Reclaim Christianity.
Republicans have done a good job of claiming ownership of the symbols of traditional American identity. Democratic thought leaders fuss over whether the U.S. has been racist in its treatment of Blacks, Asians, Native Americans, Catholics, and Jews. They question whether the U.S. has been imperialist in its foreign policy. The result is that Democrats come across as somehow disloyal and unpatriotic. Republicans have been the flag wavers. America is good and strong and Number One! This has been complicated lately by the GOP attack our institutions of justice. Yet somehow Republicans both wave the flag and demand we abolish the FBI. They claimed the symbol if not the institutions they represent.
Something similar has happened with Christianity. The big energy in American Protestantism is in Evangelical churches. They aren't selling piety or humility or anything like the Christianity I learned in my youth. They are selling certitude, strength, and salvation: Christ with a sword. Christ is Number One!
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A reader of this blog attended an event I held at my house in support of Joe Yetter, a candidate for Congress challenging Cliff Bentz, the Republican incumbent. Bentz voted to discard election results in Pennsylvania so Biden electors could be replaced with Trump's "alternatives." I consider voting to overthrow the peaceful transfer of power to be disqualifying for holding a position of public trust. Bonnie Bergstrom attended that gathering. She taught remedial reading to children and then led workshops where she taught fellow teachers. She retired and moved to Medford, Oregon.
Guest Post by Bonnie Bergstrom.
About a month ago I attended a fundraiser for Joe Yetter. Joe is running for Congress in Oregon's District 2. I was very impressed with his priorities and what he would try to do for our District if elected. But the thing that stayed with me was his urging us to reclaim the American flag from the right. That the liberals in this country are actually the patriots and therefore the ones who need to be displaying the flag as a symbol of that patriotism.
Bergstrom
I would like to propose, in the same vein, those liberals who happen also to be Christian, work to reclaim Christianity from the right. It seems that they are trying to take us closer and closer to being a theocratic state. We can look at Iran and Afghanistan, among others, to see how well that would work out. I recommend a book called The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the heart of American Power, by Jeff Sharlet, or watch the Netflix series based on the book. You will learn about the fundamentalist basis of their ties to Putin and the Russian Orthodox church among other things. The merging of religious fundamentalism and fascism is a dangerous trend around the world, and in the U.S.
I resent that the folks like Viktor Orbán and those who admire him, have co-opted Christianity as an excuse for their unChristian views. If these people actually read and pondered the actual words of Christ, they would hopefully notice that He says nothing about a Christian "culture" and in fact instructs His followers to go out and preach the gospel (the good news) to every creature. As far as the anti-immigration connection to Christianity, you will actually find hundreds of statements in both the Old and New Testaments that very directly compel us to care for the stranger. The one about the traditional family? That is most blatantly ignorant about what is in the Bible. Good luck trying to find something you could call a traditional family there! I am a non-evangelical lifelong Christian who is very familiar with the contents of the Bible. I often find it helpful to respond to those who think they are supporting their illiberal views with their religion to show me exactly where Jesus said the words or ideas they are parroting. They can't.
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People can call themselves whatever they want, but what matters is whether Jesus would call them a Christian and that depends on how they act. A brief excerpt from Matthew 25:
34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ 40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ 45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
Jesus kept it real simple. To the people He said, "A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another as I have loved you". And to Pilate, "My kingdom is not of this world."
Piety and humility are--should be--central to practicing Christians, yes. There is no Christianity without salvation, however. Social service will naturally be a greater, even a primary focus among denominations for whom Christ is but a symbol, or an uplifting example, perhaps among many, as opposed to part of a literal Godhead with an individuated consciousness, who also happens to be, per his own unambiguous declaration--and warning--the sole and exclusive conduit, after a universal day of judgement, to eternal happiness instead of eternal darkness. Christian culture is the shared beliefs and mores of the extended church of the faithful, including first and foremost the undeserved opportunity to defeat sin and death by way of Christ's generous sacrifice. One is not obligated to believe in the foregoing dogma, to be sure, whatever title or description one assumes, but if one does not, one is perhaps best described as inspired by Christ rather than as a Christian.
