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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   33976 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 12, 2025

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Just saw this bit of news:

https://religionnews.com/2025/05/12/episcopal-church-ends-refugee-resettlement-citing-moral-opposition-to-resettling-white-afrikaners/]https://religionnews.com/2025/05/12/episcopal-church-ends-refugee-resettlement-citing-moral-opposition-to-resettling-white-afrikaners/

with the title of "Episcopal Church refuses to resettle white Afrikaners, ends partnership with US government". Thinking that it was a case of sensationalizing the tittle to attract clicks to a more moderate news article I opened the page. Oh boy was I disappointed.

While the majority of the article was more as a moralizing plea for the resumption of resettlement programs, the beginning at least was what it said in the title. The episcopal church will end its partnership with the US government due to being asked to benefit white south africans.

...we have determined that, by the end of the federal fiscal year, we will conclude our refugee resettlement grant agreements with the U.S. federal government.

Why are they doing that?, in their words, because they are pro racial justice:

In light of our church’s steadfast commitment to racial justice and reconciliation and our historic ties with the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, we are not able to take this step


It has been painful to watch one group of refugees, selected in a highly unusual manner, receive preferential treatment over many others who have been waiting in refugee camps or dangerous conditions for years.

Maybe the next step in the Trump Administrations should be to show that welfare programs benefit a majority of white people or something like that?



Link to the letter from the Church - https://www.episcopalchurch.org/publicaffairs/letter-from-presiding-bishop-sean-rowe-on-episcopal-migration-ministries/

Reading the letter, I'm struck by the notion that the way they talk about their operations is not so different than what an international corporation does. Bits like

We have served nearly 110,000 refugees during this time, many of whom are now American citizens and beloved members of our communities, workplaces, and neighborhoods.

Just substitute refugees by clients and then it makes sense why they are so gung ho about adding more bodies through this kind of partnerships. They win twice, once by getting money from the federal gevernment and once more with some of those resetled contributing to the church itself, be it through economic donations or voluntary work.

We are working with the affected staff members to provide extensive outplacement services and severance packages.

in reference to their winding down of their resettlement services makes me think Corpo. And it's logical if one thinks about it for a moment, but for some reason it never occurred to me that churches aren't that diferent from other NGO's.

While our public-private partnership as a refugee resettlement agency is no longer viable.

Finally, this last bit is maybe the real reason why they are finishing their services and not just out right anti-white racism, but it is curious that it is buried in the body of the letter and the woke justification is front and center in the opening paragraphs. But one salient point against this theory of mine is that it looks like they are ending services due to the white Afrikaneers, not because the pause in the resetlement programs. This is further reinforced when the original news article mentions that

Four of the faith groups have since filed two separate lawsuits, one of which recently resulted in a ruling that should have restarted the program.

so it sounds to me, like these NGO's were hopping to lawfare their way into opening the money faucet at the through again, but at least for the Episcopal church dealing with whites with "preferential treatment" is too much.

EDIT 05/13.- The ANC has responded

https://x.com/MbalulaFikile/status/1922237764788961358

This is so viscerally disgusting to me, it's almost amazing the way the Trump administration has managed to expose the hypocrisy at the heart of the refugee resettlement NGOs and cause them to undermine their entire raison d'etre, it's beyond brilliant:

-- It's blatantly obvious to any liberal paying attention that politically rejecting refugee groups on ethnic grounds will go in bad directions. If you're rejecting Afrikaners, why are you accepting Palestinians? Who can you accept from Rwanda and the Congo? Almost every ethnic group has done bad things en route to refugee status, the myth of the innocent victim is an absurdity. This undermines all future refugee resettlement projects, and exposes them to future lobbying against other refugee groups.

-- It's going into the nativist frame by admitting that some refugees and immigrants are bad for the country and don't deserve to be here. The pro immigration argument must be universal if it is to exist at all, once you admit of some exceptions you enter the restrictionist frame of argument, and you start losing.

