[Verv]

How does this help you?

מֵעֹ֤צֶר וּמִמִּשְׁפָּט֙ לֻקָּ֔ח וְאֶת־דֹּורֹ֖ו מִ֣י יְשֹׂוחֵ֑חַ כִּ֤י נִגְזַר֙ מֵאֶ֣רֶץ חַיִּ֔ים מִפֶּ֥שַׁע עַמִּ֖י נֶ֥גַע לָֽמֹו׃

53:8 ישעה Hebrew OT: Westminster Leningrad Codex

Anyone familiar with Biblical Hebrew can clearly see that the oppressed Servant is a collective Servant, not a single individual. The Hebrew word לָֽמוֹ׃ (lā-mōw), when used in the OT, always means "to them" never "to him".

That is an argument people make.

But:

Most Jewish people today believe that Isaiah 53 isn’t talking about the Messiah, but about the nation of Israel, suffering at the hands of the world. Some rabbis will even claim that this was always Judaism’s view. However, all ancient Jewish writings, the Mishna and Gamara (Talmud) and the Midrashim, as well as other manuscripts, saw the passage of Isaiah 53 as a passage talking about the Messiah, not the nation of Israel. So which is it?

Jewish sages preceding the medieval scholar, Rashi, all believed this passage to be a description of the Messiah, so when Rashi controversially first suggested that Isaiah 53 was about Israel some time around 1050 CE, the Jewish community did not receive his new interpretation positively. Even Maimonides opposed it.[1]

ewish sages saw Isaiah 53 as speaking of an individual, not plural:
Targum Jonathan interprets Isaiah 53 with reference to the Messiah (singular).
The Talmud never interprets Isaiah 53 with reference to the nation of Israel (as a whole), but only to individuals within It.
The Jerusalem Talmud (Tractate Shekalim 5:1) applies 53:12 to Rabbi Akiva (singular), while the Babylonian Talmud applies 53:4 to the Messiah (singular) in Sanhedrin 98b, 53:10 to the righteous in general in Tractate Berakhot 5a, and 53:12 to Moses (singular) in Tractate Sotah 14a.
Midrash Rabbah interprets 53:5 with reference to the Messiah (Ruth Rabbah 2:14).
Yalkut Shimoni applies 52:13 to the Messiah.[2]
However, once Christian missionaries started using Isaiah chapter 53 widely as a strategy to prove that Jesus is the Messiah, the number of rabbis accepting Rashi’s interpretation as an easy solution grow dramatically up to the point where today, the idea that it pertains to Israel is the most accepted interpretation of Isaiah 53.

...

However, there are a few other possible aspects that Asur fails to acknowledge:

“Lamo” can be either plural or singular, as Isaiah elsewhere uses lamo to mean “to it,” not “to them,” Isaiah 44:15: “he makes an idol and bows down to it”. So, if we take lamo to refer to the servant, it could still mean “for him” as opposed to “for them.”
Septuagint (LXX): εἰς θάνατον (לַמָּוֶת) – The translators of the Septuagint saw a taf at the end of “lamo,” making it “lamavet” – to death. “He was led to death”.
NJPSV (New Jewish Publication Society Version) understood “nega‘ lamo” as
“For the transgression of my people to whom the stroke was due”. The servant receives a stroke for those for whom he is suffering.
So then, we can see that the Messiah can fit perfectly with verse 8 in Isaiah chapter 53.

...

The second time rabbi Asur “noticed” a plural description is in verse 9, where he believes the character is dying multiple deaths, not a single one, and therefore, cannot be the Messiah. He writes (from Hebrew): “Any Hebrew speaker will be amazed. Why does it says “Bemotayv” and not “Bemoto”? How come the word “Moto” in singular does not appear here, yet the word in plural, “Bemotayv”, does? Meaning the servant in Isaiah 53 experienced several deaths, not just one. Didn’t Jesus died only one famous death?…It is clear that the term “Bemotayv” in the bible speaks of plural not singular”.

