LIES THAT DEMAND OUR LOYALTY Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” —JOHN 8:32 The truth—how to find it, trust it, and live by it—is core to both faith and democracy. And the truth problem we now confront may be the single biggest threat to our democracy. Disinformation.
Fake news. Alternative facts. Telling lies in the public forum has become so commonplace that it has spurred its own lexicon. Of course, bending the facts and using rhetorical smoke and mirrors to highlight the positive and gloss over the negative is not a new phenomenon, especially among politicians and other powerful individuals, corporations, and institutions big and small.
Still, the idea of “truth” has become murkier than ever. Today, more than any time in my seventy-five years, separating the truth from lies has never been harder for people. Even worse, some people are concluding that there is no truth anymore, or that it doesn’t matter anyway, so let’s all just pick our favorite lies. And powerful interests and ideologies have developed sophisticated messaging, media skills, and the technology of algorithms, to go after people who are open to the falsehoods that serve their interests, perspectives, or power. Lies have become a hallmark of both political discourse and the way the news is delivered and consumed. There are countless spins or even downright contradictory reports on the same pieces of news, each carefully crafted to take hold of the target audience’s attention by serving up just what they want to hear and what will justify their existing beliefs, prejudices, and judgments. Cable news networks focus on the stories and the angles that will draw the best ratings based on viewer biases. And talk radio shows daily appeal to our worst extremes and impulses. “Fair” and “balanced” are now antiquated words long out of date to many of our media platforms. The 1949 Fairness Doctrine of the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) required those who held broadcast licenses to offer differing viewpoints on controversial matters and important issues; it was abolished during the Reagan administration. The demise of the FCC rule helped lead to the increase in media polarization.1 And that polarization is no accident. Both the practice and publicizing of politics today play on the well-established human tendency to favor the attractive lie over the difficult truth.
JESUS’ WORDS
Given this state of affairs, Jesus’ message in John 8 is more critical than ever. What did he mean by “the truth”? His words went beyond, and much deeper than just saying, “Don’t lie.” He wasn’t merely moralizing about right or wrong when he proclaimed, “You will know the truth and the truth will make you free.” He was urging his followers to recognize that truth and freedom are indivisible, that you can’t have one without the other. At the same time, he was exhorting us to recognize that the opposite was equally true. Without truth, we are slaves to our own delusions. Jesus makes clear that the opposite of truth is captivity—the loss of freedom. No truth, no freedom. Even when we believe or endorse lies unwittingly, we are ensnared in a web of dishonesty, one that gradually kills our souls.
We are trapped, and this is the very reason Satan is known as “the Father of Lies” (John 8:44). In John 8, Jesus urges the people gathered around him, his disciples, to seek truth, no matter how inconvenient and painful it may seem. The only way to break our captivity is to learn anew how to know, love, and speak the truth that Jesus promised would set us free. How do we do that? The freedom Jesus promises is not just life after death but freedom for our lives in this world—here and now. New Testament scholar Tom Wright remembers singing freedom songs as a young man in the 1960s, and so do I! Wright says this about John 8:32: Verse 32 rings like a bell through much of Christian language: free from sin, free from slavery, free from the law, free from death, free from injustice, free from debt, free from tyranny.… The way to freedom is through the truth, and what matters is to know the truth. Tyranny and slavery of every sort thrive on lies, half-truths, evasions, and cover-ups. Freedom and truth go hand in hand.2 Many commentaries on John focus on freedom from the slavery of sin. Wright says, “It is the slavery that grips not only individuals but also groups, nations, and families of nations. It is the slavery we know as sin.” He and I both grew up in religious worlds with a “small minded” view of sin, often relegated to mostly sexual sins. He says, and I agree, that “sexual sins matter” and can destroy lives, marriages, families, and communities. “But there is more to sin than sex,” Wright says, “and sin as a whole is more than the sum of its parts. When people rebel against God in whatever ways, new fields of force are called into being, a cumulative effect builds up, and individuals and societies alike become enslaved just as surely as if every single one of them wore chains and was hounded to work every day by a strong man with a whip.”3 “Fields of force” is a powerful phrase that can illuminate the spiritual nature of America’s sin of historic racism. This passage, and the many commentaries on John 8:32 and following, have got me thinking how sin is slavery and slavery is sin, and how the two are so deeply connected in America. The brutal physical chains that enslaved African Americans wore led to the destructive moral chains on the sinners who held them and denied their humanity. We have described how America’s original sin of white supremacy still endures and evolves, and those chains in the nation still continue for both Black and white lives. Lies sustained those chains—and still do. And only the truth can set us free.
