I Give Up
I am pretty much done with Christianity. No, not the faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and our Risen Savior. I mean, I am done with the label Christian. Given that the label is used by all manner of malodorous miscreants who spew bile and bloodshed under the banner of Christianity and the image of the Cross, it is long past time to jettison this label. It is giving the followers of Jesus a bad name and interfering in the call to bring people within the shadow of the Cross.
What is being done under the label Christianity is nothing short of appalling and a full turn away from God. We have Christian Nationalists, Christian doomsdayers peddling nonsense about how they know when the end is coming. We have all too many who claim the Christian label who actively supported an Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza (in what I am afraid is but a momentary ceasefire). Another, often overlapping tranche are all in on the US provoked war in Ukraine and seek to continue the bloodletting all in the name of weakening Russia, in God’s name of course. Not to forget my good Progressive Left friends on that side of the spectrum, we have Christian Socialists, heirs of the “Social Gospel”, who spent 150 years (and a not insignificant number of war crimes) helping to build an enormous reservoir of power in the US federal government, only to lose their shit when a knuckle dragging Neanderthal named Trump took power. Christianity has become yet another “empty vessel word”. It has all become quite unbearable.
How Did We Get Here?
According to Bart Ehrman’s work The Triumph of Christianity at the beginning of the 4th. century there were approximately 4-6 million Christians within the Roman Empire. That means that Christians were about 10% of the total population. That represents a stunning level of growth for a faith that started with about 20 adherents after the Resurrection. Especially when you consider the often-serious persecution these people faced, given that they would accept only God as sovereign. It seems clear that the empire was not going to be able to defeat this growing faith. So, like all earthly power centers, they coopted it.
In 313AD The Roman Emperor Constantine had a vision prior to the Battle of the Milvian Bridge. Since Constantine won the battle, he interpreted that as a sign that his vision of Christ was valid. You can see that this character immediately lost the plot from the very beginning. Constantine followed this with the Edict of Milan, which officially ended the persecution of Christians and granted them freedom of worship. While Constantine did throw money at Christian public works projects and did confiscate some pagan held property, his reign did not see systemic persecutions of other belief systems.
In 380AD Theodosius I, emperor in the East and Gratian, in the West, made Christianity the official state religion and began a systemic persecution of pagans. The pagan element in Europe was all but eliminated by 600AD. The Christian leaders took to this newfound position of power like fish to water. Within 70 years, Christianity went from persecuted, and outlawed, to a part of the oppressive power structure. Not a bad piece of cooption that. Even a cursory review of Church history will inform that things only got worse from there. Crusades, pogroms against Jews, persecution of any who challenged Church orthodoxy. Even after the Reformation managed to split Christendom, differing faith traditions fueled nearly 150 years of awful warfare under the banner of Christianity. These theocratic elements persist up to today, most notably in the form of right-wing Christian nationalists.
Worshipping Power not God
These theocratic impulses are clearly detrimental to the body politic. They create coercion, oppression, and a serious truncation of fundamental human rights. In their extreme form they can lead to mass murder, and they have throughout history. On a practical level, all of this produces a damaged, impoverished society and economy. One does not need to be a believer to see the harm in all of this.
However, from the perspective of the believer, the worst part of theocracy is what it does to the faith. It warps and distorts our faith tradition beyond recognition. It subjugates the need for us to respond to the Gospel by following Jesus to the needs of a competing worship center, the state. There is zero Grace in any of this.
All of this has disastrous consequences in terms of turning people away from the Gospel. Theocracy becomes a program of “works righteousness” and turns people away because it is harsh, judgmental, bigoted, and violent. It is one of the key drivers of the loss of followers in the church. I outline much of this in chapter 10 of my book Understanding God: The Joy of Finally Hearing God’s Good and Gracious Word.
One thing I did not highlight in my book, but will mention now, is the loss of clergy associated with these theocratic movements. In the case of the left-wing Social Gospel movement, much of the clergy associated with this moved on. They often became agents of the state, either functionaries in the bureaucracy or elected officials. A good anecdotal example of this is former California Governor Jerry Brown. He started his adult life as a Jesuit Novitiate, with the intention of becoming a priest. He turned from that to a career in elective politics. I am not saying Jerry Brown, or any other, is insincere. I also do not know where Mr. Brown is on his faith journey. The point is that he, like many others turned from a life in direct service to the Gospel, to one in service to the state. In the end, on the left, there was little Gospel left, and only the Social.