-- It's not clear how accepting white south africans who want to leave South Africa into the United States can possibly be a bad thing for South Africa. It's creating a frame of imprisonment, of anti-emigration: the country of South Africa has a right to say that white people can't leave in the name of "racial justice." Which is clearly insane and disqualifies their whole argument: absent an actual crime a country being unwilling to let their people leave is obvious tyranny. If South Africa wants to keep its white population in the country, it should treat them better. Full stop. Freedom to leave is the most basic freedom imaginable.

Not only is all this disgusting to me, it blows my mind that they are saying all this out loud. That no one at the organization seems to see what they are saying, is bright enough to pick up on subtext.

This is the best way yet to permanently torpedo the refugee program.

This is the best way yet to permanently torpedo the refugee program.

I predict a Democrat will be in the White House soon. Probably next election. They'll scramble to selectively undo Trump's work. Expect the NGO cash spigot to open back up.

-- It's not clear how accepting white south africans who want to leave South Africa into the United States can possibly be a bad thing for South Africa.

But it is? I'm extremely pro-immigration because immigration is imperialism. It hoovers up people self-selected for being ambitious and hardworking from other countries, thereby strengthening our nation and weakening our rivals at the exact same time. Academia might claim that immigration claim actually benefits both countries because of remittances, but that's just a classic case of privileging legible measures of contribution (in this case, the accounting value of remittances) over real, but illegible benefits (all the ways people improve their communities my living in them.)

To be clear, this church is full of racists and hypocrites. To believe only white people emigration hurts source countries indicates a massive level of paternalism and contempt for nonwhite peoples, while at the same time believing Afrikaners aren't deserving of humanitarian treatment is of course just pro facie racist against Afrikaners. But the specific argument they're making here isn't entirely wrong.

But it is? I'm extremely pro-immigration because

Exactly my point!

Admitting that people emigrating is bad for the country they are from is an argument that, once admitted by the pro-immigration crowd, is fully generalizable.

If it's bad for South Africa to get rid of discontent whites, then why is it good for us to take refugees from Syria and Afghanistan and...?

...because syria and afghanistan are illiberal shitholes and we should jump at the chance to strengthen ourselves while weakening them?

The problem is Californication -- the people you bring in are likely to make your country more like their country in some ways, including ways you won't like. Italian immigration brought La Cosa Nostra, for instance.

It hoovers up people self-selected for being ambitious and hardworking from other countries, thereby strengthening our nation

Largely untrue for recent and particular groups to Denmark and The Netherlands.

That's because migrants shouldn't get government welfare besides essential services (e.g., police, fire) and programs know to have a positive rate of return (e.g. childhood education) unless their host country admitted them specifically because they have an attractive skillset justifying recruitment and retention efforts. America is better than europe because most of our immigrants are illegal so we don't need to pay for their medicare or social security. Illegal immigration is better than regular immigration.

This is so viscerally disgusting to me, it's almost amazing the way the Trump administration has managed to expose the hypocrisy at the heart of the refugee resettlement NGOs and cause them to undermine their entire raison d'etre

Except they didn't. People are already making excuses for them. The Afrikaners jumped the line so it would be immoral to help them. The Afrikaners aren't actually oppressed so it would be immoral to help them when so many actually oppressed are. The Afrikaners aren't actually the reason, it's the suspension of the refugee program. And so on. People don't update. The head of the program could probably state outright "We'd rather shut down than help these goddamn white devils" and the people who supported them would still support them. Sure, those of us who were already suspicious see this as a great reveal, but it doesn't make anyone change sides.

It's not going to show up right away and it's not going to show up for everyone. It's going to take time and it's going to be on the margins. White hatred isn't special, white adjacent contains everyone eventually.

But this same argument will be used against Alawites and Palestinians and Hutus.

We've seen the right use rhetorical judo anti semitism against the left. This will be next.

I could be wrong about their motivations, but the impression I get from the Episcopal Church's decision is something along the lines of "The administration is aiding white people who are or might be in danger of their lives, while telling people of colour in similar danger that they are obligated to stay in their own countries and die. This suggests that the administration believes that the life of a white person matters more than that of a person of colour. This belief is a grave sin, and we refuse to be complicit in it."