Therefore, we all ask: What is the truth, and how can it set all of us free? Throughout John’s gospel, as many commentators also point out, it is Jesus himself who is the “truth, the way, and the life” (John 14:6) and he can set us free. And the way to do that, says Jesus, is to continue in “my words.” Tom Wright says to be “infected with the disease of sin” puts us in “darkness” but, by hearing and receiving Jesus’ words, we can be set free. The text goes on to show that even those who say they believe in Jesus can still be stuck in the darkness of sin unknowingly. “The same is true today,” says Wright, “that even those who are members of churches are not automatically in God’s favor. What if the people called to carry Jesus’ light into the world are themselves infected with the darkness?”4 These are questions for us all as readers, leaders, and pastors. And it is critically important that a new generation learns how to find the truth.
THE NEWS, THEN AND NOW
Let’s apply the gospel truth principles practically. When I was growing up, we all got our news from a few anchors on the “big three” major broadcast networks—ABC, NBC, and CBS. News then was like a town meeting, where we all received the same information and considered the same arguments, trusting that the only agenda was to present the facts, what was happening in our country and world. Sure, they made mistakes, sometimes showed their biases—especially mostly white reporters with racial biases and the Black news that was seldom reported; but we basically trusted them to present the general news as it had occurred and without a deliberate attempt to mislead us. My family gathered each night for a half hour after dinner to tune into the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. Cronkite famously signed off each evening: “And that’s the way it is.” And America believed him. A poll taken in 1972, ten years after he assumed his role as a CBS news anchor, declared Cronkite “the most trusted man in America.”5 We didn’t always agree with everything that he said and we weren’t always happy with all the news he reported, but mostly we believed that what he said was, in fact, the way it was. The trust in shared media that we once took for granted has gradually, and now completely, eroded over the years. In fact, television news is now the second-least-trusted institution in the country, according to a recent Gallup poll.6
Alarmingly, Congress earned the top spot. In both cases, powerful interests have caused a distrust of truth. The news, once a means of getting the populace onto the same page, has been replaced by media outlets split along ideological and political lines. With some admirable exceptions, too many so-called news sources play to the darkest fears and most deep-seated prejudices of the consumer, each spewing venom in the direction of “the other.” Many have grown tired and distrustful of “the media” and have begun seeking out other news sources. Unfortunately, this disavowal of mainstream media has turned many toward extremely partisan news sources with even less oversight and accountability.7 “The left” and “the right” seem to be living in parallel universes.
There is a real difference between deliberate lies and regular bias. But we do see each claiming their own set of truths and facts irreconcilable with the other. Kellyanne Conway, former senior counselor to Donald Trump, all but owned this phenomenon when she referred to “alternative facts.” Each side’s audience is rarely exposed to the perspective of the other and too often reject it outright when they are. Of course, there is only one alternative to truth, and that is a lie.
THE VOCATION OF TRUTH TELLING
The vocation of journalists is to tell the truth. This is a mission of the church as well. There are vocational parallels here. And there are still many courageous journalists who work hard to fulfill that mission of truth telling. In some countries that costs journalists their lives; and even in America they are increasingly becoming the targets of those powerful people who want to deny or cover up the truth. There have also always been great truth tellers who are pastors and preachers. But now, truth telling from pulpits is far too rare and, when some pastors do tell the truth about current events and offer a biblical response, even they can become targets of congregants who don’t like their “politics.” And in the pulpits of white Christian nationalism, congregants who don’t agree with the political right’s agenda being preached can be targeted or even asked to leave. I’ve had conversations with pastors whose congregations are increasingly divided along political lines, using different media sources, resulting in battles erupting on church listservs and in newsletters. When I ask what one side does when hearing about big stories and events from the other side, they say, “They never even hear those stories; don’t know those events and circumstances ever existed; and wouldn’t believe it if they heard.” Other pastors tell me how they work mightily to correct rumors and fears on their church listservs. Feeling a need to pastorally intervene, they ask parishioners to please not spread unverified information. Recovering the vocation of truth telling is one of the most important missions for pastors now. For that, we will need both Scripture and important research to help make our vocation of truth telling more possible.
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Folks, what I am finding in reading The False White Gospel, is that it is so completely attuned to what is happening in America these days, and, in the past, that it would be impossible to actually provide an overview of content. Immediately, I must say that this book just might be one of the most important books you read this year...