However, both in biblical Hebrew and in modern Hebrew, a word written in plural form doesn’t always mean more than one referent, but may also indicate collectively (intensive plural). For example: פניו (Panayv) רחמים (Rahamim) אדוניו (Adonayv) are all in plural form, yet have a singular meaning to them.

Jewish scholar of Semitic languages, Dr. Michael Brown, agrees: “Such usage of intensive plurals is extremely common in Hebrew, as recognized by even beginner students of the language.”

There are only two occasions in the Hebrew Scriptures where “death” in plural exists: (1) Isaiah 53:9. (2) Ezekiel 28:10 (מוֹתֵי עֲרֵלִים תָּמוּת). Ezekiel 28:10 clearly states that Ezekiel is using plural deaths (מוֹתֵי) in order to describe a singular death (תָּמוּת).

Now, let us see how bible translators in modern and ancient times understood this verse:

As found at the Dead Sea Scrolls, this verse was written (before Jesus existed) in the singular: “בומתו”.
The Jewish sages translating the Septuagint, also understood this verse as talking about the singular, translating it: ἀντὶ τοῦ θανάτου αὐτοῦ = בְּמוֹתוֹ (death in singular).
The NJPSV (New Jewish Publication Society Version) translated: “And with the rich his tomb”. Modern Jewish version, although they took out “death”, they still choose to translate verse 9 as in the singular, not plural.
The Targum (Jonathan ben Uzziel) a Jewish translation into Aramaic translated “Bemotayv” into the singular (בְמוֹתָא) and not into the plural (בְמוֹתָיא).
If prophet Isaiah meant the death to be in the plural, he probably would have used “בְמוֹתָ֖ם” such as appears in 2nd Samuel 1:23 (see also Ezekiel 28:10)

Etc.

One For Israel

It seems to be a pretty common line, but it was the first time I have ever read about it.

Thanks for the excellent information here!

[Rich]

Well I have to say this thread has been thought provoking for me. I realise I have been at fault. In the past I have been far too unaggressive in my Pagan advocacy and far too timid in my attacks on the Abrahamic religions and Marxism.

Gay sex was not illegal in pagan Rome. in fact there seems to be evidence of unofficial gay marriage, contrast this with the sickening bigotry of Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Mormonism, the Soviet Union and Castro's Cuba.

Pagan Rome was a million miles from the ideal when it came to women's rights, but within the Pagan Priestesshoods, we see some sort of opportunity for women to gain autonomy and escape marriage. There are no such opportunities in the hideous religions of Judaism and Islam.

[ingliz]

But

Among those who seek power and gain from their religion, there will never be wanting an inclination to forge and lie for it.

— Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius, 3rd century Church leader

They saw nothing wrong with fooling the ignorant masses, reasoning that they were ultimately saving a populace steeped in unrighteousness, as the New Testament testifies.

— St. Augustine, 4th century theologian

Isaiah 53

Isaiah 53 is the fourth of the four “Servant Songs.” (The others are found in Isaiah chapters 42, 49 and 50.) Though the “servant” in Isaiah 53 is not openly identified – these verses merely refer to “My servant” (52:13, 53:11) – the “servant” in each of the previous Servant Songs is plainly and repeatedly identified as the Jewish nation. Beginning with chapter 41, the equating of God’s Servant with the nation of Israel is made nine times by the prophet Isaiah, and no one other than Israel is identified as the “servant”:

“You are My servant, O Israel” (41:8)

“You are My servant, Israel” (49:3)

See also Isaiah 44:1, 44:2, 44:21, 45:4, 48:20.

The Bible is filled with other references to the Jewish people as God’s “servant”; see Jeremiah 30:10, 46:27-28; Psalms 136:22. There is no reason that the “servant” in Isaiah 53 would suddenly switch and refer to someone other than the Jewish people.

[Hindsite]

The Gospels are totally unreliable. They don't even agree on what day Jesus was killed. You'd think Jesus's disciples could remember that. Was it on the Passover or the day after the passover. Their last meal where the Eucharist was instituted, you'd think they'd be able to remember that, but no according to John it wasn't a last supper that was a first supper. Were Jesus's disciples all in some advanced stage of dementia?

