A Child is Dead

I.

Yesterday evening I read a post on Linked In by a woman I do not follow. I cannot recall how I found the post as it disturbed me so greatly.  This mom was writing to say her beloved trans-daughter was dead.  Her daughter no longer felt safe in the United States of America given the relentless attacks on trans-girls and women in particular, by Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Trump's administration, and the Republican governors and state representatives in this country.  These attacks purposely and legally erase trans people. The legislation put targets on the backs of every trans child and adult, opening them to hate crimes condoned by the president. 

Imagine a President of the United States saying repeatedly that an entire group of people do not exist, and stripping from them every right they have for protection under existing laws.  Imagine the same man having splashy shows of anti-trans-girl hatred where he signs executive orders aimed at harming trans-girls with a group of mostly white women and girls crowded behind him.  All of them laugh and smile as if the deaths these actions have and will continue to cause do not matter.  

This is what erasure does. It lessens our capacity to see others as human. 

II.

In Nazi Germany suicides in Hamburg up until 1938 occurred infrequently. From 1938 onwards that changed. In Hamburg, suicides dramatically increased after Kristallnacht and continued to increase with the onset of deportations in 1941. The response to hopelessness, fear, erasure, and potential violence against you can cause some to take their own lives.  The parallels between the anti-Trans hate speech and legislative actions in the US under Trump and Vance and the erasure of Jewish people in the 1930s and 1940s by Hitler and the Reich are present.

What will you do?

III.

A child is dead who felt afraid to live in this damn country. Her family now is left to grieve. 

If you too feel frustrated, scared, and isolated and want to take action against the Trump-Musk coup (Yes, coup! See Timothy Snyder here), Robert Hubbel on Substack may offer comfort, direction, and sources of action. The current post proposes methods for resistance. 

#SOL17: On Getting Into the "Christian" Heaven (or Not)

Calvary (M.A. Reilly, 2013, South Dakota)

"History," Stephen said, "is a nightmare from which I am trying to awaken." James Joyce, Ulysses 

I. 

I was walking down the street in a town where I do not live when I was stopped by a sign in a shop window. 

Only Born Again, Evangelical Christians will know salvation. 

No one else will enter Heaven.

What first caught my eye was the word, heaven, and I slowed thinking about Rob, who is dead nearly a year, and wondering what happens after death. I am only beginning to emerge from the shock of my husband's too-soon-death and am attracted to possible answers I do not have. And so I read the whole message and then thought about my husband who was kind and generous to others.

He was also Jewish.  So, no heaven for him?

II.

Evangelical Pastor Billy Graham would tell you that my husband is presently in hell.

He tells his faithful, "The hope of eternal life rests solely and exclusively upon your faith in Jesus Christ! Make no mistake about this...When Christians die, they go straight into the presence of Christ—to Heaven—to spend eternity with God. An unsaved sinner’s destiny is separation from God, a place that Jesus has called hell." (from here).

Honestly, given this rhetoric, this sense of singular entitlement, is it any wonder that hate crimes against Muslims and Jews are soaring?  

III. 

In the 2016 U.S. election, 81% of white evangelicals voted for Trump. Further in a recent poll, "[m]ore than any other religious group, a strong majority of white evangelical Protestants hold a positive view of President Donald Trump...They are also the only religious group to to favor the temporary ban on immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries" (from here). 

Is that the christian evangelical way?

Refuse entry to the dying children of Syria (unless they happen to be Christians)?

Turn one's back as families are split apart?  

IV.. 

History teaches us that it is at best, worrisome, when organized religion and politics intermingle. In more extreme situations when God's voice is heard by only a select group--mass murder is often served alongside the "saved" who murder or remain mute. One only has to think of Ludwig Müller, the man Hitler appointed Bishop to the German Evangelical Church in 1933 to understand how 'good' Christians can do evil things and do so with righteousness that defies the foundations world religions are based upon. 

Müller believed in Christ the Aryan and supported the "purification" of Christianity and the instruction of youth to pray to Jesus and Hitler. It was ordinary people, like those who prayed each Sunday in German Evangelical churches, who gave rise to the Third Reich. Those Protestant pastors who publicly objected were sent off to concentration camps. 

Love thy neighbor was written out of the Aryan bible. 

V.

For the last thirty years, here in the United States, a moral majority--the Christian right, has been flexing its muscles. Are these, like the German Evangelical Church, God's only chosen group?  Is there no Christ in this brand of christianity?

According to Graham, evangelicals who are born again don't need to be good.  They only need to confess their sins to God. 

Graham says,

“There is no judgment, no Hell, for those who are in Christ...You can confess your sins, turn your back on your sins and receive Jesus Christ as your Savior now." (from here).

No judgment for earthly sins? 

Nope.

None.

Friends, this is how evil gets normalized.