Brock Bahler 🍉 Profile Banner
Brock Bahler 🍉 Profile
Brock Bahler 🍉

@brockbahler

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Pitt Religion/Philo Prof. Philo. of Race, Jewish thought, embodied cognition, phil of religion. Books:

Pittsburgh, PA
Joined August 2016
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
4 years
I’ve made a lengthy resource: Resources at the Intersection of Religion & Racism, the History of the Black Church, & anti-Racism Work. It includes links to some of the other popular lists that are out there as well as some pivotal and ‘classic’ texts 1/
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
2 years
@tweetraychang When you’re used to privilege, power, & special benefits, equality feels like oppression.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
2 years
@paulisci Don't forget the anti-Semitic white supremacist Henry Ford tried to ban jazz claiming it caused unsociability, sensuality, infantilism, & wasmoral poison (& claimed Jews were behind it). Citation: Emery Warnock, "The Anti-Semitic Origins of Henry Ford's Arts Education Patronage"
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
2 years
@shanteerosado @TrendySocialite @ShimminyKricket @Aizehinomo Jefferson’s “Notes on Virginia” (I teach scientific racism). It’s probably not the first but certainly one of the more prominent examples. Also the founder of gynecology Marion Sims lived in the South and experimented on Black women slaves w/o any anesthesia due to this view
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
2 years
@jacobhuneycutt_ Denny Burk citing the Constitution would be like: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall . . . be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex” - 19th Amendment
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
2 years
@AnitaYandle When I begin my Holocaust lecture on how eugenics was upheld by the US Supreme Court in 1927 and the US continued the practice long after WWII was over, all of my students look like they just got punched in the gut. “Land of the free” is very much abt power & freedom—for some.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
4 months
Science & Religion prof here. One of the great myths of my field & of Euro-Christian culture in general is Western science is completely founded on Euro-Christianity. This epistemology of ignorance denies and/or coopts contributions from all cultures but let's talk about Islam
@SuspectFed
Posts By Feds
4 months
Name a single thing Muslims invented.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
5 months
@blgtylr Saving this for next time I teach my Philosophy of Race class for when we talk about how “activist” is often used to delegitimize or minimize the academic credentials of civil rights leaders & scholars. From DuBois to MLK to Angela Davis these have never been mutually exclusive
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
2 years
@BrynnSolana @shanteerosado @TrendySocialite @ShimminyKricket @Aizehinomo The treatment of Black (& Native) ppl in US medicine is absolutely horrifying. I'm sure it was pathologized. One famous 19th Southern doctor, Samuel Cartwright claimed that the desire of slaves to run away was a mental disease called 'drapetomania'
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
2 years
@JemarTisby In his little book, *Philosophy & Theology,* John Caputo summarizes philosophy as "unanswerable questions" and theology as "unquestionable answers." A bit of a generalization to be sure, but for those of us who grew up in fundamentalism, the theology description often fits.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
7 years
Dear Mr President, if you're willing to strike Syria with missiles, please accept their refugees. @realDonaldTrump
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
2 years
My current research focuses on how Christian colonialist language is deeply embedded in US political rhetoric & my god Republicans are writing this essay for me (screenshot from the Miami Herald) @profsamperry @GorskiPhilip @JohnFea1 @AntheaButler @ardenthistorian @BradleyOnishi
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
6 years
@desiringGod “The term effeminacy is not an attack on femininity itself.” Not true. All of the thinkers this cites—Philo, Aquinas, etc—believed women to be rationally inferior, incapable of courage, and only good for having babies. Their critique of effeminate behavior was TOTALLY anti-woman
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
3 years
W/ the recent slanderous takes on #deconstruction , friendly reminder: Derrida coined deconstruction He was inspired by Heidegger’s Destruktion of the history of philosophy Heidegger was shaped by Luther’s destructio Deconstruction is at the heart of the Protestant Reformation.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
4 years
@thearmchaircom Amen. And any white ppl who don’t know how to use Google, here’s a great list of resources to start with:
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
2 years
@deonteleologist “Western Civilization,” which functions as cover for 400 years of colonialism, chattel slavery, genocide & climate catastrophe, already has a tendency toward fascism. Thinking of A & H’s *Dialectic of Enlightenment* & wishing ppl actually read CT rather than making a caricature
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
2 years
@JPBGerald One of the greatest tools in the white supremacy toolbelt is to maintain its power by getting historically marginalized communities distracted so they don’t build coalitions of solidarity (Thinking of Angela Davis’s *Freedom is a Constant Struggle*).
