Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Gods, Gays, and Guns: Religion and the Future of Democracy
    Gods, Gays, and Guns: Religion and the Future of Democracy
    Gods, Gays, and Guns: Religion and the Future of Democracy
    Ebook110 pages1 hour

    Gods, Gays, and Guns: Religion and the Future of Democracy

    By Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    "Democracy and god have failed" captures the spirit of this provocative collection of essays. Arguing that the religion must be used for the expansion of democracy, Gods, Gays, and Guns takes up the topics of gay marriage, economic justice, and social movements. Written in Parisian cafes, London's ghettos, and the aftermath of Haiti's earthquake and post-Katrina New Orleans, Gods, Gays, and Guns is a spiritual tour-de-force, revealing a crisis of faith in religion and democracy.

    With an unflinching pen, Rev. Osagyefo Sekou challenges the reader to rethink the meaning of the role of religion in our global democracy.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherChalice Press
    Release dateJan 2, 2018
    ISBN9780827212862
    Gods, Gays, and Guns: Religion and the Future of Democracy
    Author

    Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou

    Reverend Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou is an emerging leader in the new Civil Rights Movement and an acclaimed activist, theologian, author, documentary filmmaker, and musician. Sekou was a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University's Martin Luther King Education and Research Institute at the time of Michael Brown Jr.'s killing, and traveled to Ferguson in mid-August 2014 on behalf of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the country's oldest interfaith peace organization, to organize alongside local and national groups. With the Deep Abiding Love Project, he has helped trained over five thousands activists in militant nonviolent civil disobedience through the United States. Born in St. Louis and raised in the rural Arkansas Delta, Sekou has studied at the New School, Union Theological Seminary, and Harvard University. He lectures widely, including at Princeton University, Harvard Divinity School, the University of Virginia, University of Paris IV - La Sorbonne, and Vanderbilt University. He is a former Professor of Preaching in the Graduate Theological Urban Studies Program at the Seminary Consortium of Urban Pastoral Education, Chicago. In May 2017, Sekou released his debut solo album, In Times Like These. Recorded at the storied Zebra Ranch Studio, a barn in Coldwater, Mississippi, the album features the six-time Grammy nominated North Mississippi Allstars.

    Related to Gods, Gays, and Guns

    Related ebooks

    Political Ideologies For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Plutocracy That Is U.S. Democracy

      Dec 16, 2021

      The U.S. doesn’t have democracy, it has politics. Democracy is about serving the people, giving them what they want and improving their lives. China doesn’t have career politicians, it has bureaucrats. Trained and skilled administrators who are elect

      2 min read

    • Article

      Test Your Bible knowledge BIBLICAL JOURNEYS

      Jan 1, 2021

      See how many of these you can fill in before checking the answers on page 69. After you test yourself, try reading the questions aloud to a friend or family member and see how they do! 1. Where in Galilee did the wedding take place at which Jesus

      1 min read

    • Article

      Student In Blackface Spouting A Racial Slur Roils Fresno High School

      Jun 2, 2019

      The video posted on Facebook is deeply jarring: a 14-year-old white girl in full blackface, laughing, mugging for the camera in what appears to be a private home and declaring, "Who said I can't say (the N-word)?" Another video of the same girl is al

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Original Roe V. Wade Ruling Was Leaked, Too

      May 3, 2022

      Leaks of any kind are rare at the Supreme Court, but in 1973, the original Roe decision was leaked to the press before the court formally announced it. The chief justice was furious.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Visions Of A Dark Future

      Oct 29, 2019

      Visions Of A Dark Future
      2 min read

    • Article

      Truth You Can Trust

      Apr 27, 2021

      If we’re faced with confusion or deceit, it can seem hard to know what truth is. But understanding God’s nature as infallible Truth itself empowers us to discern between what’s true and what’s false.

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Draft Roe Ruling Is A Reminder That Religion's Role Is Older Than The Republic

      May 14, 2022

      The question arises: Since when did so much of our politics have to do with religion? And the answer is, since the beginning — and even before.

