Christians love to ignore the separation of church and state

By Chuck Hobbs

It’s June, which means that across America, it’s Gay Pride Month! Due to the culture wars that began in earnest with Republican Pat Buchanan in the 1990’s, and only worsened with the rise of former President Donald Trump’s bigoted MAGA movement and his acolyte turned adversary, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, hardly a day goes by when some member of the LGBTQ community isn’t attacked—or some Fortune 500 company, like Budweiser, Disney, and Target, is targeted by self-proclaimed “Christian soldiers” marching off to war.

To begin today’s Hobbservations, in my humble estimation, many of Western Civilization’s historical miseries occurred because one group’s religious practices compelled the belief that their god ordained them with all authority to regulate the lands, lives, livelihoods, and love interests of another group.

Consider: When one thinks about the historical subjugation

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From the shelves of classrooms and school libraries. Books that of women, one needs to look no further than the religious roots of Western Civilization. Whether it was women being deemed the property of their fathers and husbands in the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions, or, women being iced out from employment opportunities (including as faith leaders); women being unable to vote or serve on juries, or, women being unable to obtain credit cards well into the 1970’s, many of the lawmakers who made such rules par for the course did so because they believed that the Torah, Bible, or Qur’an fully instructed on the role of women— which was to be subservient in almost every way to men.

When we think about the bloody Crusades during the Middle Ages, hundreds of thousands of Christians and Muslims died all because the Papists in Europe believed that the “Holy Land,” lands that encompassed Jerusalem in Palestine, belonged to them and not to the Islamic and Arabic peoples who inhabited the area during that time span.

When one thinks about the rise of Zionism in the 19th Century, and the implementation of a new Israel carved out of Muslim Palestine following World War II, one must acknowledge that the subsequent decades of fighting

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“I’m extremely excited about this partnership and what it means for people and businesses in our local communities,” said Damon Jenkins, FIB senior feature Black protagonists or talk about Black history. And that’s a problem. Between books being banned, challenged, and removed from school shelves — and the College Board giving between predominantly Islamic nations and the new Jewish state occurred not just from political philosophies, but political philosophies tinged with the same religious dogma that fueled the earlier Crusades as to who should be the rightful owner of the Holy Land. vice president & Twin Cities Regional Market President. “A key goal when launching our Twin Cities operations was to provide resources that help close the wealth disparities gap and help individuals improve their credit score. This partnership with Operation HOPE is a great fit and will be an incredible in to bullying and altering its AP African American Studies course — there’s a lot of talk about what should be taught in classrooms, how it should be done, and who should have a say. We shouldn’t be

When one thinks of “Christian” Europe’s colonial conquests in Africa, one must acknowledge that the purported desire to “baptize” Black people that they deemed “savages” due to their Islamic or traditional faiths, was really an excuse to rape and pillage the land for its material resources such as gold, diamonds, ivory, and later oil— all the while kidnapping tens of millions of Black people to enslave in the “New World” in the Western Hemisphere.

And speaking of that “New World,” when one thinks of the Christian colonizers and their purported “Manifest Destiny,” their theory that God the Father, Son, and Holy spirit wanted his European children to forcibly take all of the lands from the Atlantic to the Pacific from the indigenous people who had been their for millennia earlier, one must acknowledge that the genocide of those people—and the multiple trails of tears left en route to small reservations— was done because some socalled Christians swore that God almighty told them to do so!

Now, if you’re thinking “but aren’t you a Christian, Hobbs,” the answer is an unequivocal “yes.” But my understanding of the faith, coupled with my academic asset to help us reach that goal.”

Financial and community leaders participating in the June 7 announcement and economic round table included:  John Hope Bryant, founder & CEO, Operation HOPE  Kenneth Kelly, chairman & CEO, First hiding history from students because they need to learn the truth, says Kathy Lester, a middle school librarian and president of the American Association of School Librarians. Plus, when students find books they’re interested in, they read more, and it creates conversation and opens up topics for discussion. training, leads me to condemn the above mentioned horrific acts by those claiming my same religion.

“I always grew up thinking that we wanted to learn our history so we wouldn’t repeat it,” Lester says. “We can learn from it and grow from it.” We can’t understand our current politics and culture without understanding the treatment of African Americans in the United States, as well as the integral role they’ve played in shaping the country, says Caroline Richmond, the executive director of the nonprofit We Need Diverse Books.

My faith and academic training are the reasons why, in all humility, I realize that Christians should never throw stones at other religions and their purported atrocities, because our so-called Brothers and Sisters in the faith, from time immemorial, have been blood thirsty and oft times, pure evil!

