European Reckoning – Christianity’s Indictment

Go Lean Commentary

So for many centuries, Europe and Europeans have wielded absolute power on the planet. And this has not always been good for the planet. 🙁

  • Slave Trade & Slavery
  • Colonialism
  • World Wars

Every one of these atrocities yielded millions and maybe even billions of victims.

If only there was a moral guide to lead European society on how they should behave and treat their fellow man.

Wait, wait … this was the job of the Church. So Christianity’s holds the greatest blame for the failures of Europe to be a Good Neighbor.

For her sins are piled as high as heaven, and God remembers her evil deeds. – Revelation 18:5 New Living Translation
(“Her” in this case refers to “Babylon the Great”, identified as the world’s Religious Order).

The book Go Lean…Caribbean highlights the history of European expansion that led to the Caribbean society of today; see Appendix below. This commentary from the movement behind the Go Lean book asserts that the conduct of the Church during the history of the New World (including the Caribbean) is an indictment against Christianity.

“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” – Mahatma Gandhi, Indian Independence Leader and renown Hindu cleric.

The Church felt justified with the Slave Trade, Slavery and Colonialism because of their distorted values to make new disciples at all costs. This was echoed in a previous Go Lean commentary:

There was an earlier Papal Bull that sealed the fate and would prejudice the African Diaspora for 500 years. The African Slave Trade and institution of “Slavery” was legally predicated on a Papal Bull from Pope Innocent VIII (Giovanni Battista Cybo) in 1491; just months before Christopher Columbus’s historic first voyage. Consider this encyclopedic reference:

“In his book “Black Africans in Renaissance Europe”, principal author N. H Minnich*described how the position of Renaissance popes towards slavery, a common institution in contemporary cultures, varied. The book states that those who allowed the slave trade did so in the hope of gaining converts to Christianity.[11] But in the case of Pope Innocent VIII, he permitted trade with Barbary # merchants, in which foodstuffs would be given in exchange for slaves who could then be converted to Christianity.[11]

This commentary continues this 5-part series on European Reckoning. This entry is 4 of 5 in this series from the movement behind the Go Lean book in consideration of the past, present and future of White-Christian European interactions. While this series is on reconciling the European experience, previous submissions addressed European economic leadership. This submission however asserts that the conduct of the Christian-side of White-Christian-European history has been worthy of indictment and the European institutions need to be held to account. Even though the New World and the Caribbean were established by European military power – see Appendix below – the Church was aligned and complicit. The other commentaries in the series are cataloged as follows:

  1. European Reckoning: IMF Apologies
  2. European Reckoning: China seeks to de-Americanize the world’s economy
  3. European Reckoning: Settlers -vs- Immigrants
  4. European Reckoning: Christianity’s Indictment
  5. European Reckoning: Black “Greco-Roman” Wrestler victimized for his hair

The previous submissions in this series established that the US is an extension of the European New World experience. The European Great Powers are identified as the Western Alliance along with the North American countries of the US and Canada. While it is easy to accept the premise that the ancient European value system in the New World was flawed, surely today’s experiences are better, right?

Not so fast! (Notice the statements about White Christian Countries by Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Appendix VIDEO below).

The current governing administration in the US, under President Donald Trump, has revealed the continuation of White-Christian-European religious hypocrisy. If not the rest of the world, Caribbean society at least should reckon with this actuality. See this news-opinion article here:

Title – Opinion: Conservative Christians Were The Political Pawns Of 2018
By: Brandi Miller, Columnist

To mark the end of 2018, we asked writers to revisit some of the year’s most noteworthy (for good or evil) events, people and ideas. See the other entries here between now and the new year.

This year, many have found themselves playing the role of political pawns, manipulated to perpetuate political agendas. And President Donald Trump has been the chess master.

From using asylum-seekers in the migrant caravans to push forward violent immigration policy to gathering Black pastors and people like Kanye West to appear sympathetic toward and popular in communities of color, the Trump administration seems to see all people as movable pieces on a game board serviceable to his political agendas.

While most have been forced into being pawns through circumstance and systemic oppression, conservative Christians have voluntarily chosen the role of being the most manipulatable people in the game. These Christians have been politically duped by Trump, who promised movement on their issues of deepest concern without actually following through in significantly measurable ways.

