We are thrilled to share our extended interview in the latest issue of Church & State, the Magazine of Americans United for Separation of Church & State.
Readers may recall that we’ve cited the Church & State blog and have been mentioned on the blog in the past for our posts on Ken Ham’s financing of Ark Encounter. We’re very happy that Church & State chose to feature us in an extended interview for their print publication.
The full interview is available in this month’s issue, and was posted online last Friday.
We’d love to hear others’ thoughts and responses to Righting America as well! Feel free to leave a comment below.
Hello, my name is John Kiel in Louisville, KY. The article in Church & State quotes the conclusion in your book “…has little to do with christianity’s rich intellectual and social justice tradition…” That’s interesting. I would say the evidence is clear that Christianity actually has a “rich history” of violence, killing, repression, and discrimination.What is the “intellectual…tradition” you speak of?
Regards,
John B. Kiel
John, there is no question that Christianity has a history of violence, repression, and discrimination. In fact, in Righting America we are pretty explicit about this. But in talking about Christianity — or about Judaism, or about Islam — it is a distortion of history to leave it at that. Christianity does indeed have a rich social justice tradition, as is clear when one looks at, say, American abolitionism, the civil rights movement, the social gospel, and the contemporary sanctuary movement, when one looks at (to mention just two individuals) Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King, Jr.
This said, it saddens us deeply to say that — given the evil that has been and is being perpetuated in the name of Christianity — we understand why people may conclude that Christianity stands with the forces of repression.