A lot of us just don’t read too much of Mark Twain. He’s problematical, and I get that. But I read a lot of his work when I was young, and one of the works he wrote has stayed with me since my teens.

It’s the story of “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyville.” A mysterious stranger is slighted while visiting a small town that prided itself on its incorruptibility, and vows his revenge is to reveal the corruption in them all. How he does it, and how the people fall, is the entire story, so I won’t tell it here.

But the key thing here is that these people thought they were pure and honest and moral and just, and couldn’t make a bad choice because, after all, they were incorruptible. …

THE QUESTION HAS BEEN ASKED about what we do with the Trump supporters in our life. They are our friends. Our neighbors. Our families. Our church members. The owners of the shops we still buy from even during a pandemic. Teachers. Doctors. Hair cutters/stylists.

Do we keep them in our lives? How will they ever know what they did wrong if we’re not there, in their lives, to teach them?

I think these are honest, sincere questions. I think they are valid. But I think they require honest answers, even if the answers are hard to take.

Let’s set this up as a…

A friend recently lamented about his experience as a Black man in America, a Black Christian in America, and even a Black scholar in America.

The recent events in Georgia and Louisville and Minneapolis are still fresh in his mind when he heard, almost back-to-back, of the shooting death of Trayford Pellerin in Lafayette, Louisiana and the shooting and resulting emergency rescue of Jacob Black in Kenosha, Wisconsin. There was also a shooting death of Anthony McClain, in Pasadena, California. They were Black men, and were shot by police in recent days.

He expressed his lament on social media, and within an hour or so a white pastor came into the conversation to tell him that his grief was both misplaced and too early. “It is too soon to grieve because we do not know all the facts.” And then proceeded to tell my friend why he was wrong to grieve and lament over the shooting of yet another Black man, because — and I’m speculating here — we can’t grieve the critical harm meted out to a Black man by the police, even if it results in death, until we have a complete investigation. “Hold your tears until the inquest is done. Just button up and bear the grief in silence.” …

Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night. — All About Eve. Joseph L. Mankiewicz (scriptwriter)

I’m seeing a lot of discussion about “Critical Race Theory,” or “CRT.” I’m not a scholar of Critical Theory (CT) in the first place, so Critical Race Theory, which is a subset of CT, is somewhat understandable to me as a method to analyze social structures according to the power arrangements among the groups comprising that society. When race becomes part of the power distribution, then it’s “Critical Race Theory.” …

There is a great discussion elsewhere about whether certain politicians are Christian.

Now, while American politics and government are purported to be religion-neutral, we have a general consensus that a pro forma “nod to God” is a good thing for the American citizenry. Such a nod is on our currency, in our national pledge, and part of our swearing-in ceremonies for citizenship and political leadership.

There is also a great temptation to use religion as a sword to identify the “good people” in a political decision.

So it is with the recent candidacies of certain people for high political office.

The question is raised, frequently: “is X a Christian?” …

Sometimes we think that because we’re white we’re race-neutral, and don’t have to do anything more to bring justice and equity because we’ve done nothing “wrong” — we’re just existing.

I understand that. I share that feeling of contentment and non-involvement.

HOWEVER.

It is not true. We are settled in our ways of contentment which have frozen injustice and inequality in our favor. That is a very comfortable place to be, and it is tempting to keep it that way through non-involvement and even resentment when we’re challenged by the world around us.

A few weekends ago, a white nationalist/racist mob attacked Black churches in D.C., tearing down and burning their church property. There is a long, long tradition in America of white churches not only ignoring Black brothers and sisters but of actively seeking to close down their uniqueness and silence their voices. (Witness the attempts by the Southern Baptist Church recently to silence the theologians who say that we must consider all aspects of this fallen world when we craft our faith and our faithful responses for healing — a silencing directed at critics who show that white theologians and policy and power structures still today exclude Black voices and interests.) …

How to Fight Racism: Courageous Christianity and the Journey Toward Racial Justice is Jemar Tisby’s second published work. In his first book, The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism, Tisby takes us through the 400 or so years of American history, bringing to light the ways in which racism is deeply built into and widely spread through American life, focusing on the religious basis of American racism. …

Medium is a great place to tell stories, whether they are personal essays, persuasive arguments, marketing pitches for your product or service, or contributions to the betterment of humanity.

Depending upon not only what you write, but how you write, you can find a growing audience of readers who will enjoy your work, follow your postings, and help generate a source of income for you. (See Getting started with the Medium Partner Program for more details on that. Some writers make significant bank from their writing.)

And one great tool for seeing your work get a wider distribution are Medium Publications, which are collections of content gathered together in a form that makes it easy for readers to find related content. Because publications are not only a type of aggregated content but also have subscribers who get regular updates in their mailboxes about the publication contents, you can be sure that you have interested readers who want to read what you write. …