{"id":156,"date":"2011-01-20T08:04:24","date_gmt":"2011-01-20T08:04:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/01\/brethren-in-alabama.html"},"modified":"2011-01-20T08:04:24","modified_gmt":"2011-01-20T08:04:24","slug":"brethren-in-alabama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/01\/brethren-in-alabama.html","title":{"rendered":"Brethren in Alabama"},"content":{"rendered":"

“All men are brothers” is an assertion of our common humanity. So it
\nseemed like a rejection of it for Alabama’s newly elected governor to restrict<\/a>
\nhis own brotherhood to fellow Christians–or, more accurately, to
\nfellow evangelicals. When you say, as Gov. Robert Bentley did, “Anybody
\nhere today who has not accepted Jesus Christ<\/span><\/span><\/font><\/a>
\nas their savior, I’m telling you, you’re not my brother and you’re not
\nmy sister, and I want to be your brother,” you’re talking the
\nevangelical talk.<\/p>\n

Now if Bentley had just said, “…you’re not my
\nbrother in Christ and you’re not my sister in Christ, and I want to be
\nyour brother in Christ,” it would have been a bit redundant, but
\ninnocuous. No Jew or Muslim wants to be someone’s brother (or sister) in
\nChrist.<\/p>\n

So why was Bentley denying the common humanity of his
\nnon-Christian brethren and sistren? He wasn’t. The Southern Baptist
\ndeacon was just expressing the wish–declaring his Great Commission
\nhope–that he could be <\/i>the brother (in Christ) of all those
\nnon-Christians, if only they’d hit the sawdust trail. Really, though, as
\na white Southerner of a certain age, he was cuddling up to his
\nAfrican-American audience at Dexter Avenue King Memorial Church,
\nassuring them that he considered himself more their brother than, say,
\nsome white person who hadn’t accepted Jesus.<\/p>\n

And so he had to be educated. After receiving a shot from the ADL<\/a> and meeting<\/a>
\nwith local Jewish leaders, he delivered one of those quasi-apologies:
\n“Should anyone who heard those words and felt disenfranchised, I want to
\nsay, ‘I’m sorry.'” Not only did he pledge<\/a>
\nthat he would be the governor of all Alabamians and uphold the
\nconstitutional principle of religious freedom, but also, when asked
\nasked at a press conference after the meeting whether he considered
\nthose in attendance to be his brothers and sisters, he replied, “Yes,
\nyes I do.”<\/p>\n

Well, I’m glad that’s settled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“All men are brothers” is an assertion of our common humanity. So it seemed like a rejection of it for Alabama’s newly elected governor to restrict his own brotherhood to fellow Christians–or, more accurately, to fellow evangelicals. When you say, as Gov. Robert Bentley did, “Anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":222,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nBrethren in Alabama - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/01\/brethren-in-alabama.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Brethren in Alabama - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"“All men are brothers” is an assertion of our common humanity. So it seemed like a rejection of it for Alabama’s newly elected governor to restrict his own brotherhood to fellow Christians–or, more accurately, to fellow evangelicals. When you say, as Gov. Robert Bentley did, “Anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/01\/brethren-in-alabama.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-01-20T08:04:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Brethren in Alabama - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/01\/brethren-in-alabama.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Brethren in Alabama - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","og_description":"“All men are brothers” is an assertion of our common humanity. So it seemed like a rejection of it for Alabama’s newly elected governor to restrict his own brotherhood to fellow Christians–or, more accurately, to fellow evangelicals. When you say, as Gov. Robert Bentley did, “Anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/01\/brethren-in-alabama.html","og_site_name":"Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","article_published_time":"2011-01-20T08:04:24+00:00","author":"Mark Silk","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/01\/brethren-in-alabama.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/01\/brethren-in-alabama.html","name":"Brethren in Alabama - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-01-20T08:04:24+00:00","dateModified":"2011-01-20T08:04:24+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/927f8b0a579506efe527e8e0967f519d"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/01\/brethren-in-alabama.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/01\/brethren-in-alabama.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/01\/brethren-in-alabama.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Brethren in Alabama"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/","name":"Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","description":"Beliefnet Voices","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/927f8b0a579506efe527e8e0967f519d","name":"Mark Silk","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/c82\/c82eec82562775fad85f4a47e1a5fc4ax96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/c82\/c82eec82562775fad85f4a47e1a5fc4ax96.jpg","caption":"Mark Silk"},"description":"Mark Silk graduated from Harvard College in 1972 and earned his Ph.D. in medieval history from Harvard University in 1982. After teaching at Harvard in the Department of History and Literature for three years, he became editor of the Boston Review. In 1987 he joined the staff of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he worked variously as a reporter, editorial writer and columnist. In 1996 he became the founding director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and in 1998 founding editor of Religion in the News, a magazine published by the Center that examines how the news media handle religious subject matter. In 2005, he was named director of the Trinity College Program on Public Values, comprising both the Greenberg Center and a new Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture directed by Barry Kosmin. In 2007, he became Professor of Religion in Public Life at the College. Professor Silk is the author of Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II and Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America. He is co-editor of Religion by Region, an eight-volume series on religion and public life in the United States, and co-author of The American Establishment, Making Capitalism Work, and One Nation Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics. In 2007 he inaugurated Spiritual Politics, a blog on religion and American political culture.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/author\/msilk"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}