Blurred Lines Between Righteous And Evil In The Declaration By Kiemar

Blurred Lines Between Righteous and Evil The United States of America signed the Declaration of Independence roughly 247 years ago. A country founded on Christian Ideals sinned against the commandments before America was even its own country. In Mathew 22:37-39 Jesus declares “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” The two most important commandments that are given in the Bible were thrown out the window when it came to people who had more melanin in their skin. The book, The Color of Compromise, by Jemar

White evangelists came to share the gospel with the American colonists. The “enslaved people connected spiritual salvation with earthly liberation” (Tisby, 45). They had hoped that becoming Christian would grant them the right to be freed. This however was not the case and many slave owners rejected the idea of evangelizing to their slaves. Theologian Jothan Edwards had a vast impact on American Christianity. He was even thought of as “America’s Greatest Theologian” (Tisby, 49). He however supported slavery due to his upper-class congregation. He eventually changed his stance on owning slaves and he accepted the spiritual equality that was given to both black and white people. The revolutionary war brought freedom to whites, but “The American church compromised with racism in the eighteenth century by permitting slavery to continue” (Tisby, 55). American can not be considered the lad of the free if there are so many people who are not

A change in legislation brought slavery back to America in a new way. Tisbe explains, “The blatant racist President Andrew Johnson who ascended to the presidency after Lincon’s assassination, ordered that the redistributed lands be returned to former enslavers, and many freed people went back to working on the land under the sharecropping system”(Tisby, 91). Even though the slaves were freed and were not considered slaves under the law, they were still treated like slaves working under strenuous conditions for very little to no money. Not only was the sharping system implemented, but terrorist groups also aimed to disrupt the lives of Africans. The KKK was notorious for lynching, raping, and torturing Black Americans. Although they are known for their harassment, it is unknown that they are protestant men. Their goal was to “not just order to defend America but also campaign to protect and celebrate Protestantism” (Tisby, 100). It is crazy to me that two groups that read the same Bible (about loving your neighbor) can form two drastically different ideas of how to celebrate the