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
3 years
This conflict is revealing once again how pervasive white supremacy is in society. Europe=civilized; Middle East=barbarian. From statements by other world leaders the message has been: Ukrainian refugees=good; refugees from Middle Eastern countries=dangerous.
@monaeltahawy
Mona Eltahawy
3 years
White privilege, white supremacy: the war edition courtesy via @CBSNews #Kyiv #Ukraine "This isn't a place with all due respect like Iraq or Afghanistan that has seen conflict raging for decades. This is a relatively civilized, relatively European city..."
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
7 months
@riahthelee Some years ago we were at our elderly (80yrs+) neighbor's house & I was talking about all the things I did to entertain my kids when they were toddlers & she just looked at me with a shocked look and said, "When my kids were toddlers I just stuck them in a play pen all day."
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
2 years
@jakeallr WTF. I was recently speaking at a conference that included a plenary by Shannon LaNier, a descendant of Hemings & TJ. He was pretty explicit that it wasn't a love story but Hemings was raped by TJ. & TJ enslaved his own children. Oh & Hemings was Martha Jefferson's half-sister 😳
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
2 years
Since I'm teaching CRT (Delgado & Stefancic and Crenshaw) in my Philosophy of Race & Religion course today, a thread abt why claiming it is "Marxist" or an offshoot of "Critical Theory" is lazy scholarship, misleading, & in many ways, perpetuates white supremacy.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
2 years
@RCallahanWaco Native American theologian Randy Woodley calls himself a follower of Jesus and refuses to call himself a Christian. I appreciate that.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
2 years
@TheAHayKid @vexwerewolf Not so fast. Bartolomdo de las Casas is considered by many to be the 1st (European) advocate of global human rights & was a family friend of Columbus. His efforts led to the 1537 papal bull Sublimus Dei that admitted indigenous ppl had rights (but the Church largely ignored it)
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
3 years
@lura_groen Or that the text begins with saying all humans were created out of the dust/soil of the ground. I've seen many colors of soil. Never white soil though.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
5 years
@megankmccabe Once while teaching Reuther on sexism a student said “this makes me so angry” to which I said: “I think it should.” Given permission to feel her emotions she burst into tears of grief (I followed up w/ her afterward). If teaching isn’t an act of love & justice what are we doing?
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
3 years
@michaelharriot As part of her school curriculum at the beginning of the pandemic, my daughter (in 2nd grade at the time) was assigned a book about Johnny Appleseed that claimed the land he acquired was “wild” and no one had ever lived there. A complete erasure of Native Americans.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
5 years
@GraceMallon3 Also European philosopher c. 1770: here’s my method I stole from a Muslim scholar; here’s my form of democracy shaped by the Native Americans & here’s my thoughts on desire shaped by Augustine which we’ve conveniently forgotten was from N. Africa. Oh and white ppl are superior.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
5 years
@BrianZahnd Respectfully, though I get your point, we must leave room for our Jewish brothers/sisters. Erasing how they read their own texts amounts to a form of cultural genocide/epistemicide. Esp after the Holocaust, we have to see how harmful such comments have been to Jews historically
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
3 years
@matthewsmithUS I wish they’d all been ready…
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
5 years
@cnkeiper So beautiful! Jesus is considered a prophet in Islam (mentioned 90xs in the Qur’an), born of the Virgin Mary, and will come again in the last days. Muslims love Jesus & respect “people of the Book.” But that he offered to pay for and replace the lightbulb?! Such generosity!
