I never noticed that God was holding a whip, too.
I'm reading South to America, by Imani Perry, and something she said has stopped me cold. I want to explore that a bit here.
In South to America, Perry examines the history of the South, as steeped in racism and bigotry and blood as it is, examining what it is today and how it got there. She recounts a conversation she (a black woman) had with a Lyft driver (a white woman) who lost everything, found Jesus, and started breaking into hospitals to perform faith healings. She did this with full faith in and justification in her actions, because she was acting in the name of Jesus, and that gave her dominion over...who? Over what?
Perry pointed out that the promises this woman held to, of God the Father and the Son coming to make their abode with her in heaven, to rule over... Who? Over what? These promises were made from the mouths of preachers who taught a Master's God, a White God, a God handed down from the slave plantations that defined the South for generations. It is these promises that she held to, destitute and penniless before she was saved by Jesus.
I quote Perry directly here: "The God I was taught to believe in, a God rendered by the enslaved, was and remains at odds with that God. The God we'd been taught was the God of Exodus, the one who thundered "Let my people go." Our God saw Caesar's way was wrong, not because of who was on top and who was on bottom, but because of the addiction to the idea of top and bottom, and the sin of working people to death, and the crises of vice and viciousness."
"Our roots take different routes."
The unquestioned and universally accepted doctrine that I was "a chosen generation", held to come to earth in "the last days", was taught to me since I was a child. That I was among God's noblest spirit children, prepared to deal with the challenges of the world today. Coded in that, explicitly, was the doctrine that I would have dominion and power over spirits and eventually my own family, to "rule in Zion." This is the same White God that Perry identifies, just wearing a suit and tie. This is a radical shift in how I think about Mormonism, a religion that still has in it's scriptures that black skin is a curse from God, that once espoused that Blackness was a curse for indolence and laziness in the preexistence. I see now that the men teaching me my catechism were holding whips and teaching me to do the same, I just never noticed that God was holding one too.
After Perry finished her ride, she prayed with the driver. I quote her directly again: "As I was praying, I could not in good faith respond to her with revulsion. I had an ethical obligation to wish her well. And so, as usually is the case, I prayed against the cruel violence of dominion and diminishment. And armed with the belief in things unseen and miracles alike, I prayed she might be swayed to love the God of slaves. That God is far more tender than the one she praises, even to women like her."
I remain an atheist, but I pray for the same.