And why is that important? Well, take a look at the headline for this article! Essentially, we now know (I certainly didn't) under the Republican Party, The FCC abolished the Fairness Doctrine! What that means was that prior to removing the limitation of "Fairness," all news agencies were required to present basic facts of what occurred, no matter how that news might result in prejudice, bias, or just a belief in lies by readers or listeners.
Consider the basic facts presented when President Kennedy was assassinated... It came in quickly, factual, and then returned to the programming planned. In 2024, we have several total news stations, which includes hours of discussion, based upon a basic fact... However, because the Fairness Doctrine no longer "forces" stations to be fair, we have learned that those who wish to gain control, power, or money, have begun to "spin" the facts sometimes to the extent that the entire story about an event is wrong!
Consider the January 6th insurrection. In many ways, this event was based purely on LIES. And those lies which were provided by some media, such as Fox, has moved for the most part into a disinformation station, even being sued for the false information they announced during the 2020 election!
It seems clear to me that when the republican party led the move to abolish a Fairness Doctrine to ensure equal and factual coverage of news in response to the 1st Amendment, that it was the beginning of a longer range plan that was just beginning... How far back it began may still be unknown, even if we can refer to the discrimination against the indigenous natives and the Black slaves, that history had been glossed over for decades and is only now being questioned more extensively.
As many of you know, my emphasis on the Trump/ Evangelical Christian connection was what most bothered me... But little by little it is coming forth. This book makes a major forward advancement. Just prior to getting into the issues of Truth in Media, Wallis went deeply into the manipulation and other actions taken by the republican party on the basis of their White Nationalist Doctrine. Obviously we all know that white supremacy is key to Trump's MAGA movement, sponsored by some Evangelicals.
Wallis moves quickly into the decision to be made, citing from Genesis 1:26, where we learn that man was made in His Image--all humans, not just white people--all of us. And Wallis then challenges. Do you believe and accept this? And then, he moves further in that these words were also repeated within the Constitution! So, then, what could have led to a white supremacy/nationalist type of transition?
THE MORAL CRISIS WE FACE We are facing a political and even violent clash of opposite beliefs in either rejecting or accepting a multiracial democracy in America. January 6, 2021, signaled the failure of politics to find a peaceful resolution for our deep cultural polarization around the central conflict of whether human beings from different races, nations, classes, and gender backgrounds can live together peaceably and share equal power in a democratic American future. The answer is either yes or no, and each of us must make a choice. That is true for every American and every Christian. This crisis is historical, in place since the country’s founding—even before—but it now comes to a crescendo as we move from a white majority nation to a country where multiple minorities will soon be the majority—the elephant in the room for almost every political discussion in America today.
This crisis is also a moral and spiritual one with many church communities having been co-opted by, and actively participating in, America’s growing polarization. Instead of seeking to build bridges to help navigate a new nation as racially diverse as the global body of Christ, some increasingly vocal Christian leaders are propping up the very segregation that the apostle Paul called on the church to reject. Every pastor can see those critical decisions being lived out among their congregations and parishes, and every preacher with integrity must make these choices clear on the basis of the gospel.
Some national figures, scholars, church leaders, culture watchers, and journalists have been urging us to confront a rising ideology that is rooted in America’s original sin: the sin of white supremacy. The armed groups and individuals who are motivated by white supremacy are now judged to be the greatest domestic terrorist threat to our country’s security today by many law enforcement authorities. That old ideology of white supremacy is now religiously undergirded by an old heresy—with a new name: white Christian nationalism.
I believe that white Christian nationalism is the single greatest threat to democracy in America and to the integrity of the Christian witness. These choices that we all must make will have concrete moments and milestones. Election day 2024 will show and perhaps even determine whether democracy will survive or collapse in America due to legal, extra-legal, corrupt, and even violent action amidst racial and social conflict. This is now our clearest and most present danger. When politics fail, faith communities can offer a way forward because they are founded on the very equality that makes any diverse human community possible—because all human beings are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26). Do we believe that or not? That is the moral question of our day. Will we practice a politics of the image of God?
WHITE CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM IS A FAKE CHRISTIANITY
As noted earlier, the strategy of white Christian nationalism is to prevent our changing demography from changing our democracy. And to distort and manipulate religion for those false ends. American demographic changes cannot be halted. But too many white people and their political leaders want to prevent those changes from affecting the outcomes of elections and public policy decisions. And too many of those white power holders consistently fan the flames of white grievances and fears in their constituents in order to hold on to their political power. To put it even more bluntly: the strategy is to ensure white minority rule. I believe that white Christian nationalism has now become the principal obstruction to achieving multiracial democracy.
