As an atheist, parents had me take a confirmation class where ten comands, Lord's prayer, Nicene Creed, other stuff was handed out. It did not take, it did not seize. From curiosity the Gospels and Revelation and Ecclesiastes were read. Many "old sayings" are based on the teachings, and The Gospel of Thomas was not included, if then known, when the Romans were defining Biblical content limitations. Yet it is more teaching, and kind of indirect and neat.
All that is a prelude to a look at Repubican religion, a/k/a Christian Nationalism, a/k/a Dominionism. The lens is not me looking, but a separate online commentator:
Have you ever noticed that nearly all Republican politicians claim to be Christians—but they never mention Jesus or his teachings?
I have.
Pay
attention the next time you see a Conservative member of Congress
parading their supposed faith in a press conference, stump speech, or
FoxNews fluff piece. (It shouldn’t take long.) You’ll notice they use
words like “God” throughout and they reference “The Bible” a whole lot
and even mention “faith.” but they completely exclude the very namesake
of their declared religious tradition.
This isn’t an oversight, it’s a necessity.
There’s a simple reason for the omission: they can’t gaslight us with the words of Jesus.
You
see, over the past few decades, these people have become experts at
slapping a shiny veneer of religion onto the most abominable of ideas
and the most sociopathic of behaviors. They know they
can weaponize the rather generic idea of “God”, manufacturing a deity in
their own bloodthirsty, morally-inverted, predatory image: a vengeful,
joyless, avatar. They can wield a few random,
poorly-exegeted obscure scripture passages like a hammer in order to
justify their every phobia and hangup, making frequent mention of a
Bible they’ve torn a majority of the later pages from. They can brazenly conflate Christianity and America and
give life to the grotesque, Frankensteined violent nationalism they
daily traffic in as if it were sacred, and they will find a small army
of devoted disciples willing to suspend disbelief so they can ratify
their hatred.
Republicans can use all sorts of theological gymnastics, pseudo-piety, and performative religiosity to fashion something out of God and the Bible to build a theocratic order and fool their rank-and-file.
But they can’t f*ck with Jesus.
They can’t make him say what they want him to say or get him to consent to their brutal wills—so they’ve simply erased him.
The Sermon on the Mount, his central treatise, is antithetical to the Republican ethos.
They
are oppositional movements: the former rooted in empathy, focused on
interdependence, and compelled to invitation—the latter built on fear,
strengthened in cruelty, sustained on exclusion.
Jesus’ heart for the poor cannot be twisted into the open contempt the GOP regularly shows them.
His generous feeding of the multitudes can’t justify them taking away free lunches to children.
His call to be peacemakers and caregivers doesn’t allow for their warmongering and gunlust.
His healing of the sick and suffering can’t be manipulated into denying people basic healthcare.
His
compassionate heart for the hurting and the vulnerable can’t be
transformed into their unapologetic cruelty toward immigrants and
foreigners.
His command to incarnate love for
neighbor and stranger and enemy, doesn’t mix well with strident “Don’t
Tread of Me”, America First bullying.
There is
literally nothing in the totality of Jesus’ words in the New Testament
that does anything but convict and condemn the Republican Party in both
philosophy and in practice—and they know it.
Republicans realize that if they were to even allude
to Jesus, that his life and teachings would swiftly become the loudest
and most powerful public rebuke of their vile movement, that his words
would come and violently flip their very tables.
They
would be forced to admit that not only do they [have] no interest in the
compassionate, benevolent, open-hearted life of Jesus, they actively
despise it.
So the vague GOP “God and guns”
platitudes will come—and Jesus will be there to tell them that those who
live by the sword, die by it. They will speak about America being a Christian nation—and Jesus will be there to remind them that God so loved the world. They
will be there to trot out some antiquated tough guy, alpha male
religion—and Jesus will be there to say the blessed will be the mourners
and the last will be first and the humble will be raised. Republicans
will talk about legislating “Biblically”—and Jesus will be there to ask
them where they are feeding and healing and loving and helping and
welcoming. They will revel in violence against the
different and the disregarded—and Jesus will be there to remind them
that he inhabits the least of these and they treat him the way they
treat them.
So, the next time you hear a
Conservative politician or Evangelical preacher sermonizing about the
God they claim they’re listening to and speaking for and governing on
behalf of—do something that will confound and infuriate and confront
them:
just bring up Jesus.
Photo by: AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana
Not as a believer, but as one willing to see some sense to postulating a teacher above other teachers, and lessons grounded upon empathy; what is the good of any "Christian" outlook other than a sensed supreme teacher, and paying honest and fair attention to what time has winnowed out as his calm but direct teaching? For which Rome and others killed him at a young age. For not fitting in.
Think it over
From that perspective, watch out for those that pervert the notion of what lesson is best taught to a multitude, in a governed secular world, as Rome was.
We have a secular nation because the founders were revolutionaries, children of the Enlightenment, fully cognizant of the history in Europe of death and war from differing religious zealots against each other, Kings getting heads chopped off in England, Cromwell getting his head lost too, and these founders were, in addition, aware of downside possibilities arising from encountering a tyranny of the multitude.
Today's littler Republicans, thinking themselves the multitude and not the minority, wish to impose their tyrannical world view on US, justifying it in their own narrow minds however they see fit. They see fit, the same way Trump sees fit, and that is by denial and perversion of good sense about how people should get along. They package weird stuff as "Christian."