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
2 years
@CarolLeonnig @sarahposner @SecretService Today’s #January6thHearings testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson, detailing that Trump regularly broke plates & threw his food when he was angry, reveals the significant overlap between an authoritarian megalomaniac and a toddler throwing a tantrum.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
3 years
@EWErickson God has no gender because God has no body; anthropomorphic images tell us more abt us than God (Maimonides). But God is depicted in many ways, including as a women who gives birth (Isa 46:3), a mother (Isa 66:13), a wet nurse (Num 11:12), & feminine wisdom (Prov 1).
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
2 years
@victorerikray @mattjwarner Given the US had centuries of laws written to specifically benefit white people, it’s also a form of intentional forgetting.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
4 months
@seaweedanxiety @Sharon_Kuruvila In my Philosophy of Race class I trace the impact of the Doctrine of Discovery through US law beginning w/ Johnson v McIntosh & when I tell them RBG wrote Sherrill v Oneida all of my students’ jaws hit the floor.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
3 years
Falwell’s “correction” is a classic ex. of how conserv. Christianity is shaped by modernist epistemology & mind-body dualism: Christian ‘faith’ is just mental assent to a list of doctrines. No discussion of orthopraxy: spiritual formation, embodiment, rituals, virtues, justice
@JerryFalwellJr
Jerry Falwell
3 years
Just to set the record straight:
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
2 years
@AmandaHeldOpelt Bishop Myriel in Les Miserables. Jean Valjean steals his silverware, is brought back by the police, and Myriel says, "I'm glad you returned, you forgot the candlesticks!" My absolute favorite image of radical hospitality.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
6 years
@johnpavlovitz And of course their Adam and Eve are white people. Intriguingly in many creation epics, God regularly makes people out of dust or mud—which is brown or black or red. There are no white people in the Bible.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
2 years
@DrBrandhouse @HaneMaung @PsychPLockwood The tripartite view of race is way older than that, shaped by the Medieval T-O maps and the belief that all races came from Noah’s three sons.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
2 years
@raulpacheco Our Squirtle is dressed up for Christmas, and yes I’m posting this instead of working on my book that is due next year.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
4 years
@jackmjenkins the Christianity we saw at the Capital bears a lot of resemblance to the Christianity brought to the Americas by Spanish and British colonizers.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
4 years
What is beer if not yeast persevering?
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
5 years
@thomaslhorrocks I grew up fundy, went to a conserv. Xian college & worked for a conserv. megachurch & in my exp. the either/or all-or-nothing mindset of that environment is a far bigger atheist factory than “liberal” Christian colleges. A faith that can’t handle nuance isn’t worth preserving
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
3 years
@Delafina777 I teach a religion & science class, begin w/ a comparison of Gen 1 & Enuma Elish. Then we read Philo, Augustine, & Maimonides & students are dumbfounded to discover premodern scholars read the text as allegory & metaphor, not literally.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
2 years
@krisinhawaii @AnitaYandle Whitman has the definitive text on it. Wilkerson covers it in a chapter on Caste too. Hitler was inspired by our Jim Crow, eugenics, & anti-miscegenation laws as well as our genocidal assimilation practices against Native Americans. He also loved Henry Ford’s anti-Semitism.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
4 years
Why is it always the “law and order” presidents who always blatantly break the law?
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
3 years
@JoshDaws A good text should have multiple meanings, so any interpretation of scripture is valid so long as it is marked by charity - Augustine, Confessions, book XII.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
2 years
@dalepartridge Behold! One of the most powerful kings in history, with his sword and his er, tights, dress, high heels, and long hair.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
2 years
@Will_Bunch In one of the chapters in *The Sum of Us* Heather McGhee traces how college tuition skyrocketed at the same time Black and Brown students started attending in large numbers. Before that, in any states public college tuition was close to free or incredibly cheap.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
4 years
@RepFischbach "The Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the [KKK], but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace” ("Letter").