Do you believe they would still make this refusal if it was any other race?

This belief is a grave sin, and we refuse to be complicit in it.

Then why don't they say that? Instead, they say that in the interests of "racial justice," they refuse to help white Afrikaners. An old story about logs and cinders comes to mind.

The problem with steelmanning is that it so often involves replacing the real but stupid or evil with a fictional synthetic. Imagining a good argument for one's opponent is useful practice! Unfortunately, it does not mean that "the opponent" is actually the noble soul one imagines them to be.

This isn't a steelman. A steelman defends a position on its object level merits and makes no claim on the actual motivations of the supporters. But this is "they oppose this because they suspect bad motives from Trump", explicitly framed in terms of motivations.

A steelman would be "here are some arguments for a principled immigration policy that would reject Afrikaners and allow [groups the episcopalians had no objection to]". But after all, this discussion isn't primarily about the object level policy, it's about double standards/racism. "They are actually objecting to perceived double standards/racism" on the other side is a defense of the people involved.

This is just how institutional Christianity talks nowadays. When Pope Francis changed the catechism to be against capital punishment, he didn’t say, “executions are a sin,” he said, “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.”

Ehh, I kinda get it, Episcopalians don't want to talk about anything icky and theological like "sin," that might imply they actually believe in something numinous, but almost anything would be better than, to paraphrase, saying that in the interest of racial justice they'd rather shut down than help refugees who happen to be white.

Which is unfortunate and significantly part of modernist Catholicism’s problem with total incoherency.

Catholics can all agree that the specific rules of the Old Testament law have been superseded, while understanding that God instituted just laws and punishments for the Israelites. So it becomes very awkward to say that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person,” when the everlasting God both was and is implementing death penalties.

I don’t buy sedevacantism or the idea that Francis and other modern popes have been heretics (although Francis probably skated closest to the line), but I do generally treat them like John XII or Alexander VI. Sometimes there are good Popes, sometimes you get a string of bad Popes and in the fullness of time, the damage they cause to the Church will be restored.

Alexander VI, although his personal moral behavior was quite bad probably would not make a top ten, or even top twenty, list for worst popes from a doctrinal confusion standpoint- although Francis would. Honorius I would probably go down as the worst, perhaps the original John XXIII.

It's interesting; I generally don't have a high opinion of Paul VI's handling of the magisterium but Humanae Vitae was legitimately surprising to everyone, including close confidantes of Paul VI, and I've used that as an argument against sedevacantists and Eastern Orthodox before in defending the papacy. Unfortunately even JPII and Benedict couldn't resist drowning their clarity in argle bargle and corpo speak, but from a doctrinal perspective they're probably top fifty percent of popes(remember, the median pope's theological contributions round to 0. For all his questionable decisions JPII did come in clutch on doctrine when it counted with things like the definition of the priesthood as all male) at least.

The UN convention on refugees makes salient a select list specific traits, including race:

... owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion ...

If Afrikaaners are in danger because of their race, and the black South Africans are in equal danger because of gang warfare or general lawlessness, then the UN convention covers the Afrikaaners, but not the black South Africans, as refugees.

I'm no theologician, but I'm fairly certain that the New Testament espouses the sentiment that helping some people is still better than helping no people, even if those people are not the most deserving. My memory on this is fairly vague though; I hope someone better-read can correct me here.

The closest I can think of is the widow's mite. An old widow offering what little she had is considered more morally right than a wealthy man giving tons out of his abundance (but still keeping tons for himself). Luke 21:1-4

1 And he looked up, and saw the rich men casting their gifts into the treasury.

2 And he saw also a certain poor widow casting in thither two mites.

3 And he said, Of a truth I say unto you, that this poor widow hath cast in more than they all:

4 For all these have of their abundance cast in unto the offerings of God: but she of her penury hath cast in all the living that she had.

