Friday, June 19, 2015

Southern Tier Religion and Politics

Throughout the Southern Tier of the nation, an intense evangelicalism was spread upon the wound of slavery and Jim Crow laws - a thick, gooey, perfumed, salve, that healed nothing, even as it was used, none too successfully, to obscure the stench.

And the more the wounds suppurated, the more was spread the salve.

In part, to ease the conscience ("look at what fervent believers we are"), but religion so used can never heal the troubled conscience; in fact, the conscience itself, deeply troubled, has to engage in ever-tightening circles of self-deception, making a lie of the very religion so used.

Yes, true as well, in lots of places throughout the nation (because racism is part of our DNA), but the South, I fear, is the motherlode from whence the sorrow flows and spills over into the nation.

Many in the South stand against this; yes, this I know. But the current status of the South is frighteningly regressive, from statehouse to statehouse, and my sympathies to those of enlightened mind and heart who have to live in such environments.

One can only hope that RW people in the South will see how deceived they've been by a couple of centuries of preachers and politicians.

And I can only hope that women and men of good faith and conscience will confront these evils for what they are, and offer to the world something far better.

2 comments:

  1. I tried for years and years. I know there are many people of good will and good faith left in Texas, but I just could NOT take it any more and I left them to their narrow-mindedness and hatred. I now live in Washington State, and, in addition to amazing weather, I enjoy an environment where I don't have to apologize for my governor, of my members of congress, and I don't feel like I have to spend every day/weekend in protest of something that happened right down the block.

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  2. It ain't so great
    right now up in my
    great lake state.

    Roads are crumblin'
    and the legislature
    is fumblin'

    and the educators
    are strugglin'
    and the corporations
    go a muggin'

    the gullible
    public that still
    thinks it is one
    misfortune away
    from strikin'
    it rich,
    so they keep
    votin' for
    the folks who
    put them in
    this fix.

    There's inequality
    in the cities;
    the majority
    black ones
    are under the
    governor's thumb

    and it's still
    real easy to buy
    a big, bad gun.

    Racial tensions
    are high
    and the law now
    states
    that public
    adoption agencies
    can discriminate
    against those
    they don't see
    as being straight.


    So, I do cringe
    when thinking of
    the Southern Tier
    but in some ways
    it ain't a whole lot
    better up here.

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