Broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios.
I'd like to welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher, where our mission is to foster allyship empathy and understanding.
I am your host, Ramsey's Jah.
He is Ramsy's Jah, I am q Ward. You are listening to Cilic Cipher.
Indeed you are, And there's a lot to stick around for today, especially because today we're going to be talking about the intersection of faith and faith, baith based traditions of stuff to say, the intersection of that in politics, and a lot of times what we're seeing is and what we've seen throughout the history of this country, is that people will use religion Christianity specifically to justify their politics, and in doing so, they completely change the intention that
most Biblical scholars would assign to texts and narratives that they would assign to those those passages. And so we need you to know about that and how to identify it and how to push back against it. And for the second part of the show, we're going to spend some time discussing in online exchange that was had where an individual effectively said that we should go back to Africa. There's more to the story. But you know, we'll break it down when we get there. But you know, there are people out.
There who really feel that way.
They sincerely think that, you know, if you're not happy in this country, should just go back to Africa. It's also simple to them. And maybe they're good people, maybe they're well intentioned, but the fact of the matter is that these people exist and it's up to us to have these conversations for your benefits, so that if you encounter folks like this, you know how to approach them, and you know, if you have a degree of empathy and they're willing to have a conversation, I think that
bridges can be built in that space as well. So stay tuned for that and so much more on today's show. But first and foremost, like we always do at this time, let's discuss some ebony excellent, shall we we shall?
This week's ebony Excellence is brought to you by Actively Black. Visit actively black dot com. There is Greatness in our DNA facts from Humble Texas. Viakp RC, a six year old boy in Texas, may be one of the smartest kids in the state. In fact, he may be one of the smartest kids in the country. Chandler Hughes has joined MENSA, a society for people with high IQs. It's a special fraternity of people who are essentially geniuses. Chandler started reading before he was two years old and wants
to be a doctor someday. Quote a medical doctor because I want to help people when they are sick.
Chandler clarified.
When he was in pre k, Chandler's dad said his son finished on a second grade reading and math level.
He went straight to first grade. He completely skipped kindergarten. Bes Chandler may be.
Book smart, but his dad said the next step is to work on his socialization to help him continue to succeed in life. Young Chandler, you are not just ahead of where I was head of your class, freak, but I think you are ahead of most of us who it's seeming to have this what I.
Want to be when I grow up then figured out already.
Yeah, man, so shouts the Chandler and his father for providing us with such an inspirational story.
I think I want to be like Chandler when I grow up. Sure, sure you know.
We do get an opportunity to cite an example of black excellence. We call it ebony excellence on the show here, of course, but we do get to cite an example every week, just because our stories are not all doom and gloom and police killing us and everything bad happened and or politically disenfranchised. There is excellence from our communities as well, and so today's example certainly feels like something
that is more than worthy of that. And you know, a little black genius child is never a bad thing, especially when you're trying to change the narrative. Right, speaking of changing the narrative, Christ in politics, why don't you start us off? Q?
Should I start with the video or do you want to just hear how I feel about this thing?
Let's start with how you feel. You know you have a unique perspective here.
Well, you know I spent six days a week in church as a child, and then when school was out, I spent mornings, afternoons and evenings in church. On those six days provided this thing called vacation, Bible school, revivals with other churches, doctors, training, unit teachers, meetings, usher's meetings, fire rehearsal.
I could go on and on.
My mother was not just associated pastor, but you know, before that of deaconess and at the same time a trustee. So there was some function happening at our church every day, but on average six days a week I was there, And you know, I know a lot about the Word of God, the King James Bible most specifically, and Ram just said in our in our open that a lot of conservative right wing politicians use the Bible to justify
their politics. I think they can use it more as a way to manipulate their constituents, right, because you have people like our former president, who we know is not a particularly decent human being, campaign on things that he knows will get a response from Christian evangelicals whether or
not he believes it or not. You know, you see a lot of a lot of claiming to be pro life politicians that are actually just anti abortion politicians because they know that there's a particular section of our population, Christian evangelicals most specifically, that are very very strong and very very locked in on their position on that topic.
So even if they don't believe it themselves, and most of their actions show that they are not indeed Christians by example, even if they belong to a church, even if they were baptized, even if they do tote Bible. Their actions show that the words and teachings of Christ are not something they subscribe to. They just understand by using certain points and certain speaking points and really certain political positions, that they can get the right response at
the polls from their constituency. It's not about holding up the tent poles of Christ and his teachings at all.
I remember hearing a quote, it might be from Gandhi. Maybe he says, you know, I like your christ Gandhi is not a Christian, of course, was not a Christian from a whole different faith. But it says, I like your christ I don't like your Christians. They are so unlike your CHRISTO. And that wasn't specifically speaking to politics per se. But I think that there.
Are a lot of.
I don't want to say there's a lot of Christians that identify as conservative, but there are a lot of Conservatives that identify as Christian indeed right. And I think that that particular facet based on how they vote and the values that they espouse and the values that they choose to expouse.
Because the fact is that.
