
On Friday, Mack of Coyote Chronicles caught Rob Huddleston making this unsourced comment about the tragic shooting at Knoxville's Central High:
The shooter was Hispanic and apparently acted like some sort of gangster after pulling the trigger, walking calmly out of the school.Huddleston is Treasurer of the Knox County Young Republicans, but more to the point of this post, he is also a Deacon of Immanuel Baptist Church.
Update August 26, 2008: Aunt B. gets close to what troubles me about Huddleston's comment here. It's also that he was careless (or worse, intentional) about using the word "Hispanic" in a negative context.
And then on Sunday, we hear this quote from Gary Ashley, a self-proclaimed Shelbyville liberal Protestant (maybe not an evangelical), on the Somalian immigrant population that has been drawn to his city:
The Somolians don't use toilet paper… They use their hand and then wash it without soap...I have written multiple articles on the intersection of faith and Hispanic Nashville, and it is an issue with which I wrestle constantly. Questions I ask myself include, what is the role for God's evangelical church in the U.S., of which I am a part - are we called to speak out for others who are under attack - are we called to have a role in political decisions that treat the "least of these" with disproportionate injustice?
Rob Huddleston, the Baptist Deacon mentioned above, said in this post on his site that he wants to be inspired. Well, that's the aim of my site - to inspire - so I submit to him these voices who have inspired me:
- Former Colorado Governor Ralph Carr, who sought justice for "enemy aliens" in a time of national panic
- Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., who accepted his Nobel Prize by invoking the Gospel of John and calling for a worldwide fellowship of love
- Rev. Don Finto and Rev. Mick Antanaitis of Nashville's Belmont Church, who remind us where the Good Samaritan came from
- M. Daniel Carroll, who wrote Christians at the Border (h/t Greg Siskind)
- Susannah Heschel, who followed her Rabbi father's footsteps to Selma, where he had said, "Our march was worship"
In an environment in which Hispanics and/or immigrants are the subject of politically generated suspicion and scorn, it certainly isn't right for Southern Baptists and other evangelicals to gin up more suspicion and scorn.
Silence feels just as wrong.
See also Liberty Together, which tracks pro-immigrant opinion, and this promo for HispanicNashville.com



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