For those who wish to get active in the effort to resist fundamentalist Christians' drive toward fascism in this country, there is no better place to start than the campaign called Christians Against Christian Nationalism. Founded in 2019, it has an impressive list of endorsers, including the presiding bishops of the Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (the largest Lutheran synod). The complete list is on the website, https://www.christiansagainstchristiannationalism.org/. Its statement is there and a way to get one's own congregation to support the campaign.
Suppose you had a child, and you loved the potential of the person they could grow up to be, but you despised the actual child for not having fulfilled that potential yet. Is that good parenting? Would anyone with any sense say you loved that child?
This is how many liberals relate to the United States. They love the country that the US could be if it fulfilled its ideals (as they see them), but they despise the country as it currently is, because it has not yet fulfilled those ideals. This is not love of country; this is not patriotism.
Patriotism is “my country, right or wrong,“ which does not mean I don’t acknowledge what my country does wrong. It means that this country, with all of its imperfections, is my country, and I have positive feelings about my country that I do not have about any other country.
Like unknown said, Jesus kept it simple.
Dave and Unknown @10:44—
Agreed. After this vale of tears, it’s either heaven or not-heaven for everyone. Pretty simple!
Or reincarnation until we get it right.
Just in case Matthew 25 wasn’t clear enough about the need to help the less fortunate and the fate of those who don’t, Jesus also said: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”
It’s pretty obvious that claiming to be Christian doesn’t cut it. He expects those who claim to be his followers to put his teachings into practice and help the asylum seekers, the immigrants, the homeless, the hungry, etc. Not that any of this matters to MAGA “Christians.” If they cared about truth, they wouldn’t have joined the cult of a pathological liar.
Last time through I was a newt. But I got better!
And this time around, we weigh more than a duck! ⚖️ 🦆😀
Newt? Duck? 🤷♂️😀
More Atheists and Humanists, please. More Protesting Protestants who burn the decrees and the Bibles and all translations. No upside, right side, down side flags flapping in tatters pin wheeling away over all the fences. No more anthems on harps, and piccolos and organs with missing pipes. The dead sing out from their graves, songs made by wind and flood and turbulences. Innocent children learning betrayal and poems of violence. So much for the Christian nation as is bites the neck of its constituents to suck and suck thriving on desiccated dreams,
As I was reading Bonnie Bergstrom’s thoughtful post yesterday, I was struck by the line “I would like to propose, in the same vein, those liberals who happen also to be Christian, work to reclaim Christianity from the right”
This is a political blog, so I’ll try to refrain from being unnecessarily theological. Back when I was in the (theologically) Evangelical camp, I might have concurred. But as an orthodox (small o) Christian, I’d like to offer a different perspective.
Those who are familiar with early Christianity know that Jesus and his followers were anything but political. “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” was Jesus’s response when asked if he and his followers should pay taxes. Jesus’s “kingdom” was not even a threat to Pontius Pilate, who would have quickly dispatched anyone even hinting of being a direct threat to Rome. Jesus lived in but did not operate according to the political economy of his time, and neither did his early followers. In fact it was the decentralized cells of early Christians, busily spreading their faith with their neighbors that was most vexing to the pagan leadership. Christianity’s threat, if there was one, was Christians loving and serving others so well that it embarrassed the Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate, who complained to his pagan priests that Christians made him look bad because they cared even for those who were not their own. They were doing precisely what Jesus prayed in John 17.
The politicization of Christianity since Constantine has been famously problematic, and not just for the Roman Church. The Protestant Reformation also politicized religious beliefs – which morphed into all kinds of bloodshed and injustice. We as humans love to organize, and brand and brag. We care about scale and are obsessed with growth: Mega this, viral that. We confer legitimacy on something or someone if it is big or growing or famous. However, even pastors of some so-called “Mega-churches” have admitted that size and budgets, programs, and number of social media followers – have not produced the kind of spiritual transformation that Jesus taught.
The bottom line? I am not worried about Christianity being coopted by this or that group. Graveyards are filled with forgotten leaders who exploited religion for their own temporal power grab. I can’t imagine that the Creator of the Universe is biting his nails or wringing his hands wondering how he’s going to be perceived politically, as though poll numbers matter.
I think you make excellent points John C., and may have even expressed some of what I am thinking even better than I did. It was difficult to put it into limited words, and for me not to turn it into history or a sermon. Thank you for adding your important comment.
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