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
2 years
@w_carruthers Ah the colonialist trope of "whatever land I want to possess is a vast wilderness." Reminds me of a children's book abt Johnny Appleseed my daughter was required to read in 3rd grade that claimed he was the first person to domesticate the land. Colonialist thought is pervasive
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
2 years
@Ethnography911 A lot of times it seems like DEI is just a way of adding more chairs around the proverbial table but the table is still serving the same recipes that perpetuate white supremacy, patriarchy, classism, ableism, etc. We need a new table.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
3 years
Johnny Cash’s rendition of “Hurt” remains my favorite cover. What’s yours?
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
2 years
@JohnathanPerk Shannon LaNier (right) is a living descendant of Jefferson & Hemings. I’ve had the privilege of hearing him speak. He depicts the relationship as rape (& TJ enslaved his own children), & when news broke TJ had black descendants the white side of the family initially denied it
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
3 years
@tisaiahcho When I discuss assimilation in my classes I ask my college students how many of them have been pressured to change their name or been made fun of because of their name, and w/o fail, every person of color has a story (as do many Jews & a few Eastern Europeans).
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
2 years
@EWErickson “Judeo-Christian” doesn’t exist. There’s Judaism and Christianity. The Talmud has 5 nonbinary genders: androgynus, tumtum, aloneet, sarees chamah & sarees adam. In early Christianity it was common to believe the first human was androgynous & Augustine discusses the hermaphrodite.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
3 years
@jennfrey I tell my philosophy students that they are being invited into a welcoming & inclusive environment in which their voices will be heard but also one that will expose them to texts/perspectives that will likely make them feel uncomfortable, create doubts & trouble existing beliefs.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
1 year
@AmcCritique Kant taught his anthro & geography course (which explicitly taught white supremacy) over 80x & taught ethics 24x. He told his colleagues his Critique of Judgment was an attempt to provide a metaphysical ground for his anthropology. His teleology is also shot through w/ racism.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
2 years
@DrFrankRoberts As a cis hetero-identified male prof teaching her "Master's Tools" in a couple weeks, I keep thinking of her statement: “Difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic.”
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
6 months
@TJStiles_Author What a great thread. As a complet aside, Joshua Chamberlain is my favorite Gettysburg/Civil War hero. But I highly doubt Trump has any idea who he is 😂
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
2 years
@TubbyBats @diannaeanderson A long held view in the Catholic Church, to quote Jerome, translator of the Bible into Latin, was "when a woman becomes a saint she becomes a man." Bringing sainthood into this convo doesn't help your cause & misses the point of the OP anyway.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
4 years
@danielwalbert Many Christians want to perpetuate the misogynist belief that it was Bathsheba’s fault.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
3 years
@daniel_m_lavery Currently teaching theodicy in my Philosophy of Religion course and just brought Job up yesterday. The fact he gets set up with replacement children for the ones that died has never made any sense to me. Some losses are irreplaceable.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
2 years
@desiringGod Wait but the guy in the photo has long hair and I’m pretty sure you’ve been opposed to that as being bad/not masculine. So does the beard offset the long hair? Can you not make up your mind? Are you just making stuff up as you go?
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
4 months
First a shout out to a really awesome Science & Religion text book that addresses this myth head on, along with some other prominent myths (e.g, no scholar in the Middle Ages believed the world was flat - Greeks, Muslims, and Christians all knew that for centuries!)
