The Hijacking of Jesus

I started a post last week that I never finished. I’d begun writing before Alex Pretti’s murder. I was reflecting on how, like little rabbits I meet some days along my walk, we are on high alert, looking and sniffing in all directions to see what danger is going next to befall us, what new atrocity is going to grab the headlines.

It is as if a month or more has passed in a few days. Less than three weeks ago I was on a Zoom call with three friends, two of whom live in Minneapolis. Things are worse now than they were then. I take heart that the nation is waking up to the horrors the regime is committing. I’m especially glad to hear leaders of faith communities taking a clear stand against enormities daily thrust upon US citizens, immigrant communities, even children.

Two things in the mix disturb me most profoundly. One is that we are swimming a cesspool of lies and deceit. In my opinion, the “legacy media” are complicit with this awful development, often treating as normal what by any standard is a string of crisis-provoking moves by the regime on any given day. I find it macabre that the President’s predictable response to anything he doesn’t like or find flattering is “fake.” Fake news, fake polls, fake whatever. If it’s not “fake,” it’s a “hoax.” The Epstein files, which he appeared to take with utter seriousness before his re-election, are now a “Democrat hoax.” Who buys this stuff? Don’t answer. I know.

The debasement of simple truth is not just a political development. In my opinion it is an assault on the foundation of all spiritual integrity. Humanity has never agreed wholesale on one avenue to or version of truth. But we know all too well how hucksters, snake oil sellers, false prophets, and grifters have perverted hoards and led them down paths of destruction.

That’s exactly what rubs me raw most of all: the white nationalist Christo-fascism that is fueling this societal decimation and warping not only our politics but our sense of common decency. It’s nothing new. For decades I’ve been speaking out against the attempt to capture the gospel by those who blatantly espouse distortions of it that mock the very gospel they purport to impose. Now that gang of people gleefully celebrates what the rest of us are calling “an assault on the Constitution” (which it is) and “an undermining of democracy” (which it is). But it’s more. It is not only the hijacking of Jesus, but also the deliberate pissing on all that he taught and stood for, beginning with the two Great Commandments: Love God and love neighbor. As far as I am concerned, to keep silent or to moan, groan, and finally resign to the inevitability of evil is just a form of laziness masking as cynicism.

Too strong? I don’t think so. Kinda like coffee: the stronger it is, the better it smells, the better the taste. And, to extend the metaphor, strong coffee is known for waking people up. And that is what’s so ironic about the pejorative use of “woke.” Little wonder that the people who want us sleepwalking through catastrophic enormities hate it when anyone is woke, past participle (sort of) of wake.

If you have your doubts about what “white Christian nationalism” is and why it’s such a serious warping of the gospel, I invite you to check out the work of Amanda Tyler and her team at Christians Against Christian Nationalism. The only people that can address this are people like you and me, not necessarily Christians but who understand that the attempt to fuse country and religion is a theocratic program inconsistent with both Jesus’ teaching and the Constitution of the United States.

And lest we think that this is all about “those other people,” I commend to you Carter Heyward’s book, The Seven Deadly Sins of White Christian Nationalism: A Call to Action. Heyward points out that the “liberal” churches have in many ways been complicit with the structures of racism, sexism, and homophobia, just to name a few of the (our) deadly sins.

One problem with Christian nationalism is that it depreciates (more than ignores, depreciates) non-Christian religions, such as Judaism, for example. Much of the religious strife of the colonial period in America was among differing brands of Christianity. Some of the colonies were founded by people fleeing religious persecution, but some of those same colonies, such as Massachusetts, established their own theocratic government that lasted well into the nineteenth century. Yet even after a few decades of the arrival of the first colonists, there was a community of Jews in New York City, Congregation Shearith Israel (1654). While the oldest synagogue building is Touro in Newport, Rhode Island (1763), the oldest congregation is Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim (1749) in Charleston, South Carolina.[1] Although the regime has dodged face-on antisemitism, indeed using pro-Palestinian protests as a pretext for attacking peaceful protestors as antisemites, the climate is unquestionably hostile to any group that identifies as anything but white. I’m not suggesting either that Jews are particularly at risk or that they are free from racist/religious/political targeting. What I can say is that any group that is not explicitly white, Christian and MAGA-consonant might as well consider themselves potentially, if not actually, in the crosshairs. And frankly, I think the data now shows that just because you’re white you wear no badge of protection. Both Renee Good and Alex Pretti were white.

The question for me—I pose it to you as well—is: what can you and I do about this insidious rise of white Christian nationalism? Here are my suggestions:

• Familiarize yourself with Project 2025. Copies are online. If you already know what it involves, review it.

• Become familiar with the website cited above, “Christians Against Christian Nationalism.” If possible, support their work. Consider joining one of their groups or establishing one of your own.

• Start with your circle of friends and close ones. If they’re open, work out with them a way of moving forward together in person, online, through conversations, common gatherings, or whatever you and they can do.

• Work through your local church, synagogue, mosque, sangha, or Mandir, etc., to bring people into conversation (formal or informal) about what is happening and what as people of faith you and they can do together.

• Read and share Carter Heyward’s book.

• Create a community of trusted friends who can pledge safety and security to and with each other no matter what happens.

• Encourage and support faith leaders who speak out on behalf of freedom, peace, and justice.

• Remember that there is strength in numbers. Remember that the Civil Rights movement was a matter of amassing hundreds and thousands of people, beginning first with only a few, in peaceful assemblies and demonstrations. Every single body added to a demonstration in favor of peace and justice adds to the power of the people.

• Remember to take care of yourself. The work is wearying; the cost is great.

• Remember that the future belongs to those who create it, not to those who try to bar its advent.

[1] Side note: I wondered why the oldest synagogue was not synonymous with “that in continuous use.” The South Carolina congregation, which has existed since 1749, now worships in a building built in 1840. The Touro building, while not in continuous use, was built much earlier