Following the horrific Uvalde elementary school shooting, a New York Times columnist criticized conservatives who turn to religion during a tragedy rather than turning to gun control.
Titled: Republicans Use "God" to Turn Tragedies into Talking Points, columnist LZ Granderson claimed that a “number of so-called religious conservatives like to explain away national tragedies…through the lens of God’s wrath.”
In an effort to demonize the right, Granderson said “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.”
The left-winged liberal accused Republicans of wanting to shift the focus away from “gun control” and towards faith, insinuating that it’s a bad thing.
“They [Republicans] 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.”
As the funerals for the 21 victims begin, Granderson warned that the same idea of turning to God will be pushed on mourning families at the services. He even slammed Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick for saying the reason why massacres like Uvalde happen is because the “country has stopped teaching values in schools and is now teaching wokeness.”
The liberal columnist then took it back to when Christopher Columbus stepped foot on America’s so-called “racist” soil saying, “the needle of our moral compass is susceptible to political spin…acknowledging we were never as holy as we like to tell ourselves. 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.”
Despite Granderson’s call to abolish religion in America, a Pew research found that the “U.S. remains a robustly religious country and the most devout of all the rich Western democracies.”
It states that more than half of Americans (55%) pray daily and ascribe higher importance to keeping faith in their lives than any other country.