The Christian Right Was Right

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I confess that I was dead wrong about this. I have to hand it to the Christian Right, they knew what they were talking about all this time. They knew this was going to happen and predicted it with astounding accuracy, repeatedly. For decades, they tried to tell us that the sky was falling, that devils were walking among us, and that the end was so very nigh. For years and years, they lamented the approaching devastation and tried to prepare us as good prophets do. They pounded their pulpits with ferocity and thumped their Bibles with abandon, forecasting this country’s certain doom… and we didn’t listen. We rolled our eyes and dismissed them as out-of-touch, hypocritical, religious zealots whose hold on reality was tenuous at best. Yet, they had it right all along. It turns out that each one of their raw-throated brimstone-breathing prophecies was true:

• That the wolves would come in sheep’s clothing to devour the innocent
• That there would be a twisting of the Scriptures to justify vile evil of every kind
• That people would do what was right in their own eyes and make themselves into the very God they most worshipped
• That money, power, and pride would be too seductive to avoid for far too many
• That the Church was in danger of being polluted to the point of death
• That “the least of these” would be discarded and brutalised
• That good people would be preyed upon by opportunistic monsters

These sage prognosticators had everything about the approaching disaster correct… except its source. They neglected to predict the actual genesis of this great decimation. Because it wouldn’t be the Gays, or the Muslims, or the Atheists, or celebrities, or street people, or tattooed women, or sexually active teenagers as they’d so foretold. It wouldn’t be transgender men lurking in bathrooms, or brown-skinned suicide bombers from some distant cave, or any of the countless bogeymen they told us were hiding in the shadows to bring terror. No, the encroaching danger was a lot closer than all that. For years, the far Christian Right warned us about Godless hordes coming to destroy America and it turns out this was true… it’s just that the words were autobiographical.

As a lifelong Christian, I’ve had a sick sense of déjà vu watching politicians professing to be followers of Jesus dismantling every programme designed to care for the vulnerable and the hurting, seeing the way the powerful gather ever-greater power, watching empathy vanishing, and hatred skyrocketing. I’ve heard this story a million times before; proclaimed on Sunday mornings from pulpits, unleashed in religious social media rants, and shouted through bullhorns on street corners. I knew this was coming, or at least I should have. We all should have. These harbingers of doom were right to warn us… ironically, they were the very ones they were warning us about. In the sickest kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, they were the plague of these days that they said would come. It’d be the preachers and the evangelists abandoning the heart of Jesus, perverting the words of the Bible for their agenda, selling their souls for a high place overlooking the world. They’d be the very false prophets they told us that we should like hell run from. These supposed disciples of Jesus would be the ones to betray him with a kiss and send him to a bloody, undignified end.

Yes, the Christian Right was right, evil was going to run amok through the world, terrorise the lives of ordinary people, and make a mockery of God. That’s what it’s surely doing in these days. I owe them an apology. I should’ve believed them. I once was blind, and now I see.

16 March 2018

John Pavlovitz

Stuff That Needs to Be Said

https://johnpavlovitz.com/2017/03/16/the-christian-right-was-right/

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White Evangelicals, This is Why People Are Through With You

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Dear White Evangelicals:

I need to tell you something… people have had it with you. They’re done. They want nothing to do with you any longer and here’s why. They see your hypocrisy, your inconsistency, your incredibly selective mercy, and your thinly veiled supremacy. For eight years, they watched you relentlessly demonise a black President; a man faithfully married for 26 years; a doting father and husband without a hint of moral scandal or the slightest whiff of infidelity. They watched you deny his personal faith convictions, argue his birthplace, and assail his character… all without cause or evidence. They saw you brandish Scriptures to malign him and use the laziest of racial stereotypes in criticising him.

And through it all, White Evangelicals… you never once suggested that God placed him where he was, you never publicly offered prayers for him and his family, you never welcomed him to your Christian Universities, you never gave him the benefit of the doubt in any instance, you never spoke of offering him forgiveness or mercy, your evangelists never publicly thanked God for his leadership, your pastors never took to the pulpit to offer solidarity with him, you never made any effort to affirm his humanity or show the love of Jesus to him in any quantifiable measure. You violently opposed him at every single turn… without offering a single ounce of the grace you claim as the heart of your faith tradition. You jettisoned Jesus as you dispensed damnation on him.

Yet, today, you openly give a “mulligan” to a white Republican man so riddled with depravity, so littered with extramarital affairs, so unapologetically vile, with such a vast resume of moral filth… that the mind boggles. The change in you is unmistakable. It’s been an astonishing conversion to behold… a being born again. With him, you suddenly find religion. With him, you’re now willing to offer full absolution. With him, all is forgiven without repentance or admission. With him, you’re suddenly able to see some invisible, deeply buried heart. With him, sin has become unimportant, compassion no longer a requirement. With him, you see only Providence.

White Evangelicals, all those people who’ve had it with you… they see it all clearly. They recognise the toxic source of your duality. They see that pigmentation and party are your sole deities. They see that you aren’t interested in perpetuating the love of God or emulating the heart of Jesus. They see that you aren’t burdened to love the least, to be agents of compassion, or to care for your Muslim, gay, African, female, or poor neighbours as yourself. They see that all you’re interested in doing is making a God in your own ivory image and demanding that the world bow down to it. They recognise this all about white Republican Jesus… not dark-skinned Jesus of Nazareth.

I know you don’t realise it, but you’re digging your own grave in these days; the grave of your very faith tradition. Your willingness to align yourself with cruelty is a costly marriage. Yes, you’ve gained a Supreme Court seat, a few months with the Presidency as a mouthpiece, and the cheap high of temporary power… but you’ve lost a lot more. You’ve lost an audience with millions of wise decent good-hearted faithful people with eyes to see this ugliness. You’ve lost any moral high ground or spiritual authority with a generation. You’ve lost any semblance of Christlikeness. You’ve lost the plot. Most of all, you’ve lost your soul.

