his website<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\nAbout a year or so ago, actor Rainn Wilson posted on social media, \u201cThe metamorphosis of Jesus Christ from a humble servant of the abject poor to a symbol that stands for gun rights, prosperity theology, anti-science, limited government (that neglects the destitute) and fierce nationalism is truly the strangest transformation in human history.\u201d<\/p>\n
It should come as no surprise that the rise in religious extremism directly corelates with the rise in political extremism; both are rooted in fear.<\/p>\n
How long have we been told, \u201cThey\u2019re coming for your rights?\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet to date, as Wilson, famous for his role on The Office, pointed out, the only individuals stripping Americans of any rights are the very politicians who profess to believe in \u201climited government.\u201d<\/p>\n
Every accusation is a confession.<\/p>\n
What used to be red flags are now celebrated signals. In the 1970s, it was Jonestown. In the 1990s, it was Waco. Today, it is commonplace. We\u2019ve normalized dysfunction and far too much of American Christianity has assumed the role of conductor on the crazy train.<\/p>\n
The Roman Catholic theologian Karl Rahner astutely observed, \u201cThe number one cause of atheism is Christians. Those who proclaim Him with their mouths and deny Him with their actions is what an unbelieving world finds unbelievable.\u201d<\/p>\n
To non-believers, many Christian denominations are viewed, in large part, to be the antithesis of the very Gospel they proclaim; consumed with \u201cself\u201d and not with \u201cserve.\u201d<\/p>\n
A \u201cmy way or the highway faith\u201d that fails to take into consideration that one person\u2019s doctrine could be another person\u2019s heresy; and which only demonstrates respect and compassion to those who conform and comply with a certain credo, is hardly Christlike. It\u2019s legalistic nationalism.<\/p>\n
That, combined with a political view of faith, brings us to our present reality.<\/p>\n
As Blaise Pascal said, \u201cMen never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.\u201d<\/p>\n
Recently, a well-known Catholic journalist was cheerfully ridiculed on social media by a priest who declared with religious conviction that the journalist was, \u201cA waste of baptismal water because he refuses to debate his liberal theological views.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve received similar messages from pastors, \u201cinfluencers,\u201d armchair theologians, and converts whose chrism has not even dried yet, all of whom suggest that my interpretation of the Gospel is \u201cna\u00efve,\u201d \u201cliberal,\u201d \u201cconsumed with social justice,\u201d \u201ca victim of the heresy of empathy,\u201d and \u201cfar too centered on the message of Christ, rather than the messages handed down by the Holy Spirit through sacred tradition.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s worth pointing out that quite often \u201csacred tradition\u201d is merely church-speak for gaslighting. Catholic and Orthodox Christians leverage \u201csacred tradition\u201d in defense of the male-only priesthood. Yet it was women who first arrived at the tomb and learned of Christ\u2019s Resurrection. The men were hiding.<\/p>\n
But I digress.<\/p>\n
The individuals who flood my inbox with their diatribes bear similar extreme political and theological traits: Their social media is chock full of religious imagery, prayers, rosaries, and protests. Peppered among the pharisaical posts are images of vengeance, weaponry, insults waged at \u201cthe least of these,\u201d assertions that other religions are \u201ccondemned to hell,\u201d and the notorious red hat that has become synonymous with hatred, cruelty, conspiracy, fear, and \u201cpower.\u201d<\/p>\n
These are the very people Rahner said, \u201can unbelieving world finds unbelievable.\u201d<\/p>\n
While these hyper-religious nationalists post an abundance of selfies portraying themselves deep in prayer, protesting one thing or another, or alleging their faith is \u201cunder attack,\u201d I can\u2019t find a single image wherein any of them display even the slightest interest in Christlike service.<\/p>\n
It would appear they have no taste for \u201cwashing feet\u201d by volunteering at a women\u2019s shelter, no time to raise money for a mission, no use for helping at a soup kitchen, and no desire to contribute to a food bank. They seem to occupy their time with constant protesting, \u201cdebating,\u201d attacking those who don\u2019t conform to their rhetoric, and launching \u201capostolates\u201d aimed at stroking their fragile egos.<\/p>\n
Rather than the Beatitudes, they\u2019ve adopted me-atitudes, mistaking nationalism for the Gospel.<\/p>\n
As the countercultural Benedictine theologian Godfrey Diekmann once quipped, \u201cWhat difference does it make if the bread and wine turn into the Body and Blood of Christ and we don\u2019t?\u201d<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know about that Catholic journalist, but I\u2019m not going to \u201cdebate\u201d my \u201cliberal theological views,\u201d I\u2019m going to live them.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been told I \u201cdisrupt the peace.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s probably true.<\/p>\n
I may be persona non-grata in at least two of the historical branches of Christianity, but let\u2019s be honest: Sitting in a building for an hour on Sundays doesn\u2019t make someone a Christian any more than sitting in a garage makes someone a Chevrolet. Judas Iscariot is proof that you can be part of a dynamic movement with an amazing shepherd and still become the devil\u2019s stooge if your heart is not genuinely committed to the very Christ you claim to worship.<\/p>\n
_____<\/p>\n
1<\/sup> My father was an undeclared atheist; he didn\u2019t want his children saying so since it would have been very bad for his career. He did not admit to his no-belief, that religion was a crutch to reconcile people with their mortality, until shortly before his death. My mother was not at all religious. For instance, no Bible reading or prayers. We did go to the Unitarian mother church in Boston for two years, mainly because my father had been friends with the pastor when they both lived in Charleston, South Carolina and then to a Presbyterian church for maybe six months in Oregon. So I had some exposure to Protestantism but not enough to take.<\/p>\n![\"Print](\"https:\/\/cdn.printfriendly.com\/buttons\/print-button-gray.png\")
<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yves here. While it may seem a parochial to discuss American Christianity, it has become a very powerful force in the US, not just through Evangelical support of Zionism but also on the broader and more durable plane of social values. Among the many developmental experiences most people have that I missed was that I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[2135,4038,4041,4040,2267,4039,4042],"class_list":["post-2172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","tag-american","tag-atheism","tag-christianity","tag-conductor","tag-crazy","tag-nationalism","tag-train"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2172\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}