I'm not surprised that this is couched in NGO language. I'm a little surprised they mention denying white South Africans resettlement on political grounds. I see three reasons:

  • Racial Justice. “In light of our church’s steadfast commitment to racial justice and reconciliation and our historic ties with the Anglican Church...” Which I guess is a hat tip to Desmond Tutu? At least that connection is made by AP reporting.

  • Other refugees exist that are/were more worthy of resettlement. Surely white South Africans could potentially be worthy of the same good deeds the church has afforded so many others?

  • The faucet was closed. The program is no longer feasible to run.

The last one seems like a winner. Were I the Episcopal church I would have protested the faucet being closed. I might even point at many other refugees in dire need of resettlement. I would have made those two statements after agreeing to resettle these people.

AP does report that another refugee agency will take the 49 South Africans:

Another faith-based refugee agency, Church World Service, says it is open to serving the South African arrivals.

“We are concerned that the U.S. Government has chosen to fast-track the admission of Afrikaners, while actively fighting court orders to provide life-saving resettlement to other refugee populations who are in desperate need of resettlement,” Rick Santos, CWS president and CEO, said in a statement.

He added that the action proves the government knows how to screen and process refugees quickly. “Despite the Administration’s actions, CWS remains committed to serving all eligible refugee populations seeking safety in the United States, including Afrikaners who are eligible for services,” he said. “Our faith compels us to serve each person in our care with dignity and compassion.”

This is a more appropriate protest response. I am curious about the the 49 South Africans. Hopefully somebody finds and interviews one.

The faucet was closed. The program is no longer feasible to run.

They are protesting the faucet being closed, by doing the only thing that they can do to hurt this administration: talk about it, and refuse to provide services the admin actually wants.

by doing the only thing that they can do to hurt this administration: talk about it

The Episcopal ministry is doing a really good of looking incredibly racist, which helps the administration.

CWS's response strikes the right balance of protesting while not sounding like caricatures of racist progressives.

So far, what I have seen on X of them are just photos by lefties mocking their fatness and how they couldn't have been suffering too much if they were that fat.

EDIT.- Found the tweet in question:

https://x.com/Sargon_of_Akkad/status/1921909455429439569

A lot of people wonder why Curtis Yarvin is taken seriously. There’s been a lot of drama lately about whether Moldbug Sold Out, or whether there is any reason to take him seriously. A lot of this comes from an overfocusing on his monarchy prescriptions, but this really misses a lot of the deeper intellectual content. Social justice came from American Mainline Protestantism. They are the same thing.

I think phrasing it as "Progressivism is atheistic puritanical christianity" captures some nuance that "it came from protestantism" doesn't.

Actually, I think the nuance is lost. Social justice warriors weren’t simply inspired by Christianity. They don’t have similarities by coincidence. They are a direct evolutionary branch of mainline Protestantism. There is path dependency.

There's been a weird narrative push here lately to blame Christianity for the worst parts of leftism (see the similar "akshally Communism comes from Christianity" upthread).

You know the expression "Fascism is always descending upon America, but landing in Europe"? Same deal here. SJWs and Communists have been consistently and outspokenly opposed to Christianity. When you see a Christian organization turning to such left-wing activism, you can usually safely bet they are also on the off-ramp from being Christian.

Atheism is a critical ingredient.

Of course the worst parts of Western leftism come from Christianity - almost everything about Western civilisation, good and bad, comes from Christianity. (And it is fair to say that the bad bits of Western leftism don't come from Ancient Rome).

There's been a weird narrative push here lately to blame Christianity for the worst parts of leftism (see the similar "akshally Communism comes from Christianity" upthread).

There’s a broader schism in the right-wing over whether it should be religious or irreligious. “Your ideas are actually the foundation of our shared enemy’s ideas” is a great line to use in that kind of conflict. As is, “your ideas are actually indistinguishable from the shared great evil everyone hates,” which was the Hlynkian thesis.

There's been a weird narrative push here lately to blame Christianity for the worst parts of leftism (see the similar "akshally Communism comes from Christianity" upthread).

