Take Back Jesus
It’s heartening to read the letter that Tom Tomorrow printed in this post from Scott in Nashville. I’ve received plenty of letters and comments along these lines in response to the religious posts I’ve done in the past and it leads me to this question : Are you also saying those things to your fellow Christians or just smartass atheists like me1 who to like to take cheap shots at the religious wrong? I’m grateful that there are Christians who are willing to fight the stereotype that conservative fundamentalists represent all of Christianity, but correcting misconceptions is only one piece of the puzzle2. As Bruce Bawer explains in his excellent book “Stealing Jesus”3, Christians need to reclaim their religion from the radical right :
In recent years, [conservative] Christians have organized into a political movement so successful that when many Americans today hear the word Christianity, they think only of the [conservative] variety. The mainstream media, in covering the so-called culture wars, generally imply that there are only two sides to choose from : The God-of-wrath Christian Right and the godless secular Left. Many Americans scarcely realize that there is any third alternative.
. . .
[Conservative Christianity] has warped Christianity into something ugly and hateful that has little or nothing to do with love and everything to do with suspicion, superstition, and sadism. And, quite often, it denies the name of Christianity to followers of Jesus who reject its barbaric theology. In essence, then, it has stolen Jesus-yoked his name and his church to ideas, beliefs, and attitudes that would have appalled him.
And let’s face it, it’s not too hard to jump to the conclusion that Jesus would have been appalled by fundamentalists’ devotion to “God’s Official Party”. This excerpt for the book of Luke is a perfect example of what I’m talking about :
A certain ruler asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”“Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good?except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.’”
“All these I have kept since I was a boy,” he said.
When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was a man of great wealth. Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
I doubt there are many religious leaders who would advocate giving up everything you own and giving it to the poor, but even with a loose interpretation of this passage, it’s not to difficult to infer how Jesus would react to the men and women on both sides of the aisle who accumulate great wealth while people around the world are literally starving to death. Or leaders who are more concerned with giving tax breaks to the rich while children are dying of preventable diseases due to a lack of healthcare. Or a president who ignores the plight of millions of men and women who work multiple jobs to make a decent living because his highest priority is to destroy the safety net that keeps those same people from spending the last years of their lives as paupers.
I hope this doesn’t come off as preachy or patronizing when I say that it’s time for Christians to take back Jesus from the theological kidnappers of of the far-right. The conservative extremist brand of Christianity is an aberration that doesn’t represent the mainstream and makes a mockery of the teachings of Jesus, who warned :
“Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: “‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.’”
You can be proud of your religion without proselytizing. There’s nothing pushy about saying “I voted against Bush because I’m a Christian” or reminding people that Jesus had more to say about compassion for the poor than he did about abortion, homosexuality, or judicial activism. Considering how much our President is fond of telling the public how much he loves Jesus, it’s fair game to point out how skewed his priorities are when held up to the teachings in the gospels.
But the perception that Christianity is an exclusively right-wing religion isn’t going to go away until the silent majority of Christians stand up and take their religion back. Yes, you should correct people on the far left who make the mistake of assuming everyone who reads the Bible is in league with Fred Phelps, but you should be equally vigilant in regards to the mainstream press. If an AP article uses the word “Christian” to describe Pat Robertson without qualifying it with an adjective like “evangelical”, write a letter to the editor. If CNN implies that someone is conservative because they’re religious, flood their switchboard with complaints. Most of all, don’t let anyone get away with implying that you’re betraying your own faith just because you disagree with the Republican party.
1 : I’m describing myself here, not accusing anyone of labeling me as such.
2 : But it’s an important piece. I often try to be sensitive to these sorts of things, which is why I make an effort to never use the word “Christianity” when referring to the extreme-right without qualifying it with terms like “conservative”, “fundamentalist”, or “lunatic”.
3 : You can read an excerpt of the book here.
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I grew up in Ohio, so I knew any number of born again Christians. Ya know what? Mostly they were very nice people. They treated the folks around them well. They laughed at my jokes, told me the ones they’d heard. We didn’t talk religion. We didn’t talk politics. And we had a swell time.
Religion was obviously something very important to them. I honor that, I respect that. I’ve come to different conclusions from theirs — but not about the important things. I believe in treating the people around me well. I believe in treating the people who aren’t around me well. Jesus said that’s what you oughta do. So did Buddha. So did John Lennon. It’s a good thought — doesn’t matter where you pick it up as long as you act on it.
So Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Scientologists, Zoroastrians, Wiccans — who the hell cares? As long as you treat people decently.
Now the Dominionists and their ilk, that’s something else again. I refer to them as Toxic Christians. I think that’s a good way to distinguish them from those who truly live their faith by treating other people decently.
I invite everyone else to call them that,too. Maybe we condense it: Toxichristians. I like that. I think their brand of Christianity doesn’t deserve a capital C.
But that’s just me…
Comment by Roddy McCorley — May 19, 2005 @ 4:56 pm
nice article—
Comment by tab gilbert — May 19, 2005 @ 5:54 pm
That site yanked the bumper sticker. Nice.
Comment by Rick — May 19, 2005 @ 6:36 pm
One can be a “conservative” Christian (which may have either social or theological connotations), an evangelical Christian, or even a fundamentalist Christian without concurrently endorsing a totalitarian mission. (I wholly reject the term “lunatic” because of its negative implications for persons with mental illness; my job entails working for the rights of these individuals, and not a one of them deserves to be linked to any oppressive religious-based aggressors.)
