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AR 26:7 - 'Either racist or antiracist: No middle ground'?
In this issue:
CONSCIOUSNESS - the growing use of therapeutic hallucinogens
CRITICAL RACE THEORY - responding to "antiracist" ideology
ORIGINS - how not to encourage skeptics of fine-tuning
SOJOURNERS - leadership transferred from Jim Wallis to Adam Russell Taylor
Apologia Report 26:7 (1,512)
February 18, 2021
CONSCIOUSNESS
"Psychedelics As Therapy" -- reports that "when recreational use of these powerful substances became popular among hippies in the 1960s, it sparked a backlash, with tales of bad trips and psychotic breaks. [A]fter decades of underground use, research into their value has experienced a renaissance. In 2018, the FDA designated psilocybin as a 'breakthrough therapy' for depression and anxiety. A year later, Johns Hopkins University launched the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research <hopkinspsychedelic.org> - the same year that Imperial College in London launched its center."
Today the "push to legalize or decriminalize the drugs is gaining momentum." In November, "Oregon voters made their state the first to legalize the active ingredient in 'magic mushrooms' - psilocybin - for mental health therapy in a controlled setting with a therapist. Washington, D.C., voters passed Initiative 81, making the city at least the fifth to decriminalize magic mushrooms." Canada is even using it in the treatment of addiction, among other issues.
These drugs "temporarily dissolve the ego - the sense of separation of the self from everything else - and produce an 'oceanic' feeling of oneness with the universe, which is why many indigenous societies have used them in spiritual practices. ...
"Experiments have shown that psychedelics diminish blood flow and oxygen consumption in an area of the brain called the default mode network, or DMN. The DMN, which scientists have nicknamed the 'me network,' acts as a gatekeeper for consciousness, filtering out information.... As the DMN gets turned off, people experience a sudden opening of the gate of perception, ideas, and visions, with vivid hallucinations that give participants new insights into themselves and into life itself. ...
"About two-thirds of study participants ranked the therapy among the 'top five spiritually significant' events in their lives. One professed atheist recalled feeling 'bathed in God's love.' Fear of death often disappears." (Hmm. How about the other third?)
"MDMA, long known as the club drug 'ecstasy,' or 'molly,' interacts with many of the same neurotransmitters in the brain as conventional anxiety drugs. Studies show it inspires feelings of 'empathy and bonding' that can be incorporated into everyday life with the help of a therapist." (Drug-induced kindness?)
"Studies have found that ayahuasca, a psychoactive brew of several plants from the Amazon, can also have beneficial effects. Imperial College is studying how DMT, or dimethyltryptamine, known as the 'spirit molecule,' can help patients suffering from depression and anxiety. ... Painful, repressed memories and their connection to current problems can be revealed. [T]herapists strongly advise against experimenting with psychedelic substances outside of a controlled setting, warning that the experiences can be overwhelming."
Earlier in this piece we read that "Bad psilocybin trips are rare.... Psilocybin sessions typically last between four and six hours, while LSD sessions go on for 12. Robin Carhart-Harris, who runs the Centre for Psychedelic Research <www.bit.ly/3jYKqDj> at Imperial College in London, theorized that such sessions can 'reboot' the brain in a way similar to a near-death or intense spiritual experience." (Or, possibly open someone up to malevolent spiritual forces.) The Week, Jan 22 '21, p11. [3]
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CRITICAL RACE THEORY
How to Be an Antiracist, by Ibram X. Kendi [1] -- Denny Burk's review in the Southern Baptist Journal of Theology (24:2 - 2020, pp165-172) finds that "Kendi's book is not an academic treatise on Critical Race Theory. Rather, it is a popularized application of Critical Race Theory to our current moment. It is a project to transform theory into 'social justice.' Kendi is very concerned that social justice not get lost in the ivory tower of theory. ...
"Kendi <ibramxkendi.com> argues that one can either be a racist or an antiracist. There is no in-between position. There is no such thing as being race-neutral. Race neutrality or 'colorblind' approaches are nothing more than thinly veiled racism. Racism is so endemic to the American project that one has to make conscientious daily decisions to oppose racism (and thus be an antiracist) or one will be a racist. ...
"Kendi believes that we need racial discrimination in public policy in order to elevate blacks and lower whites into social and economic equity. The distribution of wealth, power, and resources in our society should be based on racial discrimination, not on notions of political liberalism or free markets.
"Kendi holds to what is commonly termed 'systemic racism,' but he wishes to rename it as 'racist policies.' ...
"Kendi insists that antiracism must be intersectional - meaning that it must not only oppose the oppression faced by racial minorities but also the oppression faced by gender and sexual minorities. In other words, antiracism is unequivocally pro-feminism and pro-LGBT rights. Thus antiracism involves a clear rejection of biblical teaching about gender roles. ...
"Kendi also contends that 'Homophobia cannot be separated from racism. They've intersected for ages.' ...
"Kendi also contends that being an antiracist entails being an anticapitalist. One cannot be an antiracist while supporting capitalist policies. Why? Because the history of capitalism testifies to its moral failure, for it has introduced into the world 'warring, classing, slave trading, enslaving, colonizing, depressing wages, and dispossessing land and labor and resources and rights.'"
Burk finds that "Kendi's renaming of systemic racism with racist policies at least has the virtue of being clear." And Burk wisely observes that "Kendi commends racial discrimination against whites as a means of achieving social justice. And yet there can be no question that racial discrimination is nothing less than racial partiality, which the Bible strictly forbids." Further, "intersectionality fails to distinguish between social categories that are morally neutral and those that are morally implicated...