“Some Christians will go to any length to gain and maintain political power, sacrificing Jesus’ values of inclusion and justice.”

If 2017, the first year of Trump’s term, was a year of hype and of creating the illusion of a Christian nation, 2018 has been the year that Trump used his pawns to do his bidding, even at the expense of real Christian values. During his campaign, he promised to defund Planned Parenthood, and in doing so, solidified a conservative Christian base. “Every life is sacred, and . . . every child is a precious gift from God,” Trump declared. “We know that every life has meaning and that every life is totally worth protecting.”

Yet Trump’s administration has made it painfully clear that he doesn’t care about life at all; he simply cares about maintaining a base. He has put children in cages at the border, disregarded the value of Black lives, desecrated Native land with the Keystone XL pipeline, oppressed trans people in the military and regularly dehumanized people through his petulant Twitter tirades.

When Trump needed people to support militarization at the border, he manipulated the traditional values of protecting your family, when he needed to exclude people from predominantly Muslim countries, he leveraged Christian fear about freedom of all other religions. Culminating in the Religious Liberty Task Force introduced by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the Trump administration has catered to its Christian constituency with a track record of either ignoring or demonizing other people of faith and simultaneously elevating and espousing (politicized) “Christian values.”

When he wanted to put Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court despite the sexual assault allegations the judge faced, Trump leaned on pro-life values that would appeal to his Christian base. And when he continuously violates all morals and ethics in his personal life, character and communication, he is able to rely on the notion of forgiveness, grace, or Christians choosing to put up with his lesser evils as long as their political motivations are legitimized and backed.

“Trump will continue to be a chess master, moving Christians toward the death of their integrity and the increase of his own power.”

This administration floats on hollow promises and grandiose rhetoric. Trump is a political siren, singing and swaying Christians away from the values of Jesus with the promise of single-issue victories on abortion, religious freedom and a seat at the political table. They seem plenty happy to go along with Trump, to the death of their integrity and the witness they so claim to desire.

It has become more and more clear that some Christians will go to any length to gain and maintain political power, sacrificing Jesus’ values of inclusion and justice in exchange for a front-row seat at this administration’s circus of oppressive activity. The sad irony is that members of Trump’s evangelical Christian base are the least powerful pieces on this political chessboard, mere pawns used to spread Trump’s message of hate and oppression.

Jesus warned against gaining the world and losing your soul, but some Christians have sold out the real Jesus in exchange for American political prestige and acclaim. Until they believe that Jesus himself is worth more than their ideas about him, Trump will continue to be a chess master, moving Christians toward the death of their integrity and the increase of his own power.

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Brandi Miller is a campus minister and justice program director from the Pacific Northwest. 

Source: HuffingtonPost Online News – Posted December 29, 2018; retrieved January 20, 2018 from: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/opinion-trump-conservative-christians_us_5c267b7de4b08aaf7a9044e4?%20fbclid=IwAR39fH9McWvQGWd0mGs7lly7F8sj3JFAvuS5GzjbAcPscj7rRAhAaLw-60w

The movement behind the Go Lean book has addressed this issue – religious hypocrisy – in previous blog-commentaries. Consider these prior submissions:

http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16477 Transforming Hindus versus Women – What it means for us?
Hinduism, Christianity, Islam and other religions have been guilty and failed to protect their congregants and adherents from the bad orthodoxies in their communities! The new Caribbean must do better.
http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16172 A Lesson in History: Jonestown, Guyana

40 years ago – 1978 – a religious atrocity transpired on Caribbean soil; this was the mass-murder/suicides of over 900 people in Jonestown, Guyana.

