Under a headline, "An Open Letter to My Fellow White Christians," New York Times contributing opinion columnist Margaret Renkl chastised Christians who are fiercely in the "law and order" camp when it comes to defending the police, for failing to come to grips with the fact that there is a strong racist element in policing in the country.
Along the way she said Christians need to look in their hearts and accept some responsibility for Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin who sits in jail for the killing of George Floyd by kneeling on his neck for almost nine minutes.
"Christians set a fire every time we allow our leaders to weaponize our fears against us. We set a fire every time our faith in good police officers prevents us from seeing the bad ones," she wrote. "Christian voters preserve a system that permits police violence, unjust prosecutions and hellhole prisons filled with people who should have received the same addiction treatment we give our own troubled kids."
Writing, "We set a fire every time we fail to scrutinize a police culture that allows an officer’s own fear and hatred to justify the most casual brutality against another human being," she illustrated her point by noting, "Study the air of perfect nonchalance on Derek Chauvin’s face as he kneels on the neck of George Floyd. Register the blithe indifference in his posture, the way he puts his hand in his pocket as though he were just walking along the street on a sunny summer day. Nothing in his whole body suggests concern. He is not the least bit troubled by taking another human life."
"We created Derek Chauvin," she charged. "Every single aspect of our criminal justice system is permeated by racism, but too many Christians continue to vote for 'law and order' candidates anyway, failing to notice that more cops and more weapons and more prisons have done exactly nothing to make us safer. Failing to notice that they have instead endangered all Americans, but black people most of all."
Changing direction, she indicted evangelical Christians who are some of Donald Trump's biggest defenders for violence against their fellow man.
"We set the fire when our 'Christian' president cleared a peaceful crowd by spraying them with tear gas as though they were enemy combatants, marched to a nearby church for a photo-op and held up a Bible to imply that God is on his side," she explained. "We have to stop letting this president turn our faith into a travesty. Love is the only way to put out this fire, love and listening and the hard work of changing, but this “Christian” president doesn’t want to put out the fire. Fire is his homeplace. Fire is his native land."
"Perhaps it is ours, as well," she added.
You can read the whole piece here.