I follow the lead of Hendrik Hertzberg and others in using the adjective “Christianist” to identify those who create a cult of religious dogma to promote a hostile, rigid, and elitist political agenda.
Comment by Ereshkigal — May 19, 2005 @ 8:07 pm
Interesting post but I’m not exactly sure that the numbers of Christians who disagree with the radical right’s agenda is all that large. They seem to give folks a varied menu of hate/fear to choose from. If you’re expecting a groundswell of rational Christians to ride over the ridge, like the Lone Ranger, & save the day….ummmmm….I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.
I happen to work with mentally retarded folk and my job attracts large numbers of fundamentalist Christians who think they’re doing the Lord’s work…….right about up to the point when they have a large pile of bm heaved at their heads by a client in the middle of a behavior.
But anyway, as an example of the mindset of fundamentalist Christians, I had a supervisor who spent just about everyday that we worked together trying to save my soul. He constantly told me how God loves me & he would never do anything to hurt me & on & on…..
He was never very convincing, primarily because it became apparent, quite early, that he’d never read the Bible from beginning to end. But one day, just out of annoyance, I said to him, ‘Well, what about these gentlemen here? Sitting around all day staring into space, filling their diapers while people talk to them in a babified sing-song….Do you seriously think these guys have anything even remotely approaching a life? What kind of love filled God would do this to someone He loves?
Without missing a beat, he said, “Oh that’s easy, there’s some kind of sin in his family….maybe his father or his great grandmother, & God is just punishing them for that sin.”
This, I’m sorry to say, is not atypical.
Comment by Richard — May 19, 2005 @ 8:47 pm
I am no longer a Baptist because I didn’t see them following the teachings of Jesus, feeding the hungry and clothing the naked. I’ll say it again, it’s a sad day when the godless liberals are better Christians than those who spend all their religious energy getting high on Jesus (no matter what they call themselves).
Comment by Becky — May 20, 2005 @ 6:39 am
Greg,
Can we start by not sugar-coating what these people are?
Calling them ‘conservatives’,'Christian conservatives’ or ‘evangelicals’, etc. is a misnomer.
They are radical republican extremists. The proverbial wolves in sheeps’ clothing and false prophets all rolled into one. They are facists hiding behind the banner of Christianity.
Labeling them anything else only gives them cover.
Comment by October — May 20, 2005 @ 9:53 am
Richard, while Christians of that stripe are not atypical, they’re not the majority — they’re just the most vocal and organized branch, and therefore the most visible, unfortunately. They’re closer to a majority in shithole states like my own (Oklahoma), but on a national level it’s more the case that Christianity has been hijacked by bigots with a political agenda.
Concluding that all Christians are fundamentalist assholes because people like Pat Robertson are so visible is the same as concluding all Muslims are fundamentalist assholes because of Osama bin Laden and those who believe like him. The problem that people who actually follow Jesus’s teachings have is that doing so is a lot less noticable than using the Bible to publicly bludgeon homosexuals.
I’ve heard it said that this very problem will cause a schism within the Republican party, splitting votes between fundamentalist assholes and fiscal conservatives. On a related note, I’ve started noticing bumper stickers with sentiments like “I voted against Bush because I’m a Christian,” suggesting at least the beginnings of an anti-fundamentalist backlash (fingers crossed).
Comment by briantologist — May 21, 2005 @ 10:19 am
briantologist, while you may be right that Christians from the ‘I worship an apparent sociopath God’ school of Christianity aren’t in the majority ( & I don’t use Robertson or Falwell as litmus tests for the Christian mindset…..I mean seriously, the $$$$$ signs in their eyes & the subtle cash register KA-CHING that echoes around their broadcasts kind of gives away the identity of their real God) still someone voted our little poster child for impeachment president into the Oval Office again & it damn sure wasn’t my agnostic little ass.
Comment by Richard — May 21, 2005 @ 8:30 pm
All I have to say about this matter is that those who are true Christians don’t have to tell you that they are. You will know it by their character. Meaning, they live by the truth of judge not lest you be judged by the measure that you judge. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. Jesus led by example. I know that in a “perfect” world it would be great if everyone could just get along. But obviously we don’t. So that’s why we all need to pray that we will get the right people in the white house regardless of his or her personal agenda.
Comment by Jewels — May 21, 2005 @ 10:58 pm
Brian, the strange thing about Oklahoma is that it has been one of the last states outside the Northeast and the West coast to succomb to far-right religious and political ideology. We have a Democratic Governor, and this is the first year the Republicans have controled the state legislature in thirty years. Remember that Tulsa, surprisingly, is the most right-wing part of the state, and while people in Oklahoma City maybe dumber, they’re not necessarily as ignorant and cruel.
just sticking up for the homestead.
Comment by Joe — May 23, 2005 @ 12:05 pm
The Bible said that? The more I learn about the bible the more I like it. It’s ironic that God and the Bible are the antithesis of the Christian Conservative.
You’re absolutely right, Christians need to take back their religion. The Religious Reich is giving a good thing a bad image.
Comment by Kerensky97 — May 23, 2005 @ 3:55 pm
Does anyone remember the Church of the Kidnapped Jesus from Vonnegut’s novel Slapstick? I’m gonna have to go back and reread that book.
Comment by Joe — May 25, 2005 @ 7:45 pm