Just from a religious standpoint, if God did send his only son (who was also himself) to Earth, you'd think he'd want people to actually remember what happened. The Matthew and Luke nativity stories are completely incompatible, in one his parents live in Nazareth, in the other they live in Bethlehem. They both throw in the most absurd plot devices to get Jesus to Bethlehem in the case of Luke or to Nazareth via Egypt in the case of Matthew. Jesus! Game Of Thrones series 8 had a more convincing plot sequence. The Gospels are not even internally consistent, Luke's Temple protege story was obviously invented in complete ignorance of the miraculous birth and Angelic visitations stories.

You must undersand that Luke was not an original disciple and wrote his gospel account after investigating and gathering the information from others as he admits at the beginning. However, the gospel writers do tell basically the same story, but from different points of view and emphasis. Anyone who seriously studies the Holy Bible should be aware of the possible copy, edit, and translation errors that may normally occur simply because we are imperfect humans and our knowledge and understanding varies.

I think your problem and the problem of many others is not understanding what you read and not being able to put the gospels together into one coherent narrative. I can understand that since I had the same problem for awhile, because I had assumed that the Catholic and Protestant traditions of a Friday crucifixion of Jesus was correct. However, Jesus said, "For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." (Matthew 12:40) Also see Jonah 1:17. So a Friday crucifixion does not work.

John reports that Mary Magdalene arrived at the tomb early on the first day of the week while it was still dark and the stone had been rolled away from the entrance. (John 20:1-2)

A Friday burial at sunset and a resurrection on Sunday before daybreak is not three days and three nights.

Once I realized that a Friday crucifixion would make Jesus a false prophet and put His prophecy of a resurrection also in doubt, I began reading all the gospels more carefully, because Paul wrote that if Christ is not raised your faith is worthless. (1 Corinthians 15:17)

The following additional references also indicate the three days were to be complete, that is complete days including the nights. The pharisees quoted Jesus as saying, "After three days I will rise again." (Matthew 27:63)

Mark writes, "And He began to teach them, that the Son of Man must suffer many things , and be rejected of the elders , and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again." (Mark 8:31)

In Mark 14:58 the King James Version translates the Greek word "dia" as"within" and some other versions use "in"; but according to "The Analytical Greek Lexicon" the Greek word "dia" should be translated "through". Again, this would indicate that the three days were to be "entirely" complete.

To understand which Roman day of the week the crucifixion of Jesus took place, we must also understand the Jewish days. Many people don't realize that there are more than just a weekly Jewish Sabbath that begins at sunset and ends at sunset. This is confusing for most of us who think of only the Roman days that begin at midnight. The Holy Bible refers to other Sabbaths called "high days" or "high holy days" that may be on different days of the week.

The day of the crucifixion was a preparation day for a high Sabbath as is indicated in John 19:31. This high Sabbath was not the normal weekly Sabbath that we think of as being on Saturday. This Sabbath apparently has to do with the Passover and Feast of Unleavened Bread.

The Passover and Feast of Unleavened Bread lasts eight days from the 14th to the 21st of Nisan (Abib), which is the first month of the Jewish Festival and Religious Calendar. The 15th of the month was a day of convocation and a day of rest (a Sabbath). See Exodus 12:6; Leviticus 23:3-8.

So I believe Friday must have been a work day after the Crucifixion and the high Sabbath and before the weekly Sabbath that allowed time for the women to go to the market place and buy spices and then return home to prepare them to annoint Jesus, which they were planning to do when they went to the tomb early on the first day of the week.

Mark writes, "Now when the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, that they might come and anoint Him."
(Mark 16:1)

Luke writes, "Then they returned and prepared spices and fragrant oils. And they rested on the Sabbath according to the commandment."
(Luke 23:56)

I believe Mark is referring to the high Sabbath after the crucifixion and Luke is referring to the weekly Sabbath two days later with a normal work day in the middle.