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
2 years
@IBJIYONGI Not just Nazis either. The colonizers of the Americas (Spanish Catholics & British Anglicans/Puritans) developed the concept of race/white supremacy that led to the justification of chattel slavery & genocide out of the anti-Semitism & Islamophobia that fueled the Crusades.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
5 years
@thomaslhorrocks I found Pastor Rich’s timely post yesterday an apt response
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
5 years
@morgan_bell15 PowerPoint slides in church shouldn’t have typos. Selah.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
3 years
I've appreciated some of his tweets but this is peak colonialist theology. Hey we stole your land, put your kids in boarding schools, committed genocide on your ppl, molested you, traumatized you, excluded you because you're gay... but we led you to Christ so don't attack us.
@Svigel
Dr. Michael J. Svigel
3 years
Theology 101: If the theological tradition you left was good enough to lead you to Christ and disciple you as a young believer, it’s probably good enough to not constantly attack, berate, chastise, and humiliate just to justify your departure and make you feel better.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
3 years
@KevinMKruse I wonder why they never quote this part of the “I Have a Dream Speech” 🤔
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
3 years
A little thread on #deconstruction . The past few wks, my phil of religion students have read essays on the religious exp of ppl in marginalized communities, challenging students to think abt how religion intersects w/ slavery, segregation, ableism, trauma, colonialism & sexism.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
1 year
@Ameen_HGA @kkdumez Mark Noll (another historian) was right when he said, "The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is no evangelical mind." The anti-intellectualism & black/white thinking in Evangelicalism makes it difficult for them read a book with nuance.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
5 years
@joshuaray A priest gives away his candlesticks, which causes a chain reaction where a thief, a prostitute, a young girl, and a revolutionary team up to show a legalistic policeman that grace is more powerful than law.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
3 years
@prophtpriestkng 1. End times eschatology—lotta them think “God’s gonna burn it up anyway.” 2. Anthropocentrism—lotta theology is centered on human salvation & ignores everything else 3. Capitalism/colonialism—our whole current system is based on extraction of resources assumed to be infinite
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
3 years
On one level, it reveals how churches often view disability. Disabled ppl are pbms to be fixed, deviations from the norm, tests to determine the quality of one's faith. Whether it's because they're in "sin" or because it's just to "show God's glory," it's a pretty damaging view
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
2 years
@mattihaserotu @DrBrandhouse @HaneMaung @PsychPLockwood In Middle Ages, most Euro Christians believed the three known continents were separately populated by Noah’s 3 sons, Ham, Shem & Japheth. When race was invented in the colonial era, the so-called Curse of Ham was then interpreted to = black skin & used to justify slavery.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
3 years
But the spirit of their work IS deconstructive: Projects that don’t want to destroy tradition but take it more seriously by reevaluating & innovating it w/ new life, through a concern for justice, for voices that have been silenced due to a calcified tradition. Here I stand.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
3 years
@mattnightingale Indeed, I used to be so deeply entrenched in Evangelicalism, and it was actually through a deeper love & more serious wrestling with the Bible that I became progressive, LGBT affirming, accepting of Evolution, and anti-racist.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
2 years
@DrHistoryBrad You forgot: David did indeed rape Bathsheba (yes the Christians were arguing about that last week AGAIN).
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
3 years
There's a whole industry right now of conservatives [usually white guys w/ power] glibly explaining away #deconstruction , #exvangelical & #deconversion stories, often gaslighting victims & blaming them for their own questioning or loss of faith. They simply aren't listening.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
1 year
@GovBillLee @MariaLeeTN I mean, if you want to promote your Christian values to the world, you should at least know what the Bible actually says about fasting. This ain't it. Fasting isn't some kind of magical seance to fix problems but a practice to motivate us to actively end oppression and injustice
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
11 months
@ZitoSalena @PPSnews @dcexaminer I teach Jewish Studies courses in Pittsburgh. Many here believe it is possible to both remember Tree of Life today (the 5yr anniversary) AND have compassion for Palestinians. This headline is not a story.
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@brockbahler
Brock Bahler 🍉
4 years
@publicroad Capitalist materialist gain was the driving force of Christian colonialism. It's telling that the things he sees as the most important from a president are lower taxes and a strong economy.
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