"One cannot be an antiracist on Kendi's terms and honor what Scripture teaches about family structure and authority. ...
"Kendi's specious claim that 'Capitalism is essentially racist' utterly fails to convince."
In conclusion: "To say that these ideas are radical outliers with no purchase in the mainstream is to ignore one of the most consequential activist movements in the history of the United States.
"[A]ll Christians (and especially Christian pastors) will have to reckon with the ideas propounded in Kendi's book. It is an ideology with a growing base in America and even within many congregations. For that reason, pastors in particular have an obligation to recognize and challenge this teaching wherever it occurs." <www.bit.ly/2Le9uJN>
Also worth noting:
* - Samuel Sey's December 19, 2020 online commentary "How to Be a Racist" <www.bit.ly/3psB7wv>
* - "Children's Books: Too Much Too Soon" — Wall Street Journal reviewer Meghan Cox Gurdon advises readers (Dec 24 '20) that "I promised to talk about bad board books, and in 2020 we had some doozies, books so eager to cram in notions favored by adults that they make no concession to the developmental level of small children." She warns that "by far the worst offender in 2020 has got to be Kokila's relentlessly faddish 'Antiracist Baby' [2]. Alongside Ashley Lukashevsky's hard-edged cartoon pictures, the humorless Ibram X. Kendi lectures pre-verbal children. 'Point at policies as the problem, not people. Some people get more, while others get less…,' he intones, 'because policies don't always grant equal access.' Later the author tells children that they must 'confess when being racist,' as, in the pictures, we see a bald-headed baby tottering and almost falling before righting himself. Why should children do this? 'Nothing disrupts racism more than when we confess the racist ideas that we sometimes express.' There is perhaps no clearer sign of 2020's ghastliness than that this dreary work of propaganda has been a bestseller." <www.on.wsj.com/2Zrr9Bi>
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ORIGINS
"How not to be generous to fine-tuning sceptics" by Neil A. Manson -- the abstract explains: "The fine-tuning argument for the existence of God requires that the probability that the universe is life-permitting if God exists is not nearly as low as the probability that the universe is life-permitting if God does not exist. Recently, some proponents of the fine-tuning argument have reasoned as follows. 'Stipulate that the probability that there exists a life-permitting universe if God exists is one in a billion. Only the most hardened sceptic would refuse odds like that, right? So one in a billion is more than just fair to those sceptical of the fine-tuning argument. It is generous. Even on that generous assumption, the fine-tuning argument is very strong.' This article explains why the assumption is not, in fact, generous." Religious Studies (UK), 56:3 - 2020, pp303-317 <www.bit.ly/3pi2iLq>
For more on fine-tuning from our past issues, see <www.bit.ly/2UV99v2>
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SOJOURNERS
The "From the Editor" column in the February issue of Sojourners magazine notes that the Left-leaning Christian organization has transferred its leadership. "Adam Russell Taylor has taken up the mantle as new president of the organization, as part of a multiyear succession process. Outgoing president and cofounder Jim Wallis will continue to work with Sojourners in a variety of capacities and starting this fall will also have a new full-time faculty position and found a new center at Georgetown University on faith, public life, and the common good." <www.bit.ly/3rmsmFX>
An earlier post explains: "Taylor first joined Sojourners in 2001 as a Board member, and he became senior political director in 2004. He served as Board chair for four years prior to returning to the staff in 2018 as the executive director. During his tenure as Sojourners' executive director, Taylor oversaw the launch of SojoAction, a mobilizing platform dedicated to equipping and mobilizing faith leaders, activists, and their communities with the organizing and spiritual resources to engage in sustainable justice movements. He recently co-led the Lawyers and Collars/Turnout Sunday program, which in partnership with Skinner Leadership Institute mobilized more than 1,000 clergy and faith leaders to serve as voter-protection poll chaplains in nine states....
"Taylor previously led the Faith Initiative at the World Bank Group and served as the Vice President in charge of Advocacy at World Vision U.S. He has also served as executive director of Global Justice, an organization that educates and mobilizes students around global human rights and economic justice. He was selected for the 2009/10 class of White House Fellows and served in the White House Office of Cabinet Affairs and Public Engagement. Taylor is a graduate of Emory University, the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government, and the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology. Taylor also serves on the Global Advisory Board of Tearfund U.K. and is a member of the inaugural class of the Aspen Institute Civil Society Fellowship.
"Taylor is ordained in the American Baptist Church and the Progressive National Baptist Convention and serves in ministry at the Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Va." <www.bit.ly/3j9Sv7Q>
Six months before the magazine's announcement in "From the Editor," Religion News Service reported that Wallis was being "replaced as Sojourners editor after controversy over an article on Catholic racism" (Aug 14 '20). "The decision came after weeks of turmoil over Wallis' removal of an essay criticizing white supremacists within the Catholic Church, which led two staffers of color to resign from the magazine." (At the time RNS clarified that Wallis "will continue to serve as president of the Sojourners organization.") <www.bit.ly/2NiF5uP>
Read more related to Sojourners in our past issues at <www.bit.ly/3jde5It>
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SOURCES: Monographs
1 - How to Be an Antiracist, by Ibram X. Kendi (One World, 2019, hardcover, 320 pages) <www.amzn.to/3qxc1OD>
2 - Antiracist Baby, by Ibram X. Kendi (Kokila, 2020, board book, 24 pages) <www.amzn.to/3s9sOaZ>
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