Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Empathy Mining

Home
Progressive Christian
Sins of Our Fathers: The Ongoing American Tragedy

Sins of Our Fathers: The Ongoing American Tragedy

Last updated on: September 11, 2019 at 1:19 pm by Shane Phipps

Sins of Our Fathers: The Ongoing American Tragedy 2019-09-11T13:19:30-04:00 Shane Phipps

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

I’ve often written about the myth of the Good Ol’ Days. It is a fundamental truth that there never was a Good Ol’ Days, there was only a time of ignorance. In that sense, I sure do miss the Good Ol’ Days.

I miss the days when I was young and went to church completely ignorant of the fact that most of the people sitting in the sanctuary shared very different political views from my family. Back then, I never heard my parents and their church friends discussing politics much. We didn’t have the internet so there was no such thing as social media where church folk constantly reveal their political biases through the articles and memes they share. Back then, the right to a secret ballot seemed more sacred. I really don’t think my parents’ friends knew how each other voted. Maybe that’s a naive notion, but that’s how the Good Ol’ Days work, after all.

The age of Trump has changed all that. Now there is a very public battle between fundamentalist conservative Christians and the increasingly out-of-the-closet progressive Christian movement. There have always been progressive Christians, I am a product of them, but there didn’t used to be such a need for the label. In the age of Trump, progressive Christians have felt the heavy weight of the responsibility to step out of the shadows and shout to anyone who will listen about the Emperor’s New Clothes. Ignorance has been obliterated and the truth is a heavy burden.

Within recent months, a lot more of my ignorance has been destroyed. The Netflix documentary, The Family, opened my eyes to just how deeply enmeshed the conservative Christian agenda is–and has been for many decades–with our government. And not just our government, but governments all over the world. Just as the Good Ol’ Days are a myth, so too is the concept of Separation of Church and State. It’s supposed to be very real, but it has long since been seized and neutered by a secret, cultish group of conservative Christians. The only thing standing between us and an official, rigid state-run religion is time and some members of Congress who still fight for our Constitutional freedoms. But make no mistake, there is a very organized effort to commandeer a super-majority in Congress to completely hijack the Constitution and turn this nation into a theocracy the likes of which the world has never seen. This plan has been in the works for the better part of a century. Watch The Family if you doubt me.

There is so much that we don’t know about the inner-workings of our government. The things we don’t know would chill us to the bone. We like to think of our government as the watch dog of freedom. I’ve got news for you, there is an element of our government that would love to squash freedom. There are people in our government who would love to see people who are critical of the Trump administration lose that precious right. And let’s not kid ourselves, if our government wants to shut someone up badly enough, they’ll shut them up. We like to point at evil regimes around the world that silence protest through selectively putting resistance leaders to death. Some countries do this openly, some do it in more clandestine and creative ways. We’ve seen a lot of examples of people in our own country who suddenly turn up dead–mysterious suicides, car accidents, “random” murders–and while I am not a big conspiracy theory guy, I have had my eyes opened to the fact that our government is capable of heinous acts, they just cover them pretty well.

This is nothing new, of course. History is a veritable guidebook of supporting evidence for my claim. Back in the Good Ol’ Days of the infancy of our nation, a paranoid John Adams issued the Alien and Sedition Acts, giving the government the very unconstitutional power to round up and imprison anyone who looked like a suspicious foreigner or someone who was writing critical things about the government (this article could have gotten me thrown in prison in 1798). In the 1830s, Andrew Jackson (the man who used to be my least favorite president) went directly against a Supreme Court ruling and forced through his dreadful Indian Removal Act, which was followed by the shameful Trail of Tears. During the 1940s, as we were at war with Japan, over 100,000 Japanese-Americans were rounded up and forced into internment camps, just because of their genetic heritage. As the Cold War was growing, our government, with the paranoia-driven Senator Joseph McCarthy taking the lead, began to track the political beliefs of citizens, many of whom were consequently discriminated against after being labeled as “un-American” or communist. From the late 1800s through the 1960s, the U.S. government sanctioned racial discrimination through its support of segregation and Jim Crow laws, an era that is still painfully fresh in the memories of millions of living Americans.

I could go on, but you get the point.

It seems each generation of America just keeps re-opening Pandora’s Box and unleashing all manner of evil demons–the specters of the worst of our humanity–the sins of the fathers continue to visit the sons and the sons add their own. Then, with shaky hands, we point guns at one another rather than making any attempt at atonement.

Over and over and over, we get burned.

Over and over and over, we never learn.

The bright side of Trump’s presidency is that he does a very poor job of being clandestine. Unlike previous presidents, most of whom had the maturity to keep selling the myth of a pious America, Trump can’t keep his mouth shut. He is constantly tweeting out clues to the secret agenda. He is constantly making statements that reveal the government’s targets, foreign and domestic. This gives me a degree of hope. I believe that the next generation of leadership is on to our dirty secrets. I believe that they hold the key to finally turning America into what we were always supposed to be.

So, I issue you this challenge, young people who’ll be voting for the first time next year, you have a grand opportunity to create a new America, one that can be as great as it’s always claimed to be, one that is as good in action as it is on paper.

Seize the Day!

NOTE: The theme of this piece was born of a poem I wrote, which I turned into a song. You can listen to the song at the link below.

separation of church and state

The Family

Previous Post

September 8, 2019

You Aren't Following Christ if Your Political Agenda is Selfish and Bigoted, Jesus Said So

Next Post

September 16, 2019 How Can a Conservative Christian Help Us Put Trump in the Trash Bin of History?

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category 150 word story 2nd Amendment AARP abortion addiction aging alcoholism Anderson Wigwam Andrew Jackson Appalachia Basketball bias bigotry Black Lives Matter Christianity Christmas, Constitution, Bill of Rights Civil War Clinton cloning confirmation bias Conservation Constitution Controversial Creationism Creepy tales David Bowie depression Dogs Education Election Electoral College Empathy Environmental Evolution exvangelical faith Family Family History Fantasy Genealogy Genesis George Washington Ghetto Global Warming Gun Control health care High School Basketball Hillary History Hockey homosexuality Hoosier Hysteria Hoosiers Hunting immigration income inequality Interview ISTEP Jurassic Park Kaepernick Ken Hamm Kids say the Darndest things LGBTQ Love MAGA Manifest Destiny Merit Pay Mike Pence Muhammad Ali Multiple Perspectives Music Music Review Nashville News media NHL No Child Left Behind NRA Paradox Parenting Pence Perspective Politics POTUS Poverty Predators Race Religion religious freedom Sci Fi Science Secret of Life sexual harrassment Short Stories Slavery Small Town Indiana Smashville Social Commentary social media sports Stress technology Terrorism Thomas Jefferson Trauma Trump Turning 50 Uncategorized war Washington DC White Privilege wooly mammoths words in red Writing Writing Process Writing, Writing Process Young Earth

Select a Month June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 August 2021 May 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

I climbed a tree to see Jesus passing by because I was short in stature and curious about this teacher. Who perched in the branches?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Zacchaeus Nicodemus Bartimaeus Matthew

Support this
Column