I put his on Facebook, in response to my fundamentalist cousins stupid comments;
I finally listened to the entire speech.] I didn’t really need to just to know that he wasn’t claiming Christians today were like the Crusaders or whatever nonsense has been going around, but I did need to hear what he really had to say. The talking points raised by fundamentalists almost always masks the real message. He raised the Inquisition and slavery points to get to a discussion about humility and freedom to speak. He said, “Our job is not to ask that God respond to our notion of truth – our job is to be true to Him, His word, and His commandments", but just like church goers do every Sunday, that part of the speech was missed, the call to action. He also says, “And so, as people of faith, we are summoned to push back against those who try to distort our religion." If a few more people would do that, we’d be a lot better off.
It was a well crafted liberal Christian sermon. The Crusade comment was designed to get you to say, “wait, what”, then he went on for several minutes about humility and pluralism, the modern world . The history he didn’t cover, that you’re supposed figure if you don’t already know it, is how we got from there to here.