Humility or Humiliation?

In 1936, after years of campaigning, numerous arrests, and multitudes of newsletters and publications called things like The Woman Rebel, Sanger won a court battle that had the effect of making birth control more accessible to American women. Because of her interest in the whole question of reproduction, or more specifically the lack thereof, she was also an advocate for eugenics and the enforced sterilization of the unfit.  It’s worth noting that she was an advocate for this at a moment in history when eugenics was not just a hypothetical theory to be speculated about in classrooms, but a bloody and vicious experiment in the midst of being carried out in Germany—an experiment that several hundred thousand American men gave their lives to stop… Merkle, Rebekah. Eve in Exile and the Restoration of Femininity (p. 48). Canon Press. Kindle Edition.  I want to be careful of making overblown accusations. I don’t want to say that this author has lied. But even if she isn’t lying in k...

 

  During the 1770s, in the wealthy Rhode Island seaport of Newport, the Rev. Samuel Hopkins preached against slavery. Living in a slave-trading center, Hopkins and his congregation displayed admirable courage in opposing the business that had enriched the town and colony. In 1784 the church even refused brotherhood with anyone who participated in the trade. Hopkins, who considered abolitionism essential to a true Christian identity, regretted that his fellow citizens viewed African Americans in “a mean, contemptable light.”... But Reverend Hopkins could not fully accept African Americans as his brethren and backed colonization to remove them to the British colony of Sierra Leone... When he (Hopkins) learned that a Black congregant had married a white woman, his church excommunicated both, exclaiming that interracial marriage was “Contrary to the Distinctions that God made.” In 1818 Newport’s Episcopal Church explained that “white respectability” mandated that “no colored people be ...

Another video related to the previous one. I also want to add a bit here, relating back to what I wrote earlier about how it is not good to respond to sin with sin of our own. I can agree that sexual sin is serious. I think that the biblical commands against fornication and adultery means that sexual activities should be done between married couples, a man and a woman, a husband and wife, and that to do sexual activities outside of marriage is sin. But there are other things that are sins, too. Unjust judgments are sin; being cruel to people is sin; lying is sin. In the biblical account of Jesus, the adulteress, and the crowd who brought her to him for judgment, we see Jesus doing something very difficult: he doesn't approve of her sexual sins, but he also doesn't go along with those who wanted to condemn her. I hope we can agree that what was done to the women and children mentioned in this video was wrong; what I would hope for next is that we can look at how Jesus handled th...

 

I plan to occasionally post this message again and again, to remember what this blog is about and not about: it's not about giving an endless listing of church crimes and sins, but the hope that this list will result in humility and repentance from the church. Proverbs 11:2 When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with the humble is wisdom. Proverbs 22:4 The result of humility is fear of the Lord, along with wealth, honor, and life. Understandably, church leaders like to make much of those they consider to have been "heroes of the faith", those who have suffered persecution and martyrdom because of what they believed. Also understandably, church leaders do not like to consider that the church itself has far too often been the persecutor, that the church has been the one who kill the martyrs or who committed other gross sins. Church leaders like to portray the church as the victim, but there is another and much more unpleasant truth; the church has often been the victimi...