I've been blowing that horn for years. Because it's true. Like leftism, Christianity lauds the wretched and denigrate the strong or wealthy. Like leftism, Christianity insists that good people take all the shit they are given without striking back (and in doing so thus empowers bad people!).

I actually tend to agree that social justice warriors are downstream of Christianity, but I don't think this is a sufficiently nuanced portrait of what Christianity teaches. Yes, it criticizes the rich and strong, but also the lazy and the lawbreaker. The Biblical solution to lazy people who refuse to work? Let them not eat. The Biblical solution to bad people who bring destruction? A wrathful sword.

Obviously there's some debate among Christians on these topics – some would disagree with me. (And it is true that many early church fathers were very pacifistic, although they were being persecuted by their enemies and largely did not have to deal with the problems of power; it's not surprising that the emphasis of the church changed when their circumstances did.)

But I don't think, historically, Christians were okay with executing and imprisoning criminals just because they aren't good at being Christians (although, yes, Christians are often bad at following Scripture's teachings.) I think it's pretty natural to read the parts of Scripture dealing with justice and go "...yeah it's totally fine to use lawful force to suppress evil" and do it.

TLDR; while non-pacifistic Christianity might be wrong, I don't think that it is hypocritical.

It's a little strange, then, that in the 2000 years of Christianity we've had no shortage of executing and imprisoning criminals.

Yes, fortunately most Christians are bad at those parts (as they are at the others).

While my first impulse is to deny and defend the church, with examples like these and seeing lady bishops and whatnot in some denominations, I can't really deny the reality that there is truth to that statement. Always a disappointment to see the religion of the Crusades being so limp wristed with statements like

As Christians, we must be guided not by political vagaries, but by the sure and certain knowledge that the kingdom of God is revealed to us in the struggles of those on the margins. Jesus tells us to care for the poor and vulnerable as we would care for him, and we must follow that command.

The episcopal church has always been more or less defined as the liberal branch of the Christian communion least defined by doctrinal concerns.

Oh they’re defined by doctrinal concerns, just not Christian doctrine.

Tucker Carlson claims to belong to this denomination lol.

Was this true 350 years ago?

Yes. America was basically founded on the idea that if you take protestant religion serious, you're one of the no-longer-a-pure-Anglican sects and if you need to go to a protestant church every so often to be socially respectable that church is what would become Episcopalian.

Ok, you activated an "urquan has too many theological opinions for his own good" moment, but I remember a research project I did for my historiography class in college on Anglicanism in America that gave me a decent answer to this question.

My original question was asking about how American Anglicans on the eve of the Revolution dealt with the idea of rebelling against the Supreme Governor of their Church: the British Monarch. Perhaps this was a silly question to ask, but I seriously wondered how you could deal with the cognitive dissonance of belonging to a church whose governor -- not "head", that's what Henry VIII called himself before someone told Elizabeth that calling yourself "head of the Church" sounds like usurping Jesus Christ -- was the very King you were calling a tyrant. I was aware that many of the Founding Fathers were Anglicans, so this seemed like a fruitful area of study.

I focused my research on Anglicans in Virginia (where several of the Anglican Founders were from) in the 1700s, to narrow in on that question.

And I found that, not only was the exact question "how did the Anglican Founders deal with the cognitive dissonance of rebelling against the Supreme Governor of the Church of England" had never been posed in the historical community, but that actually the subject of intense debate among scholars was the much more alarming question, Did Anglicans in Virginia actually care about their religion at all?

I recall one researcher, who wrote an entire monograph about a specific Anglican lady who had a Bible and a journal where she wrote devotional texts about God. And the researcher treated this like she'd found the Holy Grail -- look, everyone, I found an Anglican woman who seems like she had a heartfelt faith in God! It was a revelation. Stop the presses! We have to rewrite the textbooks! Maybe at least one Anglican in Virginia actually did believe in God!

