“Equality Acts” from Easter to Pentecost and Beyond
Reflections on the occasion of Pentecost: A bill named “The Equality Act” has been debated in the U.S. Congress in recent years and recommended for passage by President Biden in a recent speech to a joint session of Congress. Whether one believes that the main result of this “Equality Act” would be exciting athletic competition between biological women and transgender women; or, on the other hand, the exclusion from competition of whole groups of would-be athletes with lesser average muscle mass; one might at least agree that the term “Equality” in this bill’s name has been minted only very recently. In contrast, if one were to seek the counsel of millennia of experience, one would find, for example, that men and women played equally dignified roles in the Biblical accounts of Easter and Pentecost: Women went to Jesus’ tomb to anoint his body on Easter morning; joined the apostles for prayer in the upper room; were among the group of believers who were filled with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost; and heard Peter’s first sermon quoting the prophet Joel, saying “Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.”
Some commentators raise the question, however, whether the Biblical accounts are mythical. In response to this question, Robert Barron has recently cited C. S. Lewis in saying that “those who think that the New Testament is a myth just haven’t read many myths.” Barron notes that myths are “once upon a time” stories with their own takes on eternal truths, but without any specific location in historical eras. No one ever supposed that Heracles performed his labors during a specific historical time period. In contrast, Barron notes, Biblical accounts in the New Testament are very specific in their historical references.
The Biblical “everyone who calls” refers not only to birth gender, but also to race. (Perhaps one should say “birth race,” for who would be so foolish as to doubt that a lucrative pigmentation technology could arise for altering skin color?) Martin Luther King, Jr. famously looked forward to the day when everyone would be judged by the content of his character, not by the color of his skin.
In the opinion of Jason L. Riley, the day foreseen by Dr. King has already arrived: Race relations in America are better than ever. Dr. King’s concept of equality is being achieved. This improvement has occurred despite various well-publicized ideological agendas promoting theories of “systemic racism” and “unconscious bias” that swamp out good news. For example, the approval of interracial marriage rose from 4% in 1958 to 84% in 2013. Riley writes that “the political left has a stake in overstating both the existence and effects of racism so that it can advocate for more and bigger programs to combat it.”
One such leftist group is named “Black Lives Matter” (BLM). According to the New York Post article “Inside BLM co-founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors’ million-dollar real estate buying binge” (April 10, 2021), a NYC version of BLM has called for a financial probe into the operations of the global version of BLM. Cullors is a self-described Marxist whose standard of living seems greatly to surpass those of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, or Mao; and flagrantly to violate the spirit of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Presumably, this Marxist slogan has also undergone some recent linguistic engineering, but it is difficult to see just how the enjoyment of luxury housing in Topanga Canyon or the Bahamas can be construed as an “act of equality.”