Christians Should Condemn Christian Nationalism and Evangelical Theocracy. Jesus Does.
The Conservative Christian Church has become antithetical to its namesake
There's nothing more dangerous than professed Christians who have no real interest in Jesus.
They're rather easy to spot if you're paying attention.
They're usually the ones most loudly claiming things like religious liberty while methodically swallowing up the personal freedoms and elemental rights of other people.
They incessantly broadcast their devotion to God on their bumpers and bellies and profiles, while living antithetically to the compassionate heart of Jesus actually found in the Scriptures.
Their spirituality is largely performative: a showy firework display of culture war talking points and religious buzzwords that distracts from the truth that their lives are yielding almost nothing truly loving to anyone but people who agree with them on everything—or those they see as “their own kind.”
Most telling however is that their theology is built on an idea that Jesus fully rejected: compulsion.
At the core of Jesus' movement two-thousand years ago was a personal invitation to follow him in the ways of empathy, mercy, and justice. It was at its core, an appeal to the voluntary orientation of the heart of each human being he crossed paths with. It was something to be embraced or rejected without fear of repercussions.
In other words, it is nothing like the Christianity of the current Republican Party.
The greatest border crisis in America today is at the one between Church and State.
The United States is currently a few months from possibly falling into theocracy at the hands of a small and powerful minority of professed followers of Jesus—and it would have made him sick to his stomach.
Watching the highest court in this nation here being weaponized by a small number of religious extremists to legislate their morality on the majority, it's a good time to remember that this wasn't merely something Jesus would have refrained from or quietly objected to—it was the very poisoned, institutionalized expression of faith that he outwardly and passionately railed against throughout his time here.
If you read any of the Gospels (even the ones in the Trump-autographed Bible), you realize pretty quickly that if Jesus' feet were on the planet right now, the Conservative Church in America would be one of the first tables he'd overturn.
You see, Christianity as modeled by Jesus was never meant to hold power. It was never about control or brute force or dictating the laws of the land or imposing itself on people's lives. It was never intended to be a political or religious institution but a chosen community of like-hearted people working together for the common good.
This is why actual followers of Jesus don't want Conservatives' compulsory Christianity.
They don't want legislated morality.
They don't want people's bodies and bedrooms and marriages invaded by someone else's theology.
Actual followers of Jesus understand that spirituality is the most intimate of expressions, wholly and deeply personal and made by a human being for themselves alone.
Actual followers of Jesus aspire to a life tangibly emulating Jesus in the world and perpetuating the compassion they find there, but they would never pile those expectations on anyone else.
Actual followers of Jesus believe their personal faith shouldn't dictate the laws others live under because they know he preached a kingdom that transcended the systems and paradigms of this place.
Actual followers of Jesus want a world where people's most intimate of relationships and decisions are not the jurisdiction of any faith tradition, because they recognize that choosing or rejecting a spiritual path is a sacred and singular decision.
Actual followers of Jesus want no part of the Republican Party's supposed Christianity because Jesus would have wanted no part of it.
They and he want something resembling Christ.
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You're so right, John- faith cannot be coerced, just as love cannot be. Jesus Himself, when bruised and bleeding, corrected Pilate that His kingdom was not of this world. And He needs no autocracy claimed on His behalf. In fact, He both said and modeled that whoever sought greatness in His kingdom should be the servant of all. He said they would know we are Christians by our love, and that makes me weep.
The long path into this current morass reflects a series of incremental perversions of Jesus of Nazareth's attributed teachings: hardened ritualism, heirarchical clericalism developed in the 2nd century, the merger of throne and altar starting with Constantine, soteriological exclusivity claims, secular enforcement of heresy and other thought crimes, "unholy alliances" with some economic models (slavery, unrestrained capitalism), prosperity gospel, and the elevation of institutional preservation above pastoral (even legal) obligations (which led to the embrace, however reluctantly, of fascism and naziism (Spain, France pre WWII, and Germany) by the cardinals and bishops in those lands. Sadly, our experience in the US is of a challenge that has asserted itself for centuries and extends well beyond the Catholic heirarchy to reach deeply into many, if not most ostensibly Christian communities. The encouraging aspect, the hope, is that each of these communities have members who, like you, John, have not accepted the bargain of the third temptation of Jesus and instead have attempted to remain true to the original teachings. May those "embers" turn into a conflagration and recapture the moral legitimacy and force of the faith. It will be a long fight.