20AR25-48

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AR 25:48 - The spiritual roots of Black Lives Matter

In this issue:

SEXUAL ABUSE - the "institutional secrecy and widespread protection" of predators in religious settings

WORLD ORDER - has "the theological inheritance underpinning our conceptions of order" begun to unravel?

YORUBA RELIGION (IFÁ) - at the "core" of Black Lives Matter

Apologia Report 25:48 (1,505)

December 2, 2020

PLEASE NOTE: Another first. We've gone all year without any interruption in sending AR each week. However, we will be interrupting our schedule to take on another project this month. This is our last issue of AR for 2020. Later next year a major unwelcome update is scheduled for the software we use to provide the Apologia ARchive. Consequently, we are needing time for what appears to be a lot of work ahead. See <www.j.mp/ar-chive> for more on this. Publication of AR should resume the first week of January.

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SEXUAL ABUSE

"Researchers reveal patterns of sexual abuse in religious settings: Sociologists expose how perpetrators use trust, faith and authority to groom victims and keep abuse secret" by Geoff McMaster (Folio, Aug 5 '20) -- begins: "A recent literature review by a University of Alberta cult expert [Stephen Kent] and his former graduate student [Susan Raine] <www.bit.ly/3lswYGX> paints a startling and consistent picture of institutional secrecy and widespread protection of those who abuse children in religious institutions 'in ways that often differ from forms of manipulation in secular settings.' ...

"Raine and Kent examined the research on abuse in a number of religious denominations around the world to show 'how some religious institutions and leadership figures in them can slowly cultivate children and their caregivers into harmful and illegal sexual activity.'

"Those institutions include various branches of Christianity as well as cults and sectarian movements including the Children of God [aka The Family International], the Branch Davidians, the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints as well as a Hindu ashram and the Devadasis.

"The two researchers began their study after Kent <www.bit.ly/3prKBcW> was asked to provide expert testimony for a lawsuit in Vancouver accusing Bollywood choreographer and sect leader Shiamak Davar of sexually abusing two of his dance students in 2015.

"Kent realized that although some scholars had written about sexual abuse in religion, 'They had not identified the grooming process and the distinctive features of it.' After the lawsuit was settled out of court, he approached Raine to take on the project. ...

"The result is 'the first of its kind to provide a theoretical framework for analyzing and discussing religiously based child and teen sexual grooming,' he said. ...

"Raine and Kent define sexual grooming as the gradual sexualization of a relationship between a person with religious authority and a child or teen, 'beginning with non-sexual touching that progresses over time to sexual contact, whereby the child may not even understand the abusive and improper nature of the behaviour.' ...

"In Nigeria, the researchers found that some Pentecostal pastors groomed children under the pretext of freeing them from demonic possession, using 'exorcism' as a euphemism for sexual assault. The pastors were protected by 'the absolute trust that the community has in them,' said Kent and Raine." <www.bit.ly/3km5y4Z>

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WORLD ORDER

"The Theological Roots of the Secular World Order" by Nathaniel Peters -- finds that "The rise of secularism concealed the medieval theological foundations of international order, but did not destroy them" in this technical review of Political Theology of International Order, by William Bain [1].

Peters first asserts that "Religious principles - frequently even religious questions - are artifacts of the past, at least among the educated movers and shakers of the intellectual and cultural world. But over the past decade or so, a number of scholars have challenged this dominant secular narrative."

To develop this, Peters summarizes scholarly claims that "secular liberalism is not as secular as it claims to be," and observes that "our post-Christian age takes theological stances in spite of itself. ...

"Bain argues that today's debates about the nature of international order have roots and take sides in the theological debates of the late Middle Ages. The secular international order did not emerge from the Peace of Westphalia like Athena from the head of Zeus. Rather, the transition from medieval to modern is a 'change within inherited continuity.' Our world claims to reject God, but its political logic still operates on analogies between the divine actions of God and the political actions of man. The rise of secularism concealed these medieval theological foundations of international order but did not destroy them.

"Bain begins with a distinction between immanent order and imposed order, two mutually exclusive ways of understanding the relationship between God and the world that lie at the heart of contemporary conceptions of international order. ...

"Two theories of order attempt this reconciliation: immanent order based on philosophical realism and imposed order based on nominalism." Discussion follows.

"Bain sees Thomas Hobbes not as a great proto-secularist, but as a great nominalist and Reformed Christian. ...

"Having laid out the theories of immanent and imposed order, Bain explores how they shaped the thought of Martin Luther, Thomas Hobbes, and Hugo Grotius." Peters summarizes this and "successfully demonstrates that theological ideas undergird the thought of thinkers like Hobbes and Grotius, which is his stated goal."

Yet, "Bain concludes, we have reached a point where those concepts have less purchase, and the theological inheritance underpinning our conceptions of order has begun to unravel...." Law & Liberty, Aug 28 '20 <www.bit.ly/32mV53c>

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YORUBA RELIGION (IFÁ)

"BLM Co-Founder, LA Chapter Leader Discuss Group's Occultic Practices ..." by Heather Clark -- "In an interview posted to social media, Black Lives Matter (BLM) Co-Founder Patrisse Cullors, along with BLM Los Angeles Co-Founder Melina Abdullah, discussed the 'spiritual' component of the movement, explaining the practices and 'rituals' performed to remember and 'invoke' the spirits of deceased African Americans. ...

"As previously reported, Black Lives Matter was formed by Cullors, Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi in 2013 in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of teenager Trayvon Martin. Cullors is a self-described 'queer;' Garza identifies as lesbian; and Tometi is a self-described feminist. ...

"During an interview in 2015, Cullors acknowledged that the group is led by 'trained Marxists' and talked about the group's aim to include homosexual and transgender African Americans." Christian News, Aug 28 '20, <www.bit.ly/2U3EWLx>

An article in Religion Dispatches (June 24, '15) explains that Patrisse Marie Cullors-Brignac - who was raised a Jehovah's Witness - "is a queer polyamorous practitioner of Ifá, a religious tradition from Nigeria, and a person many people turn to not only as a political leader but as a spiritual leader." <www.bit.ly/33AMD0Z> In a June 15, '20 report from Religion News Service she explains that "I wasn't raised with honoring ancestors. ... As I got older and started to feel like I was missing something, ancestral worship became really important...."

As part of a 2015 protest ritual outside of Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti's home, participants recited the names of "those taken by state violence before their time - ancestors now being called back to animate their own justice...." Libations were poured on the ground as the group in return chanted "Asé," a Yoruba term "often used by practitioners of Ifa, a faith and divination system that originated in West Africa," wrote Hebah Farrag of USC. BLM-Los Angeles co-founder Melina Abdullah "said it took her almost a year before she realized Black Lives Matter was much more than a racial and social justice movement," now recognizing that "At its core, it's a spiritual movement." <www.bit.ly/37mMEXr>