Such is why I refuse to join in with the modern day Christian purveyors of evil, those who talk Jesus with their mouths, but are hot for Satan in their hearts! The ones that oppose abortion on one hand, but applaud police officers who kill unarmed citizens of color!

The ones who preach the Gospel of charity on Sunday,

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 Damon Jenkins, svp & regional market president, First Independence Bank

 Tawanna Black, founder & CEO, Center for Economic Inclusion

 Renay Dossman, president & CEO, Neighborhood Development Center

“In order for us to be the nation that we claim to be — a land where all people are created and treated as equals — we have to teach our children how this has not been and still is not the case today,” Richmond says. “And so, if we’re not teaching Black history in our schools, then our students — of all races and backgrounds — are not receiving a holistic education.”

In its “Banned in the USA” report, PEN America collected book bans in states around the country between July 1, 2021, and June 30, 2022.

The analysis found that bans occurred in 138 school districts across 32 states, and these districts represent 5,049 schools with a combined enrollment of nearly 4 million students.

While the majority of states with reported bans only to ridicule the poor and dispossessed seeking asylum and work in the United States Monday through Saturday!

The ones who read the scripture about God making man in his image, only to make laws that discriminate against those men, women, and trans men, women, and children who were made to have amorous feelings for the same sex, or made to identify in a gender that’s opposite from the one assigned at birth.

You see, my faith and my academic training have taught me, more than anything else, to be careful about assigning MY personal values upon the next person or group of people. I do so because in all of my personal talks and meditations with God, He has only told me to love my fellow human beings—not judge, condemn, or cast anyone else aside based upon some arrogant belief that I am the arbiter of His beliefs and justice on Earth.

Hobbservation Point is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Chuck Hobbs is a freelance journalist who won the 2010 Florida Bar Media Award and has been twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary.

 Adair Mosely, president and CEO, African American Leadership Forum saw less than 50, some states racked up over 100, with Texas topping the list at 801 bans. But it’s not just about history books. For Black and Brown kids, it’s about seeing yourself represented in history, in a book, but also in the daily experiences that children face.

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“We want our kids — and we want every kid — to be able to see the experiences of Black children in the books that they read because it makes every person more relatable,” says Derrick Ramsey, co-founder of the nonprofit Young, Black & Lit. “If you can see that person, a Black student, doing a science project through a book, then that’s exciting to any student who wants to get into science.” Davis says there’s more power in variety than singularity because there is so much more to learn.

“It’s a very dangerous act to not allow children and people the experience of reading a variety of different texts because that’s what informs us about the world. That’s what helps us build our ideas and thoughts around what we believe,” Davis says. “If we are showing kids a singular thing, then I think we’re alienating them and we’re manipulating them.”

The Message a Book Ban Sends Banning these books sends a message — both to Black students and their nonBlack peers.

“It sends a message to Black students that their history doesn’t matter, that it’s not important,” Lester says. “Then, for white students, that it’s not important for them to learn about it or that their history is more important — which are not good messages to be sent.”

And their non-Black peers are also harmed because they end up learning a lopsided view of history that ignores huge swaths of the American narrative, Richmond says.

“They won’t have the opportunity to really grapple with our shared past,” Richmond says, “to read primary sources, to ask probing questions, and to engage in thoughtful discussion and build empathy.

Acknowledging past harm and our current inequitable society is the first step in creating real, long-term, sustainable change.” Of the banned books studied by PEN America, they were most likely to have BOOKS 7

LGBTQ+ content (41%) or characters of color (40%). Among the top reasons for book bans were titles having to do with race or racism (21%), and titles with themes of rights or activism (10%). When thinking about these book bans, Davis thinks there are some important questions to ask those doing the banning: What do you want? What do you want Black children to feel by removing those books? What does removing them actually do?

“I’m just like, ‘Why?’” Davis says. “What’s your intention? What are you saying to the kids about that book, specifically?”

For Ramsey, the message is clear: “Your history doesn’t matter. Your experiences don’t matter. Who you are doesn’t matter.” It’s a challenging space for a child who is already trying to find their path in the country and in the world.

Plus, it’s not just talking about Black history or Asian history, Ramsey says, it’s American history. “Education should be the space where you can learn about everything and anything that you want. There should be no limits to the creativity of the ideas and the dreams that you inspire into every child,” Ramsey says. “This really takes away a lot of that opportunity to see what you could be, even if you hadn’t thought about it before.”

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