I predict that this will also be the arc of Christian Nationalism. Their adherents will sooner, rather than later turn from the Chrisitan part of that equation to just the nationalism portion. If forced to choose between God or country I am convinced these people will choose country. In the meanwhile, they will do great damage to the Gospel, just as the Social Gospel cohort did in the late 19th, and early 20th century. If my progressive left friends thinks this is harsh consider that it was a socialist minister Francis Bellamy that wrote the Pledge of Allegiance.
Toward the Righteous Path
How then do we cut the Gordian Knot of the faithful’s enslavement to power? How do we free ourselves from our modern-day Babylonian Captivity? I would like to offer two suggestions, both of which involve sacrificing popularity and majority status. First, we should let those enamored of power have the use of the moniker “Christian”. As I said it is now an empty vessel word. In marketing terms, it has become a tired brand. It conjures up all the wrong images, and emotions. It has come to stand for narrow mindedness, bigotry, judgementalism, and vindictiveness. This is most certainly true of the right-wing Christian Nationalism, but in its way, this is also true of what is left of the Social Gospel movement, who all too often think that Gospel proclamation happens by enabling legislation.
Instead, let us return to the use of the term “The Way”. This term is used to refer to the early followers of Jesus and can be found in the New Testament (Acts 9:2; 19:9, 23; 22:4; 24:14, 22). I would rather be known as following Jesus on “The Way” than be a Christian with all the baggage that entails. How liberating this would be! If this becomes our new label, we can clearly differentiate ourselves from those poor souls who have lost the true power of the Gospel and have allowed themselves to be coopted by the siren song of earthly power. Amen!
Second. Speaking of power, we must forgo our allegiance to the power structure as a source of the solutions to the problems of this world. Power is the problem, not who holds the power. If you think it is only the current administration that is the focus of evil, then you are not paying attention to history. Who claimed he could govern without the votes of Congress because he had a pen and a phone? Democrat Barrack Obama, who in the process destroyed the sovereign country of Libya and foisted a coup upon Ukraine, among other crimes. Who rounded up Muslims in the aftermath of 9/11? Republican George Bush. Who violated US law to funnel weapons to the Nicaraguan rebels? Republican Ronald Reagan. That only gets us halfway to the internment of Japanese-American citizens in WWII by FDR, or the Palmer Raids of the Wilson Administration truncating the free speech rights of US citizens. Then there were the genocide of Native Americans and the chattel enslavement of blacks just to highlight the 19th century.
Notice a pattern? It does not matter about the political ideology or the partisan party in charge. Power destroys. It murders, it steals, and it absolutely demands worshipful obeisance. These are all things that Christians are quite comfortable with. They can never be acceptable to followers of Jesus.
This is not an easy path, but then when did Jesus ever say following Him was going to be easy? We must accept that the world is never made better using such power. We must also recognize that in this macbre partnership between church and state, the church will always be the junior partner. In the end, that state will brook no competitors. We must reject the bullshit we learned in so-called civics classes. We must see power for what it is, the negation of the Gospel and the cooption of the faithful. Let us see briefly how this takes us closer to the heart of what Jesus gave us.
I’m An Especially Big Fan of Jesus’ Early Work
In rejecting the power structure and our participation in it we will return ourselves closer to what Jesus intended for His followers, and closer to the understanding that the original church practiced. Such church leaders as Origen, who among other things rejected participation by church members in the military, and the complete rejection of retaliation. This saw him reject the power of Rome as compatible with following Jesus. There is in fact, a rich tradition of the early church rejecting participation in the violent apparatus of the empire. Not only were these church fathers closer to Jesus in time but also in spirit. There is much we can learn by returning to the early traditions of the followers of Jesus. We should not conclude that the only impulse along these lines is from early church leaders. We can look to more recent witness to the true nature of Jesus’ call. The church has consistently produced leaders who bravely challenged the existing earthly order and demanded that the church reform itself. Figures like Francis of Assisi, Jan Hus, Martin Luther on to the 20th century martyrdom of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Even today there are stalwart believers who refuse to acknowledge the state’s right to incinerate the planet or trample the human rights of any of God’s children. It is from this brave few that we must draw our strength. They are the remnant (for my views on the remnant and the majority see here) of the true church; they carry forward the light of the Gospel, which already is victorious. If we steel ourselves for this battle, refuse to compromise and build a movement, one soul at a time, rejecting all state power one act at a time, we just might once again make visible to a blinded world what we can see because of our faith. This I believe is the response to the Gospel that God always intended for us.
So, let us reclaim “The Way”. Let us put ourselves on the road toward the Cross and the empty tomb that lays behind it. It’s this way ✝️. Come and See!
Praise Be to God
