Thread:
Back in 2007, I TAed Dr. Emmanuel Katongole's course on the Rwandan Genocide. Every session, a student would try to argue that the genocide couldn't have happened if only there had been an *authentic* Christianity among the Hutu who killed the Tutsi ...

who were their neighbors as well as fellow Catholics. The slaughters took place in houses, fields, and even churches–shared churches where the murderers attended with the ones they murdered. So was the faith only genuine or authentic for the victims, or ...
was something else going on? The false tribal narrative promoted by the colonial ID cards had a powerful effect on how people imagined themselves. When radio personalities demonized the Tutsi and called for their slaughter, the ID cards were the markers between people...
Not baptism. Not family. Not church membership. An invented idea. But the week before the killings started, these people were in church together. Did the faith stop being authentic? Did grace have an expiration date? No.
But the decision to allow state politics to give meaning to human bodies displaced the Body of Christ in the people's way of imagining themselves. Right now, a lot of people are tempted to think that the insurrectionists would back down if they had *authentic* Christianity,...
But they have given over their imaginations about the meaning of their bodies to a particular political ideology. They go to the same churches as people who find their behavior reprehensible and see that their actions are illegal and unhinged.
Don't let yourself off the hook by imagining that your faith is authentic and theirs isn't. We have failed each other in the Church by not teaching people to know themselves as members of the Body of Christ. Without that teaching, that anchor in the physical reality of grace,
people cannot see themselves as otherwise than the version of themselves whoever is most persuasive and tells the most enchanting story. We need to teach faith anchored in the senses so that our imaginations and our lives are shaped by the Incarnate God.
There cannot be generous discussion and difference of opinions in the Church when many people are deluded as the Trumpist conspirators are. Outside of bodily formation as members of Christ's Body, there is no genuine faith & love between Christians.
"Christian" means nothing without the Body of Christ. There is no demagogue who can stand alongside God. But people will only understand the question, "Who is like God?" when they meet God through their senses, when we teach the Incarnation so they know it through their bodies.

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Two things can be true at once:
1. There is an issue with hostility some academics have faced on some issues
2. Another academic who himself uses threats of legal action to bully colleagues into silence is not a good faith champion of the free speech cause


I have kept quiet about Matthew's recent outpourings on here but as my estwhile co-author has now seen fit to portray me as an enabler of oppression I think I have a right to reply. So I will.

I consider Matthew to be a colleague and a friend, and we had a longstanding agreement not to engage in disputes on twitter. I disagree with much in the article @UOzkirimli wrote on his research in @openDemocracy but I strongly support his right to express such critical views

I therefore find it outrageous that Matthew saw fit to bully @openDemocracy with legal threats, seeking it seems to stifle criticism of his own work. Such behaviour is simply wrong, and completely inconsistent with an academic commitment to free speech.

I am not embroiling myself in the various other cases Matt lists because, unlike him, I think attention to the detail matters and I don't have time to research each of these cases in detail.

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Still wondering about this 🤔


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