That underscored to me how serious the rot was in the Anglican Church in America, even back then; it really did seem like Anglicans saw the church as a social club, and took or left portions of their faith as it served their other interests. Actually taking religion seriously just wasn't something in the vocabulary of most Anglicans at the time. That was something for those weird revivalists or those Wesleyans with their method.

Having met some Episcopalians, I really do feel like I can take their approach to faith and just push it back a few hundred years, and get a good sense of the scorn or bewilderment with which their WASP ancestors would have viewed intense religious devotion. Or worse, expelled basing your morals on an unchanging read of the Scriptures instead of just doing what's high-status.

Relevant to the subject of morals, and to the larger topic at hand -- about racism -- many American Anglicans at the time were slaveholders and it was very common for churches to be racially segregated, or for blacks not to be allowed in the church at all. So there's a bit to the Episcopal Church's posture that really is a "we know we were the epicenter of this, we're really sorry."

As far as I was able to discern, in this very limited research project (that included little to no primary source work), the only effect that the American Revolution had on the American Anglican Church was that they changed their name to "The Episcopal Church," to get rid of the whole "Anglo" thing. ("We promise we're good patriots!") Or wait, was it the Protestant Episcopal Church at that time? I think the "Protestant" got nixed at one point because it sounded too much like having a solid theological opinion.

It's also true that a huge number of Loyalists were Anglicans, and so I'm sure if I devoted myself to a more serious investigation of the time period I could find evidence of Anglicans' religious affiliation influencing their views on the American Revolution. Many of these people fled to Canada as it became clear the patriots were winning, so a true telling of the story of Anglicanism in North America (not to be confused with the "Anglican Church in North America", a modern body, that split from Canterbury over gay marriage and is essentially a missionary project of African Anglicans, because as much as Episcopalians like to talk about their tight links to Africa, the Africans think they're apostate for their strong support of SSM) would have to talk about Canada too.

I'm pretty mean to Episcopalians, but really, I guess I'm just as bewildered about them as they would be about me, God bless them.

If you really want to get me started on things that are interesting about Anglicanism, ask me about the Oxford Movement or the "Anglican Continuum." That's where the story becomes fascinating, in both the way that a plane crash and a mathematical equation are fascinating. But you have to find the Anglicans who barely want to be Anglicans before I start getting really interested. (The ACNA people I mentioned above are continuing Anglicans, they're trying to be more Anglican than the Anglicans, and some of them ordain women. Confessional Protestantism in America has had two big waves of schism, once in the 60s-70s over women's ordination and now in the past 10-15 years over gay marriage, and I'm sure at this point all the Catholics and Orthodox in the audience are going "man am I glad we have The Tradition.")

All that to say -- I think Anglicans ~300 years ago had all the seeds of their present situation already planted, in British America more than in Britain. Anglicanism to me has always seemed like the Church of the Compromise rather than a church with a strong set of beliefs, and the American Anglican Church was so eager to compromise with the prevailing winds that they changed their name to obscure their origins. There's an old quip of Oscar Wilde that seems apropos: "The Catholic Church is for saints and sinners alone – for respectable people, the Anglican Church will do."

In that sense I don't see their collapse into social liberalism as particularly surprising, in the way that I find the descent of mainstream Presbyterianism and Methodism (which, to be sure, was an Anglican revival movement at first, though it's always had a more independent nature in America) surprising, given the history of those churches in firm confession and rigorous devotion. But I'm sure that's another story for another time, one that you're no doubt more well-equipped to tell than I am.

I want to get you started. What is the Oxford Movement?

The Oxford movement was a Victorian Anglican movement to rediscover historic ties to Catholicism, without going so far as popery. Nowadays most self-proclaimed Anglo-Catholics have become, well, actual Catholics, but this is an iterative process tracing itself back to the Oxford movement.

Any western rite orthodox parishes are probably also descended from the Oxford movement, by the way, but there just aren’t a lot of them.

How are Christians being "limp wristed" because they're taking a stance about helping the poor? Jesus's teachings are very often about helping the poor and dispossessed: e.g. the parable of the good samaritan, Matthew 19:21:

Jesus said to him, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”

No, it's totally on-brand and correct for anyone that follows the teachings of Jesus to care about the poor.

