LA Times column compares invoking God amid Texas school shooting to 'faith that allowed brutal enslavement'

L.A. Times opinion columnist LZ Granderson ripped Republicans who turn to faith in God during the aftermath of a tragedy like the horrific school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, claiming they sought a "return to the kind of faith that allowed brutal enslavement to be the law of the land for centuries."

"They clearly have a period in mind in which they believe God was happier with the direction of the country, but our history makes it impossible to pinpoint a date without looking racist. So they tend to talk in nostalgic Judeo-Christian generalities," Granderson surmised. 

The author warned that the same practice of turning to God would be invoked at funerals: "As the first funerals for the 21 victims of the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, are happening this week, starting with services for 10-year-olds Amerie Jo Garza and Maite Rodriguez, we’re going to be hearing a lot more of these generalities," he wrote.

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Granderson echoed liberal concerns of a distraction from gun control. He worried, "With each passing day, it is clear that conservatives want to move the national conversation surrounding these mass shootings away from gun access and toward God. This despite Pew having found the U.S. to already be ‘the most devout of all the rich Western democracies.’"

Then he went back to America’s racism, implying that the country – since Christopher Columbus set foot on land in the western hemisphere – isn’t worth redemption. "My question is how a nation that romanticizes, even monetizes, its own evil beginnings can even start to fight the kind of evil some of these politicos speak of. This is the country that turned Christopher Columbus from being lost at sea into a folk hero who ‘discovered’ a land full of people. We are the ones who rebranded slave labor camps as plantations."

Granderson even claimed that Civil War enthusiasts enjoy watching the Confederate army during re-enactments as proof of this inherent wickedness. "We have Civil War reenactments in which people root for the bad guy," he argued, asserting "we haven’t been conditioned to think" of the Union as the U.S. and Confederacy as "the enemy."

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Turning back to lawmakers who invoke God during a crisis, he offered a diagnosis. Naming Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., specifically, who recently stated the solution to mass shootings is "renewed faith," Granderson called it "spin" that "panders to our desire to see ourselves as good people. That’s much more pleasant for us than acknowledging we were never as holy as we like to tell ourselves."

The columnist then slimed the Christian faith of earlier Americans, adding, "We don’t need to return the kind of faith that allowed brutal enslavement to be the law of the land for centuries. We don’t need to return to the kind of faith that allowed Jim Crow laws to follow." He didn't mention the kind of faith that spurred the abolitionist movement or the Civil Rights marches.

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After quoting Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick saying, "You just cannot change character without changing a heart, and you can’t do that without turning to God," Granderson asked, "When exactly did a nation built on stolen land, kidnapping and enslavement turn away from God?"

It's no "wonder how this evil came in," the wonder is why people "won’t admit it’s been here since the beginning," he concluded.