You can cherry different things from the Bible uh and make yourself look like a decent person. But I think that really it's what you ignore, what you cast aside, that really shows your level of commitment. You know, again, the things you espouse can be sort of manipulated, The optics can be manipulated. And so I don't want to I don't want to cast a negative light on you know,
people trying to do their best. But what I think I want to do is illuminate the fact that not everybody really talks the talk and a lot of people's.
Well, a lot of people talk to talk. Well, not everybody walks walk the walk that seems to be missing right nowadays.
And there and there's a breakdown there. So what brought this to our consciousness for this week is the video that you mentioned.
So let's let's play this video.
This comes from a gentleman by the name of John Google Sang and this was on MSNBC recently.
So ahead and right wing fundamentalists and Christian nationalists who use Jesus, whose birth we celebrate, as a prop while legislating and fighting against his actual teachings. There's a lot of right wing brothers and sisters in this country who identify as Christian and they care about the major and the crucifix, and they ignore the thirty years of teaching, well actually three years of teaching he did in between.
Jesus is not an ally of the Republican Party. There is no overlap between Jesus and the policies of Donald Trump. A South Carolina, they try to have a bill this year calling for the death penalty for abortion.
Where so pro life will kill you. That's where we're at right now.
I would kill for a nobelpe this week. Enrage these right wing Christians so much because he acted like Jesus in blessing gay unions. Jesus is not anti immigrant. He commands people to welcome the stranger. He never mentions abortion. The Bible never condemns abortion. We've had two generations of Christians in this country who have been gloomed to believe criminalizing abortion is something to do with what Jesus talked about.
Christ was a peaceful, radical, non violent revolutionary. Never mentioned gay people. He commanded you to pay your taxes to welcome the stranger. Individuals and nations must care for the poor and sick. In Matthew twenty five, he who lives by the sword must die by the sword. Loops twenty two. There's a reason why these right wingers never try to put the sermon on the Mount on walls and classrooms read the Bible. Wow, yeah, he says, birthday, you're delivered.
I said, I'm a child of a next noun in a next Francisco if you are. If you want to criminalize abortion and put people in jail because you're so Christian when Jesus never mentioned abortion, but you support the death penalty, which Christ actually opposed. The rest of us wrote the books. Yeah, if you support those things that the rest of us are the lives to take your
claims of Christian piety seriously anymore. And the media it's the blame because the media loves the bad guy and has made the Ballwells and the Robertson's asked for what Christianity is for a generation. It's time to take the Bible back from the hypocrites and thoughts.
Wow.
So you know you heard it, You heard it yourself, And I think that that really stands up to.
What a lot of people have been pointing to.
You know, on our social media, we've pointed to a lot in a way of Republican hypocrisy, and we've identified and delineated lots of examples. You know, Republicans legislators voting to not fund school lunches but to give themselves free lunches, you know what I mean. I believe that might have been in like Montana or Wyoming or someplace like that,
maybe Idaho. Obviously we've talked about abortion, We've talked about you know, all these other sorts of things, and there are people who can make arguments for, oh, this was in the Old Testament, you know whatever, but Jesus was not in the Old Testament. Jesus was in the New Testament. So anything that people make arguments about, like homosexuality, those
sorts of things, that's old Testaments. So in theory, the way that Christianity works is you have the Old Testament and that serves as the Old Covenant, the old set of promises, the old set of rules, and then there's the New Testament, and the Old Testament informs the New Testament. But the New Testament is the one that you should go by. That is why you are a Christian. If you were just going by the Old Testament, you would
be Jewish. And people try to use different parts of the Bible that conflict with other parts of the Bible, but they'll only take this one vantage point because it serves an agenda for them. It helps prop up their worldview, It creates value in their immediate universe, their their frame of reference.
And so.
As you mentioned, or as as the video mentioned, you know, there's a lot of shortcomings there. There's there's some more that I want to take some time, and you know this first one I'm going to say, and I just want you to kind of figure out where this fits politically. Okay, Uh, there's a verse from Luke ten to nine. Funnily enough, we're reading from the Bible on this radio, so on
these radio stations, because not all stations, you know. Anyway, this verse says, heal the sick who are there, and tell them the Kingdom of God has come near to you. So this is this goes against people who call universal health care socialism.
Like so like that make socialism a pejorative term.
Yeah, like it's a bad word, right, But I'm reading from often enough those same people Bible, right, and then they have to shift their argument somehow to say that it's not affordable, it's not sustainable, so farth so on, And the truth is we know that it is.
We know that it is.
This is the only country that is this developed that charges like you can go bankrupt for getting sick. If the government is going to do anything, it's going to make sure that the health of the population is okay. You know, deborders from being sick or die from being poor.
There you go, there you go. Excellent.
So again this is from the same people's Bible and asking them to reconcile that against their beliefs. They'll often have this kind of tactic where they kind of dodge the question or change the approach to the question. They'll they'll shift it around. But you know, if you are a Christian, as you profess to be, you know these people as they profess to be, you would imagine that these truths would be central to their moral compass. Not how much money is it?