So it looks to me like the crucifixion probably occurred on Wednesday afternoon instead of Friday afternoon. Also I think Jesus was eating the last supper Passover meal like was originally done in Egypt at the Exodus. It may be like the first of two Passover Seder meals that the Jews sometime eat today.
https://www.chabad.org/holidays/passove ... -Seder.htm

[Pants-of-dog]

Not all Jews, but some of the Jews were OK for attacking and killing Christians who they believed were heretics and a threat, as @ingliz has likewise pointed out.

Which Jews, exactly?

At various times and places, mob violence occurred against Jewish people perpetrated by Christian mobs, who believed that they were exacting revenge, often for something that would be called "blood libel" later by historians, or because of financial strife.

Sure, we can place a historical context around Christian persecution of Jews.

Anti-discrimination laws are unnecessary. It's something that sounds good, but ultimately functions as a tool for social engineering without actually providing real utility.

So you would not support anti-discrimination laws that protect Christians in those places where Christians are currently persecuted?

Would St. Paul have been aware of sodomy? Yes, he was. Would he be aware of some specific "homosexual" lifestyle? I don't know if he would have, and I do not know if there was a lifestyle that would qualify as a part of LGBTQ culture now.

So St. paul was not condemning the homosexual lifestyle or identity at all, since he had never encountered this lifestyle or identity.

(1) How would women's consent be foreign entirely? Rape is in the Bible and people who commit this face absolutely severe penalties.

Marriage, for both men and women, was thought of often in contractual terms and as an absolutely necessarily station in life. As even @ingliz pointed out earlier, Jewish society previously did not have a model for celibacy.

(2) I disagree -- this isn't the case.

Please provide an example of women’s consent being respected in the Bible.

We are told not to from the very beginning. The standards of behavior have become more stringent, and so our sexuality has to be more disciplined, not less.

Gay marriage would be an example of gay sex becoming more disciplined. Instead of an intermittent release of pent up energy through illicit debauchery, gay sex would be a part of a loving, permanent, monogamous union.

n Rome, Jewish communities enjoyed privileges and thrived economically, becoming a significant part of the Empire's population (perhaps as much as ten percent)

...

The book of Acts in the New Testament, as well as other Pauline texts, make frequent reference to the large populations of Hellenised Jews in the cities of the Roman world.

From History of the Jews in the Roman Empire

Large numbers of Jews lived in Rome even during the late Roman Republican period (from around 150 BC). They were largely Greek-speaking and poor. As Rome had increasing contact with and military/trade dealings with the Greek-speaking Levant, during the 2nd and 1st centuries BCE, many Greeks, as well as Jews, came to Rome as merchants or were brought there as slaves.[4]

From History of the Jews in Italy

There is every reason to believe that the Jews had a very substantial population outside of Judea...

Point being, what would the purpose of "moving Christianity out of Judea to Rome" be? Certainly not to get away from Jews and Jewish influence.

He did want to convert gentiles en masse, yes...

What are you aiming at?

As I explained earlier, the author of Acts was probably not Jewish and did not witness the events in the Holy Land.

And you would, of course, like a proper, knowledgeable man, acknowledge that this actually does not mean that the original book of Acts was necessarily written in that.

If we have a translation and not the original, then we have even less actual verifiable knowledge.

Heretical schools sprang up over disagreements on doctrine or existed at the periphery of established Christian sites. There is no parallel heretical group that transmitted any kind of doctrine that has a history and a prevalence comparable to the Church.

That is because the Church successfully ingratiated itself with the Romans, gained political power, then used said power to drive “heretical” groups down and out.

[ingliz]

@Verv

In the Old Testament, it is prophesied that the gentiles will be joined to God...

...as Jews

In the World to Come, nations will recognize the Jewish G-d as the only true G-d, and the Jewish religion as the only true religion (Isaiah 2:3; 11:10; Micah 4:2-3; Zechariah 14:9).

Many peoples will come and say, "Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the temple of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths." The law will go out from Zion, the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.

Isaiah 2:3

As Egyptians & Assyrians that would be equals to Jews

No.

And the LORD will make himself known to the Egyptians, and the Egyptians will know the LORD in that day and worship with sacrifice and offering, and they will make vows to the LORD and perform them.

