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An assistant professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, recently maintained that some adherents of the pro-life movement use the Bible in an effort to distract from issues such as climate change while consolidating “white political power.”
Vanderbilt University assistant professor Sophie Bjork-James made her claim during an event last Monday titled “(Mis)using the Bible: White Evangelicalism and Christian Nationalism in America,” which was hosted by the University of California, Los Angeles.
Those who hold a secular world-view have no restraint on how far they will go to make their secular case.
Be informed, not misled.
The assistant professor maintained that some adherents of the pro-life movement use the Bible to distract from issues such as climate change while consolidating “white political power.”
Professor Bjork-James is what's wrong with higher education in America, in my opinion. She's an advocate, rather than an educational instructor.
Her bio says that she is the co-editor of Beyond Populism: Angry Politics and the Twilight of Neoliberalism (West Virginia University Press, 2020). She is the author of The Divine Institution: White Evangelicalism’s Politics of the Family (Rutgers University Press, 2021), which provides an ethnographic account of how a theology of the family came to dominate a white evangelical tradition in the post-Civil Rights movement United States, providing a theological corollary to Religious Right politics. She is currently developing two projects. One explores anti-racist strategies challenging the white nationalist movement in the Northwestern United States. The other project explores contemporary pro-life activism and the intersection of abortion politics and environmental politics.
Apparently, bushes are more valuable than unborn babies, according to her values chart.
This is being fed to American youth, who are often sent to private schools by their parents at great cost because mom and dad want the best for their child.
False prophet
The Christian Post said this:
The UCLA event explored “how Evangelicalism and Christian Nationalism use and misuse biblical and historical material to bolster their narratives,” according to the event description, which also claimed “January 6 and the second Trump presidency have highlighted the entanglement of politics and religious belief that is central to Christian Nationalism.”
Bjork-James’ contribution to the event was titled “To Be Pro-life in an Age of Extinction: Abortion, Christian Nationalism, and Ecological Denial,” during which she claimed that while many pro-life people cite Scripture to explain their point of view, “many biblical scholars say abortion is actually not even really referenced in the Bible, and many argue that it is not a central ethical theme.”
She cited Bruce Waltke of Dallas Theological Seminary and Reformed Theological Seminary, who wrote in a 1968 op-ed for Christianity Today that “God does not regard the fetus as a soul, no matter how far gestation has progressed.”
She also referred to Jennifer Holland, a historian who Bjork-Jones said described “the anti-abortion movement as the civil rights movement for white people.”
By equating abortion with historical injustices such as slavery or the Holocaust, pro-lifers leave no room for nuance regarding their stance on "fetuses," which have “almost like a public good that must be protected," Bjork-James argued.
She further suggested this approach subtly consolidates "white political power."
“And we can also see in this movement, really a way to help consolidate white political power without having to say, talk about whiteness,” she said.
The assistant professor further claimed that for some, an emphasis on abortion is an attempt to “pivot away from other issues" such as climate change, claiming there is a “long history of organized opposition to environmentalism within evangelicalism."
Abortion is a crutch to "pivot away from other issues"?
This "expert" is standing in absolute defiance to her own god, "Science."
Ultrasound, which was not available in 1968, shows clearly that what is in the womb is not a mass that will only become a baby at the moment of birth.
And she's quoting other misled theologians to support her own misguided ideas.
Jesus said when the blind lead the blind, they both fall into the ditch.
This woman is in the ditch. Unfortunately, she is leading others into her ditch
The Post said, "Other parts of the UCLA symposium included insights from Brooklyn Walker, an instructor of political science at Hutchinson Community College in Hutchinson, Kansas, who will join the University of Tennessee-Knoxville as assistant professor of political science in the fall."
They noted that "Walker accused 'Christian nationalists of using Scripture in misleading ways … to link America’s founding documents and principles to the Bible. She suggested that so-called Christian nationalists attempt to use the Bible to justify voter suppression, oppose same-sex marriage, and endorse political violence such as the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol."
"So instead of holding space in the public square for those they disagree with, Christian nationalists show an openness to using force and power to intimidate or silence others," she said.
Walker blamed the Jan. 6 riot on Christian nationalists, claiming they "were at the center of the January 6 insurrection, the first transition of presidential power to be steeped in violence."
Ohio State University assistant professor Michael Fisher also spoke, condemning Christian nationalism and associating it with white supremacy in a talk titled "Race, Politics, and Christian Nationalism in the Second Era of Trump."
He accused President Donald Trump of advancing a Christian nationalist agenda, and also questioned whether black Christian nationalism exists, arguing that the faith of many black Christians fundamentally differs from the Christian nationalism allegedly practiced by some white Americans.
Takeaway
Sophie Bjork-James is walking in darkness. So are her cohorts.
Paul had a very direct response to this kind of thinking when writing to a young pastor named Timothy:
II Timothy 3:4-9
Traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men [ and women] of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith. But they shall proceed no further: for their folly shall be manifest unto all men, as theirs also was.
The verse "God knew you before you were formed in the womb" is found in Jeremiah 1:5, meaning God had a plan and knew each individual before they were conceived. This verse teaches a divine foreknowledge and purpose for each person's life.
"Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations" (Jeremiah 15).
Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Vigilant. Be Engaged. Be Prayerful.
