While listening to Senator Rick Santorum’s Iowa Caucus “victory” speech, I realized that Martin Luther’s message has been lost even among those who define themselves as his followers. I am referring to the person for whom Martin Luther King is the namesake. I am referring to the religious revolutionary who stood up to the immense power of the Catholic Church and the power of kings and who lived from 1483 to 1546.This Martin Luther sparked the Protestant Revolution that, over hundreds of years, has evolved into many streams of institutionalized belief systems including the Christian Evangelicals whose members brought Santorum his “victory.” I was struck by the fact that these Evangelicals and their Tea Party compatriots seem cut off from their own foundational beliefs and blind to the disastrous historical precedents represented by Senator Santorum.

Readers of Black Commentator may be exercised about the Senator’s comments about blacks spoken in a pre-caucus campaign speech. But, I find Santorum’s obvious deep seeded racism not surprising and not at odds with the many expressions of racism that have emerged from the individual and institutional belief systems of Protestant Evangelicals.

The Senator’s comments about “blacks” being dependent and needing to be given an opportunity to work to take care of themselves and their families is hardly unique to persons on any point on the political or religious landscape. Such comments easily flow from some Democrats and fellow candidates Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, and Mitt Romney. Very few residents of the U.S. seem to have the character capacity to hold in their minds and hearts a recognition of the present day impacts of stolen land, stolen labor, and stolen lives over many generations and the hundreds of years of invasion of this land. When Santorum and others talk about Americans and the proper inheritors of American values and largess, it is abundantly clear that he does not include “blacks,” Native Americans, nor other people-of-color in his “we.” He idealizes a history when we were considered three fifths human, could not defend ourselves in court, could not participate in business, when genocide was visited on us, when we could not vote, and when only propertied white men had power.

Many elements of the cultural belief system that Santorum spews are conceptual enhancers of racist understandings of human nature. I was struck by the force and nakedness of the Senator’s articulation of these understandings. It is as if hundreds of years of continued struggle to overturn racist foundational beliefs and institutional practices were for naught. For the reality is, Santorum speaks with the voice of the majority of Americans on race and gender. The popularity of Santorum’s understandings of human nature only highlights the fact that too little fundamental change in the U.S. racist belief systems of the majority of residents has taken place. Criticism and struggle with this racism is short lived, limited, and ineffective. Our struggles have only made racism impolite. Now, racism is subtler and subject to serial plausible deniability.

You would think, however, that the foundational beliefs of Evangelicals would be held sacrosanct and vibrant by the believers of today. You would think that Evangelicals would be alert when their beliefs are manipulated and thrown in their faces.  “Luther taught that salvation is not earned by good deeds but received only as a free gift of God's grace through faith in Jesus Christ as redeemer from sin.”  In other words, Luther said that you cannot earn God’s grace, including by tying in the voting for a political campaign, by “good deeds.” Also, everybody recognizes that some mighty evil people do well and win campaigns. So when Santorum, a Catholic, says that his victory is a blessing of God’s grace, Evangelical hackles ought to spring erect. They did not.

It was the supremacy of the Catholic hierarchy that Martin Luther rebelled against. This was a supremacy mediated by and distributed by the priests through the sale of indulgences.  Those with money could buy relief from sin and the Church benefited greatly from that income while the lowly parishioners suffered at the hands of the rich. Then as now, the poor were blamed for their retched condition. They were mustered into Holy Wars and worked to death as peons. It was the neurotic megalomaniacs pulling the levers of power in a hierarchical dominance structure that perpetrated the vilest oppression. In truth, megalomaniacs stand on every point on the political or religious landscape and they are particularly prevalent among politicians seeking higher office. Martin Luther, while in training to become a priest, came to the understanding that the megalomaniacal hierarchy of the Church was pulling the levers of power in an unchristian like manner and the Church was wrong about the nature of grace. Martin Luther took a stand against the Church’s imperialism and its meting out of privilege based on the desires and the contributions of the oligarchy.

Santorum and his supporters have aligned themselves with privilege based on money and culture. They want to shrink the government that is the major force in U.S. society that is supposed to counter privilege and supremacy. The Revolutionary War was a reaction to the British-centralized, hierarchical global capitalism of the time. To some extent the constitution of our government is meant to curb such corporatism as was evidenced by the British East India Company in the 1700’s. Despite the fact that government’s leveling effects have always been miniscule, short term, and ineffective, Santorum wants to reduce government down to the point where government can be “drowned in a bath tub.” The oligarchy has not only harnessed the government but also many people’s minds. The supremacist ideology in America has metastasized more clearly into white supremacy, white privilege, a smaller more powerful oligarchy, and 1700’s cultural imperialism. Martin Luther’s Cultural Revolution has been completely erased. Protestant Evangelicals have been almost totally re-infected.

BlackCommentator.com Guest Commentator, Wilson Riles, is a former Oakland, CA City Council Member. Click here to contact Mr. Riles.