Isaiah 19:21

And if they learn well the ways of my people and swear by my name, saying, 'As surely as the LORD lives'--even as they once taught my people to swear by Baal--then they will be established among my people.

Jeremiah 12:16

[Donna]

What a lot of conservative Christians will have to wrestle with in the coming years and decades will be the emergence of a Contextual theology revolution in both Protestant and Catholic thought. The Holy Spirit is illuminating the Church with a planetary impulse toward inculturation and indigenization.

The Christianity of white supremacism is coming to an end.

[jakell]

The majority of Christians in the world are not white, and I would say that most white Christians do not subscribe to this so called 'Christianity of White Supremacism' either.

So, let this microscopic cult that you refer to muddle along, along with all the other wacky and insignificant flavours too. Religion will always create nutjobs.

[Donna]

Hard truths about white supremacy in America

Jack Downey
March 08, 2018

In 1968, the Black Catholic Clergy Caucus’s inaugural public statement indicted the Catholic church in the United States for being a “white racist institution.” The following year, Vine Deloria Jr., a champion of Native American rights, chronicled the genocidal effects of the “Doctrine of Discovery” on indigenous peoples throughout the Americas. The year after that, theologian James Cone called the white Christian ideology that undergirded U.S. slavery and Jim Crow nothing less than “Antichrist.”

The proposition that Christianity has continuously operated hand-in-glove with white supremacy since even before Spanish, French and English seafarers first washed up on North and South American shores is not itself a new thought. However, it is also true that this suggestion is still guaranteed to offend white (liberal and conservative alike) sensibilities and elicit a cacophony of scoffing, deflection and outright aggression, all drawn from the menu of evergreen cognitive dissonance management tools.

In fact, these latter responses can themselves be seen as symptomatic of the white Christian lens’s monopoly on the mainstream historical narrative in the United States. For this reason, The Sin of White Supremacy, Jeannine Hill Fletcher’s wrenching and meticulous genealogy of the relationship between Christian thought and racism, is guaranteed to shock, depress and enrage more than a few white readers. At the same time, others will read it and think it to be among the most obvious and historically demonstrable theses in world history.

Jeannine Hill Fletcher’s The Sin of White Supremacy is guaranteed to shock, depress and enrage more than a few white readers.

By virtue of its legibility and intellectual rigor, Hill Fletcher’s work is strong meat for inquiring minds who seek to study seriously the American legacy of white supremacy.“As we seek a way forward we must see how Whiteness and Christianness have been twin pillars of the dominant religio-racial project,” Hill Fletcher writes, adding:

We need to interrogate the relationship of White supremacy and Christian identity. What this investigation will help us see is that the theology of Christian supremacy gave birth to the ideology of White supremacy, and that White supremacy grew from a dangerous ideology to an accepted position inherited by Whites. The systems and structures of White supremacy have been intimately joined with Christian supremacy, such that undoing White supremacy will also require relinquishing the ideologies and theologies of Christian supremacy.

In a cultural environment that has recently seen the emboldening of self-described white supremacists, Hill Fletcher’s work inoculates against the familiar impulse among American liberal elites to locate racism and its corrosive effects squarely within the disenfranchised, “uneducated” white proletariat, the people that Meryl Streep derided as the “football and mixed martial arts” class at last year’s Golden Globes. Hill Fletcher, however, lays bare the endemic white supremacy that is also present in the rarefied air of European and white American scholarly circles and elite-professional life. One of the many hard truths she uncovers is that virtually every white thinker in the intellectual canon in the United States was—among everything else they were—a white supremacist by our contemporary standards. This is how normalized white supremacy has been throughout modern history.

Hill Fletcher lays bare the endemic white supremacy that is also present in the rarefied air of European and white American scholarly circles and elite-professional life.

