Christian Soldiers
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/02/jim_crow_south_s_lynching_of_blacks_and_christianity_the_terror_inflicted.html
The lynching and torture of blacks in the Jim Crow South werent just acts of racism. They were religious rituals.
By Jamelle Bouie
A Ku Klux Klan rally in Frederick, Maryland, in 1980.
Photo by MPI/Getty Images
The cliché is that Americans have a short memory, but since Saturday, a number of us have been arguing over medieval religious wars and whether they have any lessons for todays violence in the Middle East.
For those still unaware, this debate comes after President Obamas comments at the annual National Prayer Breakfast, whereafter condemning Islamic radical group ISIS as a death culthe offered a moderating thought. Lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ
So this is not unique to one group or one religion. There is a tendency in us, a sinful tendency that can pervert and distort our faith.
Its a straightforward pointno faith has a particular monopoly on religious arrogancethats become a partisan flashpoint, as conservatives harangue the president for equating crusading Christians to Islamic radicals, accuse him of anti-Christian beliefs, and wonder why he would mention a centuries-old conflict, even if it has some analogies to the present day.
What we have missed in the argument over the Crusades, however, is Obamas mention of slavery and Jim Crow. At the Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates puts his focus on religious justifications for American bondage, and its worth doing the same for its post-bellum successor. And since were thinking in terms of religious violence, our eyes should turn toward the most brutal spectacle of Jim Crows reign, the lynching.
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