Quoting russell@coker.com.au (russell@coker.com.au):

On Wednesday, 14 March 2018 10:45:34 PM AEDT Trent W. Buck wrote:

...

Russell Coker via luv-talk wrote:

...

https://www.politicalorphans.com/the-article-removed-from-forbes-why-white -evangelicalism-is-so-cruel/ This article explains why most Americans don't read the Bible.

AFAICT, it doesn't explain any such thing. Can you clarify your assertion?

Because the Bible doesn't support racism.

Russell Coker Hand-Waving Lazy Mostly-Non-Sequiturs, number 34 in an ongoing series. Here, I think I can help you out: You might mean, Americans who still embrace slavery-descended racism, not exclusively but characteristically living in the former Confederacy, have at least a cognitive-dissonance reason to avoid reading the Bible and thus encountering the intellectual tradition of real (as opposed to evangelical) Christianity, in that they would encounter the Biblical (New Testament) admonishments towards helping the afflicted and poor, being called to serve and protect the least among us, etc., etc. In this narrative, one would note, as did the article's author, that even the Baptist Church in the 1800s United States split right down the middle, sometimes violently, over support of versus opposition towards slavery, with the mainline Baptists becoming (in some cases) heroically opposed to slavery, and the Southern Baptists being apologists, a sorry legacy the latter have never entirely repudiated and continues to poison them and other evangelicals. There are, however, lots of problems with this wowzer-like narrative. One of the biggest is that it's completely erroneous to claim that the Bible doesn't support racism. Moreover, it's also erroneous to claim that it doesn't support _slavery_. A couple of thousands of years of Biblical exegisis have found _plenty_ of support in the Bible for both. Admittedly, the lion's share of that is found by parsing passages in the Old Testament rather than the New, but you _did_, sir, say 'Bible', not Gospels -- with the result that your argument disintegrates upon even cursory examination. My mother's family were involved in this very matter, peripherally, because they were in the Kansas Territory (and then the State of Kansas), that was first an early battleground over slavery around 1850 and then among the most militantly anti-Confederacy states on the Union side of the American Civil War from 1861 to 1865. As Kansans, some of my mother's folk conducted disputations with South-leaning apologists trying to justify slavery. And, it turned out, one of the cornerstones of the opposition's stance was its contention that slavery is glorified and institutionalised in the Bible. And they were not wrong. Seriously. It starts right away with Abraham, deemed in Christianity (and Judaism) the 'father of faith'. Genesis 21:9-10 shows him owning slaves, and God has no objection whatsoever. Genesis 9:25-28 has Ham's son Canaan being made a slave to his brothers. Again, this is accepted as natural. In Exodus 20:10 and 20:17, commonly called the Ten Commandments, slavery is mentioned in passing by God twice. Obviously, the grumpy guy in the clouds has no objection to it. Hey, how about the New Testament? Wasn't the coming of the Gospel supposed to replace the Law of Moses and renew it? OK, then it's problematic that in Ephesians 6:5-8, Saul of Tarsus ('Saint Paul') commands slaves to obey their masters. Then, in Philemon 12-16, that same asshole, Saul of Tarsus yclept 'Saint Paul' writes to say he's returning a runaway slave named Philemon to his master. But you're convinced that the Bible doesn't support racism. {boggle} Maybe, Russell, instead of saying the problem is that Americans don't read the Bible, you should concentrate on that beam in your eye, rather than trying to point to motes in the eyes of my countrymen. (That's a reference from Matthew 7:3-5, in case you are too Bible-ignorant to understand my sarcasm.)

My observation is that non-Christians know the Bible better than Christians.

We do indeed. But the rest of what you said is dead wrong, and you really ought to know better _or_, perhaps, cease pontificating about matters you know nothing whatsoever about.