Egregious Reader

Stephen Haynes is a professor of religious studies at Rhodes College in Memphis. This is his fourth publication about the young German theologian who was famously killed for being part of the Abwehr conspiracy to kill Hitler. He felt compelled to write this book to address the outsized use of the “Bonhoeffer moment” language that Eric Metaxes utilized in pleading for evangelicals to vote for Trump , among other battles raging over this long dead young pastor/leader. To get us there, Haynes takes us back to 9/11 and the way Bonhoeffer was utilized to justify America's take down of Sadam Hussein. This was clear appropriation of the most general idea of who Bonhoeffer was. It shows the plasticity of Bonhoeffer in the hands of popular American writers and public figures. Much like Jesus or God is good to pull in to justify/rationalize what power wanted to do anyway. Actually, Bonhoeffer is an even better cloak because most people don’t know who Bonhoeffer is anyway so when they hear bi...

I have no doubt that as we go forward trying to understand our country and make it better we are going to have to find new language, new maps, new models to understand. I have come across one that isn't perfect, but worth considering.  First, why do we need new models? No model explains everything, they are shorthand to allow collaboration and passing torches for giant projects like cultures and nations. The reason to change out your model is if another one comes along that explains more of the problems with the model ... the ways in which the model doesn't apply or work.  Ok, so our current model/large-scale narrative is that our society is not perfect, but it is built on equality and freedom. People come to America for this opportunity. Immanuel Wallerstein calls this universalism: jobs assigned/granted by merit school acceptance by merit marriage for love (not wealth or ethic group) equal vote equal before the law This is the "official gospel of modernity."  The op...

On white facebook (I say that in humility and to acknowledge that as a white person I inhabit mostly white spaces on facebook) I see a lot of arguments about looting and assumption that MLK would not like what is going on, even sometimes white people trying to shame the current situation using MLK as an example. To those people, I say -- Read some Martin Luther King. (I also like what Ezra Klein said that maybe the police and government leaders should read Dr. King too). The behavior they are talking about when they call for nonviolence is at most a small element of a much much larger crowd of nonviolent protesters and regular people who are mad as hell, sad as hell, tired as hell. If you want these protests to be organized then you should stop allowing people like the Minneanapolis police chief Bob Kroll to call groups like BLM a terrorist group. Wake up dummies, the biggest domestic terror groups are white supremacist! What I don't think our nostalgia brain(washing) with it...