Here the Episcopal church is taking a stand against the refugee resettlement program (resources allocated for the poor) being perverted to help those that are actually not in need (Afrikaners are generally not very poor); to the detriment of refugees actually in need:

It has been painful to watch one group of refugees, selected in a highly unusual manner, receive preferential treatment over many others who have been waiting in refugee camps or dangerous conditions for years. I am saddened and ashamed that many of the refugees who are being denied entrance to the United States are brave people who worked alongside our military in Iraq and Afghanistan and now face danger at home because of their service to our country. I also grieve that victims of religious persecution, including Christians, have not been granted refuge in recent months.

You're just using "based Crusade Christianity" as a political tool to bash your enemies with, without any regard for the teachings of Jesus.

In fairness, this comment is itself arguing against my political opponents with Christianity, but at least I actually respect its teachings.

How are Christians being "limp wristed" because they're taking a stance about helping the poor?

a refugee is someone in danger in their home country, not someone that is poor, isn't he? where are you taking this conflation of refugee with poor from?


e.g. the parable of the good samaritan, Matthew 19:21:

Jesus said to him, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”

No, it's totally on-brand and correct for anyone that follows the teachings of Jesus to care about the poor.

Here the Episcopal church is taking a stand against the refugee resettlement program (resources allocated for the poor) being perverted to help those that are actually not in need (Afrikaners are generally not very poor); to the detriment of refugees actually in need:

Isn't that referring to your neighbors and people like you?. And that tidbit about "resources allocated for the poor" should be "to the persecuted". I think, your whole line of argumentation falls apart when we take that into consideration.


You're just using "based Crusade Christianity" as a political tool to bash your enemies with, without any regard for the teachings of Jesus.

In fairness, this comment is itself arguing against my political opponents with Christianity, but at least I actually respect its teachings.

2 Corinthians 6:14 "Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?"

a refugee is someone in danger in their home country, not someone that is poor, isn't he? where are you taking this conflation of refugee with poor from?

Most refugees are poor, because countries with armed conflicts and political persecution are largely dysfunctional and poor. Afrikaners are very much an exception to this.

Isn't that referring to your neighbors and people like you?. Yes, people like you, like every other human is like you. Humans are all created in the image of God and are all thus equally morally worthy.

Definitely not just people of your same ethnicity.

And that tidbit about "resources allocated for the poor" should be "to the persecuted". I think, your whole line of argumentation falls apart when we take that into consideration.

Wealthy people fleeing persecution can take care of themselves, the money is largely useful for the poor (and persecuted yes).

I don't understand the point you're trying to make with your last verse.

Most refugees are poor, because countries with armed conflicts and political persecution are largely dysfunctional and poor. Afrikaners are very much an exception to this.

yes, but that doesn't mean that being poor is a requeriment to be a refugee, again, where are you getting your definition on this?


Definitely not just people of your same ethnicity.

I would assume the love your neighbor bit refers to if not same etnicity, at least the near group.


Wealthy people fleeing persecution can take care of themselves, the money is largely useful for the poor (and persecuted yes).

I don't think money will save you from a government that wants you death or destitute.


I don't understand the point you're trying to make with your last verse.

just to show that not everything is passive resistance with Christianity.

I don't think money will save you from a government that wants you death or destitute.

The South African government is shitty, corrupt, incompetent, and unwilling to address the needs of its white population, but the ANC does not want to kill the goose that lays the golden egg(after all, they very much want to steal that egg for themselves). The party that wants to drive out/kill/dispossess the whites is a minority party which, like most socialist parties, is most popular among college kids.

I don't think money will save you from a government that wants you death or destitute.

The South African government is a coalition between the ANC and (effectively) the white party, with many white ministers including the minister of agriculture (most directly relevant to Afrikaner farmers). The main party that displays intense racial animus toward Boers is a small minority party whose appeal is limited for a variety of reasons.

in your estimation, do you think this party will remain small for the foreseeable future?

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