The rub here that Hill Fletcher points to is that white supremacy is not just the result of “horizontal hostility,” the case of whites in economically precarious positions revolting against proximate melaninated labor competition. This has long been a common logical presupposition in leftist “identity politics” critiques, and was most recently and prominently visible in liberal autopsies of the 2016 presidential election. But far from being a marginal feature that takes root only in the presence of white poverty, as Hill Fletcher demonstrates, white supremacy often remains a central element of Christian intellectual formation in this nation.

Hill Fletcher’s work invites readers to interrogate the deeper implications for conventional optimism regarding the liberatory promise of education, given the incredible resilience of structural racism. The most educatedmen in the history of the world contributed to designing the architecture of white supremacy. If white racism can still be usefully thought of as a form of ignorance, we must contend with the realization that it has merged with our very understanding of what “education” is, and conscripted the keenest minds in the history of white people.

Some readers will notice an affinity between Hill Fletcher’s work and texts like J. Kameron Carter’s Race: A Theological Account (2008). However, Hill Fletcher makes a particular contribution to the genealogy of Christian racism by framing its ideological roots within an exclusivist relationship to other faith communities. A conquesting, Christian supremacist universalism has served as cover for the development of a tiered “sliding scale of humanity,” one that depicts non-Christians as ontologically other while nevertheless maintaining a rosy Christian self-image as the great hope for transcendental unity. The survival of Christian innocence—the notion that American Christianity is fundamentally committed to the equality of all humanity, despite voluminous evidence to the contrary—is the soil out of which white supremacy grew, she contends.

While Hill Fletcher is unflinching in her critique of Christian theo-racial exceptionalism, she continues to find vibrant resources within the Christian tradition for the promise of white conversion, reparations and reconciliation. Contemplation of the Sacred Heart and the Ignatian Examen couple with contemporary interreligious dialogue praxis to offer proactive methods for the struggle against the enduring legacy of white supremacy. “Love looks like Christ crucified—tortured and hanging from a cross,” she writes, adding: “But the witness of Christ crucified is also affirmation of the tragedy of the cross as the negative measure of where human love has failed. The failure to love is the indictment of the cross.”

White Christians have been the crucifiers, not the crucified.

The humble, receptive posture of contemporary comparative theology models Hill Fletcher’s vision for early steps toward racial justice. However, this is predicated on the scrupulous contrition of white Christians; part of what that contrition requires is a willingness to accept the fact that white Christians are not, in fact, the heroes of this story. The figure of the Black Christ raised up on the cross of white supremacy is a legacy that belies both Christian optimism and moral exceptionalism. White Christians have been the crucifiers, not the crucified.

Hill Fletcher finds cause for hope in a “theology of intimacy,” one which can re-form an anti-racist Christian community of love, not just on the level of abstract sentimentality, but actualized through material restitution and political agency. She meticulously enumerates the systematic oppression of indigenous, black and of-color communities as concrete expressions of white supremacist ideology, and notes that white Christians’ self-examination, conversion and repentance are necessary but not sufficient, so long as they remain uncoupled from concrete structural action. And yet, in this nation that so prides itself on dreaming the impossible into reality, the mere mention of “reparations” is more likely to be met with nervous sputtering about pragmatic impossibilities than with serious deliberation. White Catholic institutions are beginning to reckon with their internal traditions of racism, but justice will remain an ever-receding horizon without a full accounting of, and divestment from, their spoils of white supremacy.

This article also appeared in print, under the headline “A History of Evil ,” in the March 19, 2018, issue.

Jack Downey, an assistant professor of religion and theology at La Salle University in Philadelphia, Pa., is the author of The Bread of the Strong: Lacouturisme and the Folly of the Cross, 1910-1985.

[jakell]

As racial supremacy runs counter to the core Christian philosophy, anyone with that disposition cannot really be described as a Christian. Therefore the concept of 'White supremacist Christianity' and any analysis based upon it is going to be in error.

Lets face it, the article above is a political hit piece, and too concerned with race to have a truly Christian origin.

[Donna]

As racial supremacy runs counter to the core Christian philosophy, anyone with that disposition cannot really be described as a Christian. Therefore the concept of 'White supremacist Christianity' and any analysis based upon it is going to be in error.

This is an appeal to purity fallacy.

