and reprehensible mindset, on center stage. Cherry-picked Biblical quotes defend the indefensible: Discrimination, unfairness, cruelty and treating specific groups of people as a lesser class.
But history has made it abundantly clear--Radical Christians were on the wrong side of history. And so was their God. And their Bible. Yet they come at this country again--with the same glaringly flawed Biblical riddles as a foundational basis for discrimination and cruelty. I will own slaves because God said it is right. I shall not serve pizza to a gay couple, because God says it is right.
The sad truth is, that we are not only dealing with people who lack basic decency, empathy and civility--we are dealing with people who are willfully ignorant, intellectually illiterate and unable to engage in higher-level thinking. They are like stunted children who won't see, and therefore, can't see.
With that said, there is hope because history favors decency, empathy and civility. We evolved as a species from the days of slavery. We now understand that slavery was a wicked disgrace. We recoil when we hear that our ancestors lived in a world of segregated lunch counters and "whites-only" bathrooms. We will once again, evolve forward to the point where the next generations will shake their heads at us--their ancestors--who lived in a world in which an Indiana restauranteur was proud to deny gay patrons a slice of pizza.
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