I know it’s likely you’ll dismiss these words. The fact that you’ve even made your bed with such malevolence shows how far gone you are and how insulated you are from the reality in front of you. However, I had to at least try to reach you. It’s what Jesus would do. Maybe, you need to read what he said again… if he still matters to you:

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.

Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men. Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it gives light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

Gospel according to St Matthew 5.3-16

24 January 2018

John Pavlovitz

Stuff That Needs To Be Said

https://johnpavlovitz.com/2018/01/24/white-evangelicals-people/

The Death of Christianity in the USA

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Editor:

This is a real read n’ heed… reflect on the fact that the semi-converted like Stephen Damick and Rod Dreher want to bring this garbage amongst us and they want to ally us with anti-Christian Evangelical sectarian slimers. Evangelicalism isn’t Christian… it denies the Eucharist and the Church… that ends the discussion for me. Be kind to your Evangelical neighbours, but don’t even consider their ideology… it isn’t Christian, it never was, and it’s incapable of being such ever. Have a care; the times aren’t good…

BMD

Christianity has died in the hands of Evangelicals. Evangelicalism ceased being a religious faith tradition following Jesus’ teachings concerning justice for the betterment of humanity when it made a Faustian bargain for the sake of political influence. The ambitions of Trumpish flimflammers (who sold their souls for expediency) murdered the beauty of the gospel message of love, of peace, and of fraternity. We need no greater proof of the death of Christianity than the rush to defend a child molester in order to maintain a majority in the US Senate.

Evangelicals constructed an exclusive interpretation that fuses and confuses white supremacy with salvation. Only those from the dominant culture, along with their supposed inferiors who with colonised minds embrace assimilation, can achieve salvation. However, their salvation damns Jesus. To save Jesus from those claiming to be his heirs, we must wrench him from the hands of those who use him as a façade from which to hide their phobias… their fear of blacks, their fear of the undocumented, their fear of Muslims, their fear of everything queer.

Evangelicalism has ceased to be a faith perspective rooted in Jesus the Christ and has become a political movement whose beliefs repudiate all that Jesus advocated. A message of hate permeates their pronouncements, evident in sulphurous proclamations like the Nashville Statement, which elevates centuries of sexual dysfunctionalism since the days of Augustine by imposing them upon Holy Writ. They condemn as sin those who express love outside the Evangelical anti-body straight jacket.

Evangelicalism’s unholy marriage to the Prosperity Gospel justifies multi-millionaire bilkers wearing holy vestments made of sheep’s clothing who discovered being profiteers rather than prophets delivers an earthly security never promised by the One in whose Name they slaughter the hungry, thirsty, naked, and alien amongst them. Christianity at a profit is an abomination before all that is Holy. From their gilded pedestals erected in white centres of wealth and power, they gaslight all to believe they’re being persecuted because of their faith.

Evangelicalism’s embrace of a new age of ignorance blames homosexuality for Harvey’s rage rather than considering the scientific consequences climate change has on the number of increasing storms of greater and greater ferocity. To ignore the damage caused to God’s creation so the few can profit in raping Mother Earth causes celebrations in the fiery pits of Gehenna. Evangelicalism forsakes holding a sexual predator, an adulterer, a liar, and a racist accountable, instead of serving as a shield against those who question POTUS’ immorality because of some warped reincarnation of Cyrus. Laying holy hands upon the incarnation of the very vices Jesus condemned to advance a political agenda… instead of rebuking and chastising in loving prayer… prostitutes the gospel in exchange for the victory of a Supreme Court pick.

Evangelicalism either remained silent or actually supported Charlottesville goose-steppers because they protect their white privilege with the doublespeak of preserving heritage, leading them to equate opponents of fascist movements with the purveyors of hatred. Jesus has yet to recover from the vomiting induced by the Christian defenders of torch-wielding white nationalists calling for “blood-and-soil”. The Evangelicals’ Jesus is satanic, and those who hustle this demon are “false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works”. (Second Epistle of Apostle St Paul to the Corinthians 11.13-15).

You might wonder if my condemnation is too harsh. It isn’t, for the Spirit of the Lord has convicted me to shout from the mountaintop how the hatred and bigotry of those who position themselves as the voice of God in America devour God’s precious children. As a young man, I walked down the sawdust aisle at a Southern Baptist church and gave my heart to Jesus. Besides offering my broken heart, I also gave my mind to understanding God and my arm to procuring God’s call for justice. I always considered myself an Evangelical, but I can no longer allow that political party masquerading as Christianity to tarnish my name. Like many women and men of good will who still struggle to believe, but not in the Evangelical political agenda, I too no longer want or wish to be associated with an ideology responsible for tearing humanity apart. However, if you, dear reader, still cling to a hate-mongering ideology, may I humbly suggest you get saved.

13 November 2017

Miguel de la Torre

Baptist News

https://baptistnews.com/article/death-christianity-u-s

1 October 2017. There IS a Difference…

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There’s a real difference between a longing for our real tradition and the efforts of ungrounded converts to “recapture the Tradition”. The two aren’t the same at all. One is a longing for what one once had, but lost due to “reformers”. The other is a prideful attempt to erect what one never had. There’s a world of difference between the two things. The first is a real effort to grasp the living and life-giving Tradition found in the Russian liturgy. The other is an attempt by untutored former Prods to erect a prideful and stultifying liturgical superstructure over their Evangelical Anti-Christian Weltanschauung. Any grounded Orthodox Christian can tell the difference.

May God see and judge…

BMD