But it cannot just be defeated politically. It must be addressed at a deeper level, theologically and spiritually. We need a theology of democracy. University of Oklahoma sociology professor Samuel Perry, the coauthor of two books on Christian nationalism, writes: The fact is, Christian nationalist ideology—particularly when it is held by white Americans—is fundamentally anti-democratic because its goal isn’t “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” Its goal is power. Specifically, power for “true Americans like us”—Christians in an almost ethnic sense—who are deemed worthy to belong and govern this country. Stemming from the prior history of “Dominionist” theology, the most salient threat white Christian nationalism poses to democracy is that it seeks to undermine the very foundation of democracy itself: voting.1
How did we get here?
HISTORICAL PRECEDENTS White Christian nationalism is not new. It has been with us since before the founding of the United States, from the first landings of European explorers and settlers to the American continents—the homelands of Indigenous peoples. What is now called the Doctrine of Discovery carried the evil seeds of conquest and slavery, with the violence they required. To not know, or to deny that history, will substantially prevent a new, more just future for America. In America, Christian nationalism was always white and meant to be, so we will always attach “white” to the term “Christian nationalism” in this book. In European nations today now also experiencing an influx of refugees and immigrants of color, religion has culturally faded. But though the new European nationalism may not be so “Christian” in name, it is still “white” nationalism. “White” is coming back in Europe, uniting different European ethnicities against the arrival of “others” including Africans and Middle Easterners, even in places like Scandinavia, which have prided themselves on being very progressive. That makes this book relevant to European and other English-speaking nations, whose readers are experiencing some of the same right-wing nationalist and autocratic movements as we are here.
From the beginnings of this nation, white nationalism co-opted religion and its preachers. Listen to Cotton Mather, one of the earliest and most celebrated New England Puritan preachers in the late 1600s and early 1700s: “The New Englanders are a people of God settled in those, which were once the devil’s territories. And it may easily be supposed that the devil was exceedingly disturbed when he perceived such a people here accomplishing the promise of old made unto our Blessed Jesu—that He should have the utmost parts of the earth for His possession.”2 Early Protestant settlers believed that America was a land ordained by God for his white people. They sought to justify their possession of the land and the expulsion of its native inhabitants just as the Israelites of the Old Testament had laid claim to the land promised by God that, at the same time, was occupied by the Amalekites and other nomadic tribes. Labeling those who must be eradicated, defeated, and destroyed as “satanic” was central to the theology/ideology of conquest.
Mather was also involved, not surprisingly, in the Salem witch trials. We will never know exactly what happened at the first “Thanksgiving,” but the Indigenous people in America initially showed a willingness to help the new arrivals in their territories and even to share their land with the new immigrants and strangers. Their generosity was repaid with brutal violence that was meant to remove and even extinguish them, their children, and their culture. The theology of conquest laid the groundwork for another narrative that would become central to white Christian nationalist ideology: the “end times” eschatology, meaning the foretelling of the future—still popular with fundamentalist Christians today.
Yes, we all have our experience with seeing or reading about exactly what many of our immigrant ancestors had done upon reaching America. I have found it ironic that they then began to do to the indigenous natives, and later, to African slaves, exactly what they had claimed to have happened to them overseas... Was it not freedom--yes, freedom of religion. Yet, in all ways, those people turned against God's children, mostly because of greed, it seems to me... Perhaps only later, did they develop a prejudice against those of a different race... even claiming, for slaves that they could not even represent a full person when issues of governance began to be developed.
How did it become more and more racial prejudice so much so that the claim that now only white people are entitled to rule the land that once was totally available to the native tribes, and then worked and built by our Black brothers and sisters? And why did we cling to the old testament, even while claiming to be Christians who Loved Jesus... Who only asked one thing...that we love our neighbors--all neighbors!
I am one of the individuals, like the author, Jim Wallis, of this book and the many others that are available, that are diving into the past to pinpoint what is happening now and what must be done for the future of America. What we do know is that some part of those who claim to be christian are now a sect called Christians Nationalists... As an aside, did you know that there are over 200 different sects of the protestant faith? Consider that, when you have differences based upon issues not able to be covered by the two commands from Jesus... Love the God of All and Love all that He created (neighbors), then I, like Wallis, suggest you begin to question the doctrine you follow.
I wanted to provide a couple of others who were/are evangelical christians who have since rejectd what is happening...
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