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.
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.
ReplyDeleteIt ain't so great
ReplyDeleteright 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.