Rhetoric Race and Religion
I was arrested this week. This was the first time in my life that I found myself on the wrong side of the law—and it was necessary.
In North Carolina right now the Republican controlled legislature has unleashed the most comprehensive set of right wing draconian bills and laws that anyone in this state has ever seen. Most long time North Carolinians will tell you that these particular politicians (including Governor McCrory) look nothing like the sensible Republicans of the past that had kept North Carolina from being fully captured in the Old South (or the old South Africa for that matter). They will tell you that these politicians are not Republicans but reactionaries who fear a multicultural progressive future for North Carolina. Whether in fact the emerging diversity of the state’s population will create a more robust democracy is an open question, but the current legislature does not seem willing to take that chance—their ideology drives them and it has driven many of us to act in unprecedented ways.
Many people have protested against the right wing actions of our state government. I have joined those protests as well as a new organization emerging in our state, Scholars for a Progressive North Carolina (SPNC). But this week something happened to me. It was a moment of clarification. I have been writing a commentary on the Book of Acts (for the Belief series under the leadership of Dr. Amy Plantinga Pauw). I was considering the words that I had written regarding Acts 4—which is the famous story of Peter and John getting arrested and thrown into jail for speaking out about the new order established by the resurrected Jesus—and an inescapable fact hit me: I must get arrested.
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