      7 min read

    • Article

      The Conversation

      May 17, 2018

      The Conversation
      6 min read

    • Article

      Trump’s Headache From The Right

      Oct 23, 2020

      Trump’s Headache From The Right
      9 min read

    • Article

      In Trump Era, What Does It Mean to Be an 'Evangelical'?

      Dec 28, 2017

      For many Christian conservatives, the term 'evangelical' is now more of a political identifier than a doctrinal one – which has led some high-profile religious leaders to question or even abandon the term.

      5 min read

    • Article

      A Daughter’s Story: White Supremacy and the Poor People’s Campaign

      May 18, 2022

      UCS is honored to be a mobilizing partner for the Poor People’s Campaign, a nonviolent call to moral revival. If you can join us in Washington, DC on June 18th in solidarity with their march and assembly, I hope you will. I’ve been fortunate to visit

      4 min read

    • Article

      Behind Religious Defense of Roy Moore, an Aggressive View of Masculinity

      Nov 15, 2017

      The accusations against the former judge, and the biblical justifications coming from some quarters, have led to condemnations from many Evangelicals. Yet adult-teen relationships may not be as unusual among a certain subsection of fundamentalists as

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Last Temptation

      Mar 11, 2018

      The Last Temptation
      24 min read

    • Article

      2017 Has Been A Rough Year For Evangelicals

      Dec 29, 2017

      Self-described "evangelical" Christians helped elect President Trump in 2016. But this year, the label lost coherence. Some evangelicals reconsidered what it stood for, while others disowned the term.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Forbidden Knowledge

      Aug 11, 2021

      Forbidden Knowledge
      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Gods, Gays, and Guns

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Gods, Gays, and Guns - Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou

      Acclaim for first edition of God, Gays, and Guns

      Rev. Sekou is one of the most courageous and prophetic voices of our time. His allegiance to the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. is strong, and his witness is real. Don’t miss this book!

      — Cornel West, Harvard University,

      author of Race Matters

      "Gods, Gays, and Guns is a powerful and provocative manifesto that challenges old perceptions about race, sexuality, gender, and power. Its theoretical brilliance is complemented by the author’s accessible literary style and eloquence in the theological arguments advanced in this critical study. Gods, Gays, and Guns offers a visionary, black liberationist theology for addressing the great challenges facing America and the world in an era of war, racism, and violence. Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou has produced a monumental treatise that offers hope and courage, not only for the oppressed, but all humanity."

      — Manning Marable,

      author of Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention

      This is a hopeful book. The ‘occupy’ movement has stirred awareness here in America and elsewhere that we may be on the threshold of momentous change. But where will the fresh ideas, the leadership and, most importantly, the sustaining spirit for such a change originate? Rev. Sekou’s energetic, thoughtful and engaging book begins to answer some of these questions, and indeed the author himself embodies some of those answers.

      — Harvey Cox, Harvard University

      "The essays in Gods, Gays, and Guns are the result of deep immersion, in suffering and struggle, yes, but also in the ideas, political, theological, artistic, and above all democratic, that may make a difference. Sekou gives us something rarer and more valuable: a book of powerful questions."

      — Jeff Sharlet, author of The Family

      Copyright

      Copyright ©2017 by Osagyefo Sekou.

      Contains material previously published in Gods, Gays, and Guns (Cambridge, Mass.: Campbell & Cannon Press, 2012). This revised edition also includes new material.

      All rights reserved. For permission to reuse content, please contact Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, www.copyright.com.

      Cover design: James Gates

      ChalicePress.com

      Print: 9780827212855

      EPUB: 9780827212862 EPDF: 9780827212879

      Contents

      Acclaim for first edition of God, Gays, and Guns

      Copyright

      Contents

      Prologue: Worshiping Whiteness

      Vocation of Agony

      Whose God?

      Speaking in Tongues

      Who’s Going to Direct the Choir?

      Gays Are the New Niggers

      Queering Democracy and Christianity

      What Meaneth This?