http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15998 Good Governance: The Kind of Society We Want
The kind of society we want to live in is even better than what was/is prescribed by Christian institutions; we want our vulnerable citizens to be protected from “Bad Actors” in our society. This must mean “Good Governance” at a standard beyond the status quo of what was provided by the nominal Christian standards left here by the Europeans.
http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15580 Caribbean Unity? Religion’s Role: False Friend
The Church has NOT been a uniting force … for good in the Caribbean region. All the European colonizers brought their own national religions that did not promote the Greater Good for the region.
http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14633 Nature or Nurture: Women Have Nurtured Change
Despite the religious orthodoxy and discouragement – “Natural Law” philosophy inherited from Imperial Europe – women have forged change in society; they have effectively applied pressure to all engines of society. The Caribbean needs to encourage and invite more women’s participation for change.
http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13579 Colonialism’s Bloody History Revisited
The bloody history of European (and American) colonialism have been revisited in modern times again and again. There must be a strenuous effort to dissuade societal defects and orthodoxies. (Colonialism is not dead with 18 Overseas Territories in the Caribbean region).
http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11224 ‘Loose Lips Sink Ships’ – Leaders Undermine Tourism
Christian leaders in Caribbean communities are projecting “a Climate of Hate” towards certain minority groups. This is so bad that it undermines the tourism products and community economics.
http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11048 Managing the ‘Strong versus the Weak’ – Model of Hammurabi
The old “Code of Hammurabi” – “that the strong should not harm the weak” was not considered in the New World because of the assumption of Christian principles. But it turns out that our region went backwards instead of forward. Time to return to a protect-the-weak stance.
http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10216 Waging a Successful War on Orthodoxy
It takes a real battle to undo bad standards and orthodoxies in society – many of them religious.
http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9766 Rwanda’s Catholic bishops apologize for genocide
The Church was not a force for moral good in modern society … in Africa nor the Caribbean. The Bishops in Rwanda owned up and apologized for their complicity in their 1990’s genocide.
http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9038 Charity Management: Grow Up Already!
The Caribbean is urged to mature and handle its own Charity Management rather than submitting to faith-based NGO’s with shady track records.
http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5462 In Search Of The Red Cross’ $500 Million In Haiti Relief
The Red Cross is a quasi-Christian organization; they abused their power by collecting $500 Million for Haiti’s Earthquake Relief/Recovery and misappropriating the funds.
http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=809 Muslim officials condemn abductions of Nigerian girls
The Islamic religious orders also have a bad track record for protecting their vulnerable populations.

For the Caribbean and the rest of the world, European-based Christian churches have not been a model for good behavior and character development that we needed to elevate and empower our society. For the Way Forward, our ideals must be Greater. The Go Lean book specified the required “Separation of Church and State” mantra that is embedded in the implied Social Contract. The Go Lean book defines (Page 170) the Social Contract as follows:

“Citizens surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the State in exchange for protection of remaining natural and legal rights”.

The book Go Lean … Caribbean asserts that the Greater Good community ethos – underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices – would be better to promote in the Caribbean region, rather than some hypocritical European religious creed. The formal Greater Good ethos can be pursued despite any religiosity. This book defines this Greater Good community ethos as follows (Page 37):

“It is the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong”. – British Philosopher and Social Reformer Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)

Reconciling and reckoning European history in the Caribbean leads us to the conclusion that there is the need to double-down in reforming and transforming the Caribbean homeland. Our efforts for the Way Forward must be better than the previous European models – based on Christian orthodoxy – and better than the American model – Donald Trump has revealed the true American priorities and it is not us. We must simply be better. The book Go Lean … Caribbean provides a full roadmap; one with empowerments, strategies and tactics to elevate the societal engines of the Caribbean homeland.

Yes, we can do better; we can make the Caribbean, our homeland, a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

About the Book
The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society.

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Page 12):

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xii. Whereas the legacy in recent times in individual states may be that of ineffectual governance with no redress to higher authority, the accedence of this Federation will ensure accountability and escalation of the human and civil rights of the people for good governance, justice assurances, due process and the rule of law. As such, any threats of a “failed state” status for any member state must enact emergency measures on behalf of the Federation to protect the human, civil and property rights of the citizens, residents, allies, trading partners, and visitors of the affected member state and the Federation as a whole.

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

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Appendix – The Guianas Historic Timeline  

Source: Go Lean … Caribbean book – Page 307

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Appendix VIDEO – Putin: US Not A White Christian Country Anymore – We Europeans Need To Preserve Our Culture – https://youtu.be/h4YfPbvL9Gk

Russia Insight

Published on Oct 18, 2017

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