Right?
We already know in this country we have plenty of money. Everyone knows that we're giving billions of dollars to fight wars. We don't even have nothing to do it. Right, let's move on this time. I'm going to read from Deuteronomy fifteen seven. If I'm not mistaken Deuteronomy as Old Testament. But you know, there are people who use the Old
Testament too, right, So I'll do the same. If among you one of your brothers should become poor in any of your towns within your land that the Lord God has given you, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother.
All right.
So remember we had this conversation, maybe it might have been two weeks ago, Q, where we were talking about how there was a war on drugs and not a war on poverty. Do you think that if Jesus was around, he would have supported a war on drugs or a war on poverty.
I think in the times of Christ it would not have been faring that way. In the first it wouldn't even right. He healed the sick there and would have treated a drug addict to someone who could not get off of their dependency on a drug to a point where the drug itself that was maybe designed to heal
or help with some ailment, was killing them. He would have treated that person like a sick person and wanted to help them, sure, not criminalize them or other them and put them in a position where they're they're suffering at the hands of an addiction, made them a horrible person.
Thank you. So there is my opinion. I think I think you're absolutely right.
I think it's it's consistent with the person that we all know to be there, you know, to be this
this figure. It's it's kind of the same as when you know, when Martin Luther King Junior Day rolls around every year and you'll see Republicans sharing quotes from doctor King, and the rest of us know exactly what Doctor King stood for, but they're co opting that image and selling it, rebranding it as some form of conservative values or whatever it is, and rebranding it to their followers and their supporters. And again, it's like rewriting the narrative. And this is
something that's happened for black people consistently. You know, Elvis Presley is not the founder of rock and roll, you know, and you know this is a story that tells oldest time in this country. But you know, the powers would be the folks that are in a position to rewrite the narrative and chronicle it in such a way that it supports an agenda that does not reflect a shared reality. That's something that happens and we all need to know about this. Hints our discussion about how the Bible has
historically been used, even going all the way back. You know, democrats are not exempt from condemnation.
Here.
The Bible, as many people may or may not know, was used to justify the atrocities of slavery against black people, and.
Long before the institution of chattel slavery brought itself to this continent. Religion in general, not just the King James Bible, has been used as a way to control and oppress those with less powerless resources, and less in the way to keep themselves from being manipulated by very often logical fallacies.
You mentioned the red herring or the you know, the idea of just kind of changing the subject when brought to question on some of these very very straightforward verses from the Bible, you know, the straw man arguments that are used oftentimes in the debates that we let kind of open lies go even when they happen in front
of us on television with the Mino saw it. Yeah, So it's you know, it's not just the Bible, it's not just Republicans, it's not just politicians, but speaking to Republicans in general, because they have kind of positioned themselves
as the party of Evangelical Christians in this country. So that's the reason why they're kind of being called to the carpet, is because at the time they are using the Bible as a catapult to their political platform, even when its excuse me, has very little to do with the teachings of Christ.
You know, there's something else here too, you know, just like these folks are kind of reworking the angles of the Bible to suit an agenda. If I'm not mistaken, I believe this is true. The reason that the King James Bible exists in the first place is because the original or the Bible that was widely used prior to the King James version, prohibited divorce. And it might have been King James or another king or something like that.
They wanted to get a divorce, and so they commissioned a new Bible to be written or translated and to have that language massaged from the original. I think it might have been Hebrew text or something like that, to where it allowed for an interpretation that gave an access point for divorce. And this isn't I'm not just making that up. This is something that is that is factual.
This is the basis of that version of the Bible, but the details might not be there, but the overarching kind of storyline that is factual.
And so.
Just know that when people try to use these things kind of to stand on to kind of example their moral compass, even people that are really true to it, and they use the text word for word, they're simply using a different person's interpretation of the original text. One person that I on TikTok, his name might be like Dan McClellan or something like that. If you follow me on TikTok, he's one of the people I follow. So that's the best I can give you right now. But
check him out. He is a biblical scholar, just like the person we just listened to, John Fugelsang. He's a biblical scholar, and he interprets the Bible from the original text and he gives historical context to what it is that people were doing and thinking and saying at the time. So he's a historian and a scholar and a person
that has the original text information. And he is a fantastic TikToker to follow because he blows so much wide open, wide open, Because people only have an idea of what they think is happening, and this guy, as close as I've ever seen any human come to it. This guy actually knows full well because again he has content text. He knows what these symbols represented, and why these people talked about this certain type of bread in the body, you.
Know, all this sort of stuff.
So one of the things that I want for us all to take away from this is that it is important to maintain what the founding fathers wanted in this country, which is a separation of church and state. But with that said, it is okay to have personal beliefs and for those personal beliefs to be reflected in your politics. But in theory, religion is something that brings out the best of us, causes us to fellowship more and to
be more charitable and more empathetic and understanding. And what we've seen in recent years is that one party in particular in this country is actually using religion to drive an even further wedge between who we are to each other and how we relate to each other. And they're doing it in the name of Christ, and that feels very unfair.