{"id":3859,"date":"2012-09-18T15:39:27","date_gmt":"2012-09-18T20:39:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/frenchrevolution\/?p=3859"},"modified":"2012-09-18T15:39:27","modified_gmt":"2012-09-18T20:39:27","slug":"brian-mclarens-troubling-slavery-analogy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/frenchrevolution\/2012\/09\/18\/brian-mclarens-troubling-slavery-analogy\/","title":{"rendered":"Brian McLaren’s Troubling Slavery Analogy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I often feel as if I live in a parallel universe from my progressive Christian friends, where they know what they know, and I know what I know, and never the twain shall meet. \u00a0Every now and then I come across an instructive moment \u2014 a moment of clarity \u2014 that illustrates the utter vastness of the divide. \u00a0One such moment happened yesterday, courtesy of Brian McLaren<\/a>. \u00a0In an interesting discourse<\/a> with Patheos\u2019s<\/em> Tony Jones about the 9\/11\/12 embassy attacks and the death of Ambassador Stevens, McLaren makes a startling comparison to the era of slavery. \u00a0(Go forward to 11:30 in the video below):<\/p>\n

<\/iframe><\/p>\nDid you catch that? \u00a0He calls on us to \u201chumanize the other\u201d as \u201cwhite American living in the United States\u201d in the context of understanding those who attacked our embassies. \u00a0He recalls Uncle Tom\u2019s Cabin<\/em> as one outstanding example of \u201chumanizing the other.\u201d But who is the \u201cother\u201d than needs humanizing? \u00a0McLaren breaks the history of the Middle East into a simplistic paradigm of oppressor (the colonialist West, including the United States) and oppressed (the Muslim world), but the on-the-ground reality of the Middle East is that Muslims oppress other Muslims and other religious minorities every single day. \u00a0In other words, jihadists are oppressors<\/em>. \u00a0They may be revolutionaries, but they are not freedom fighters, and their revolt may very well plunge entire countries into medieval darkness. \u00a0It is as if McLaren is using abolitionist language to urge Christians to \u201chumanize\u201d the slaveowners<\/em>. (Interestingly, slaveowners attempted to <a href=\"http:\/\/uncpress.unc.edu\/browse\/page\/510\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">restrict free speech<\/a> to <a href=\"http:\/\/thefire.org\/public\/files\/freespeechguide\/#slaverydebate\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">protect their own delicate sensibilities<\/a> in the slavery debate \u2014 sound familiar?)<\/p>\nIt is simply wrong to use the rioters of September 11, 12, and 13 as stand-ins for Muslims at large. \u00a0In fact, we have to understand that empowering jihadists means empowering the oppression of women, the unrelenting persecution of religious minorities, and a campaign of violence against Israel and the West motivated not merely by the colonial era but by a sense of grievance that stretches back hundreds of years to much earlier setbacks in Islam\u2019s wars of conquest (remember Osama bin Laden\u2019s reference to Andalusia?)<\/p>\nBut the real energy for McLaren (and other members of the progressive Christian left) isn\u2019t on opposing jihad, it\u2019s mocking and despising evangelical conservatives. \u00a0But when Apartheid dominated South Africa, was the evangelical left primarily concerned with making sure that the white minority was treated fairly in the American press? \u00a0Why is it so concerned with the sensibilities of racist, misogynist oppressors now? \u00a0The jihadist ideology is one that would render Israel judenrein <\/em>while consigning even Muslim women to silence and ignorance, and the problem he highlights is inaccurate email forwards from evangelicals? \u00a0The real problem is evangelical hate of . . . what, exactly? \u00a0Jihad? \u00a0Guilty as charged.<\/p>\nThe prevalence of dictators in the Middle East I fear led many of us to understate the problem of jihadist oppression. \u00a0The false promise of the Arab Spring was that if we lifted the heavy hand of dictatorship, then democracy would bring freedom. \u00a0Yet we now see that some countries may even have majoritarian jihadist sympathies \u2014 with resulting brutal consequences for minorities like Christians and Jews.<\/p>\nAmerican Christians should stand with the oppressed \u2014 and against those who chant for a new Holocaust:<\/p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/K6-loAOykGs\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I often feel as if I live in a parallel universe from my progressive Christian friends, where they know what they know, and I know what I know, and never the twain shall meet. \u00a0Every now and then I come across an instructive moment \u2014 a moment of clarity \u2014 that illustrates the utter vastness […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[746,117,654],"class_list":["post-3859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-brian-mclaren","tag-jihad","tag-slavery"],"yoast_head":"\n<title>Brian McLaren's Troubling Slavery Analogy<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I often feel as if I live in a parallel universe from my progressive Christian friends, where they know what they know, and I know what I know, and never\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/frenchrevolution\/2012\/09\/18\/brian-mclarens-troubling-slavery-analogy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" 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