Lets face it, the article above is a political hit piece, and too concerned with race to have a truly Christian origin.

America: The Jesuit Review is a Catholic publication and the author of the article is a professor of theology.

[Political Interest]

What would repentance from white supremacy entail?

I'd be very interested to know how this can be quantified.

And what is even white supremacy? Just merely being a white person is an act of supremacy?

[jakell]

This is an appeal to purity fallacy.

Not really as what I was speaking of arises from fundamental principles and not from perceived identity

America: The Jesuit Review is a Catholic publication and the author of the article is a professor of theology.

This doesn't mean that it is not sly Marxist bullshit. 'Teenage Vogue' as an example of Marxist colonization of disparate organs.

And what is even white supremacy? Just merely being a white person is an act of supremacy?

Exactly, this is just another racist attack on whites using religion as a vector.

[Donna]

What would repentance from white supremacy entail?

Deconstruction and reconciliation.

And what is even white supremacy? Just merely being a white person is an act of supremacy?

White supremacy is the content of structural racism. The definition of structural racism used by the Race and Public Policy Conference in 2004 is clarifying and comprehensive: Structural Racism...is the normalization and legitimization of an array of dynamics – historical, cultural, institutional and interpersonal – that routinely advantage whites while producing cumulative and chronic adverse outcomes for people of color. It is a system of hierarchy and inequity, primarily characterized by white supremacy – the preferential treatment, privilege and power for white people at the expense of Black, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American, Arab and other racially oppressed people.

[Political Interest]

Deconstruction and reconciliation.

This will be a slight problem if whites still exist. Whites will still reproduce, therefore whiteness will always exist.

You cannot deconstruct whiteness. Unless you mean the concept of whiteness, but then what is this even? The people will always exist.

[jakell]

Deconstruction and reconciliation.

Bullshit!

There are no amends possible or required by the people who demand such things, it is bottomless and is only about the subjugation of whites, more racism in other words.. an eternal tit for tat.

[Donna]

Not really as what I was speaking of arises from fundamental principles and not from perceived identity

You are essentially making the argument that because the core principles of Christianity are anti-racist, therefore it is impossible for Christians themselves to be racist.

This doesn't mean that it is not sly Marxist bullshit.

Accusing Christians of being Marxists because of their social justice endeavors is primarily how the Alt-Right has been appropriating Christianity since 2016 or so.

There are no amends possible or required by the people who demand such things, it is bottomless and is only about the subjugation of whites, more racism in other words.. an eternal tit for tat.

You're addicted to privilege and resentment, not to Christ's love. I will pray for you.

[Donna]

This will be a slight problem if whites still exist. Whites will still reproduce, therefore whiteness will always exist.

You cannot deconstruct whiteness. Unless you mean the concept of whiteness, but then what is this even? The people will always exist.

Whiteness is a social construction, PI.

[jakell]

You cannot deconstruct whiteness. Unless you mean the concept of whiteness, but then what is this even? The people will always exist.

'The concept of whiteness has been redefined beyond race - as 'power plus privilege' thus if all the 'white people' (only a Nazi level of classification would produce any clear boundaries here) were deleted, then white-ish people would then be blamed, and so on and so on...

There is no shortage by now of people of colour who have been classified as white supremacists and as posessing white privilege, because it's yet another Marxist power game using race a a wedge.

[jakell]

You are essentially making the argument that because the core principles of Christianity are anti-racist, therefore it is impossible for Christians themselves to be racist.

You are playing identity politics with the label 'Christian'. This is shallow and disrespecting of what religion actually is.

Accusing Christians of being Marxists because of their social justice endeavors is primarily how the Alt-Right has been appropriating Christianity since 2016 or so.

This in itself would not make it incorrect. It is wrong though, I've listened to many Alt-right podcasts and read their stuff and they have barely gone near Christianity as religion is not their thing. I don't think you find any clear examples of this and I think you've just made it up

You're addicted to privilege and resentment, not to Christ's love. I will pray for you.

Thank you very much, please put your prayer in a public post in the manner that many Christian posters do.