      Dear God, from Haiti

      An Elegy for Innocence

      About the Author

      Prologue: Worshiping Whiteness

      The slave ship trafficked not only in black bodies but in the religion of whiteness. Although ethnic, gender, and class struggle and systemic oppression were prevalent in the history of the Old World, these inequalities merged with vengeance and passion in the "New World. Social immorality is part of the very fabric of the United States. Hypocrisy—a political act with spiritual implications—sits at the heart of this fragile democracy.

      As Thomas Jefferson penned the letters that would set the tone for American polity and promote democratic ideals around the world, he himself owned slaves and had an illicit relationship that produced children of bondage whom he refused to free. The soul of America holds both grand ideals and grandiose contradictions—the Jeffersonian legacy of immorality. The sacred texts of civil religion—the Declaration of Independence and The Constitution—drip with hypocrisy; half of the founding fathers owned slaves, and all supported slavery in deed. High ideals—all men created equal to pursue life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness—are subjugated to the rights of land- and life-owning white men. Victorian ethos—fueling much of American jurisprudence—protected white women’s virtue while African slaves were raped. The very roots of American civilization are watered with the blood of black denigration.

      And this is idolatrous.

      Whiteness is a racist ideological system that structures— internationally— modes of production and spiritual apparition that manipulate personal and social relations. It is a praxis of social inequality based on race, sex, and class—coalescing along a continuum of ways in which the United States categorizes humanity and shaping the ways in which individuals and institutions regard and implement power, privilege, and prestige. Straight white maleness is presented as what it means to be fully human. Under this rubric, all ideas and ideals are subject to this system, and the nonmaterial values are commodified.

      Moreover, whiteness manipulates religion to affirm conservative politics. White evangelicals are more white than Christian; at best, they worship a white Jesus. In the debate on morality in America, white evangelicals often argue that the nation has been heading down the wrong path. President Obama’s affirmation of same-sex marriage has raised evangelical ire. While polls indicate that Americans are evenly split over the issue, a multiracial chorus of evangelicals has sung a sad song of dismay, with the refrain: Pro-gay marriage is anti-Christian.

      What is really at stake in this recent dust up is the age-old tension between religion and democracy in the United States. One way to read the history of the United States is to comprehend the way in which religion has been used to either expand or restrict democracy.

      There were conservative religious leaders who used the story of Ham, and the apostle Paul’s admonishment for slaves to be obedient to their masters, to justify chattel slavery. In response, Harriet Tubman, Sojouner Truth, and a host of other Christians used the Bible to justify the inclusion of African Americans in the promise of American democracy.

      While evangelicals used Bible verses to deny women the right to vote, a very religious Frederick Douglass and the suffrage movement used the Bible to support the full enfranchisment of women. In solitary confinement on an Easter weekend, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. responded to the criticism from conservative clergy who thought his voting rights campaign was ill-timed. Today, King’s Letter from a Brimingham Jail is considered one of the greatest religious letters of the 20th century. Even though the evangelicals cast Roe v. Wade as Christian vs. anti-Christian, it has its origins in a pro-choice gathering of United Methodist Women in a Texas church basement.

      These facts reveal that the kind of religion that has served to strengthen American democracy has been the kind of religion that sought to expand democratic opportunity for the historically othered—such as African Americans and women. Prophetic religion, particularly the Christian form, has played a key role in securing democracy’s future by emphasizing the worth and dignity of all citizens. It has done this with a liberal reading of the Bible, in tandem with The Constitution and Declaration of Independence.

      What can be termed as the religious precedent for democracy expansion is the historical litmus test for the role of religion in democracy. Religion must be used to expand democratic opportunity, not restrict it. The gay marriage debate is not about religion but about what kind of religion will prevail in the public discourse and policy. As pundits and politicians have courted—if not cow-towed to—conservative evangelical leaders, they have forgotten that evangelicals have tended to be on the wrong side of history.

      For instance, the largest and most powerful evangelical denomination in the country, the Southern Baptist Convention, does not allow women to serve as pastors, and—through its lobbying arm—has supported anti-choice, anti–gay marriage, and anti-immigrant agendas.

      Rev. Billy Graham is another example of the evangelical tendency to lag behind in social progress. Rev. Graham, the undisputed leader of American evangelicalism for the past five decades, used a

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1