~Galatians 3:28
Yesterday, moments after finishing my previous blog post, I saw this stupid bullshit.
Fundamentalist nut Dave Daubenmire called Meghan Markle a "Demon" because she married into the British Royal Family.
Note that neither she nor her husband were consulted, nor their actual feelings taken into account, nor their presumed belief in Anglican Christianity even thought of. Actual facts mean nothing in the face of Mediocre Idiot White Man's racism. And don't fool yourself, that is exactly what this is.
Yet again, the people who profess to believe the best and the most in the Cross of Christ turn it into nothing more than a flaming lawn ornament when left to their own devices.
And that's aside from other aspects of this man's theology that are so deviant to my mind and what I was taught, that it beggars the imagination. I'm fucking serious, read the article. Daubenmire claims that the British Royal Family is the "Seat of Christianity." Now, hold the fuck on, tell me where exactly that is in the Bible.
I'll spare you the trouble, it ain't.
These people, given the chance, wasted no time in turning the Evangelical Church into a den of devils, supporting a man who treats breaking every one of the Ten Commandments as some kind of a to-do list, spreading division, fear and hate, while enabling Man's inhumanity to Man at the highest levels of our government.
Don't take MY word for it, listen to the kind of stuff these people say themselves, when they think they can get away with it.
One hell of a lot of these people seem to get off on Trump's cruelty, even as he throws them bones while both destroying their futures and commanding their enthusiastic participation in their own destruction. I'm fucking serious, do you really think, especially as the full extent of these people's treason is revealed that any of their illegitimate judicial and political gains will be allowed to stand? Do these fools really think that in five years, or ten or twenty, that the Evangelical and Fundamentalist churches that enabled the Trump Crime Syndicate are going to have much at all in the way of credibility?
Here's a thing that I was taught by Christians. It matters how you get stuff. It matters if you're honest. Do you really think if you lie to somebody while preaching the Word to them, that they're going to think that the Word means anything more than your own worthless talk does?
Does Dave Daubenmire really think that anybody who isn't a flaming racist asshole is the least goddamned bit impressed by his stupid bullshit ass racist talk?
What about People of Color? Are Christians not commanded to go out and preach the Gospel to ALL nations?
Half the damned problem with Evangelicals is that they spend too much time preaching to the Choir and telling people who'll give them money what they think those people want to hear.
And we wonder why the Church, despite all its political power, is slipping into irrelevance?
Let me share with you a pro tip, as somebody who's been around a bit.
Not a damned one of the most Christianized countries in the world is majority White. Oh, sure, in America lots of people claim to be religious but then lead intensely secular lives every time but Sunday mornings. Canada, the UK, most EU countries...most of the people who go to church in the first place are immigrants or old women. Most of the countries in Europe that report higher relative levels of church attendance are Catholic, and thus don't matter to Evangelicals.
Now let's take a look a but further south, over the sea and across the desert, while noting that many of the cultures and tribes that inhabit that desert still live much as they did in Biblical times, with relatively little change. From Ghana and Nigeria all the way to South Sudan and Uganda, there is a swath of countries so heavily Christianized...and not just that, but filled to the brim with Evangelicals and Pentecostals, true Believers and grifters, sheep and wolves alike, as to shame the pretensions of the American Bible Belt....and not just that, but many of those African Believers emigrate to other countries and they take their faith and religious community with them and go out and Evangelize their neighbors!
And guess what? They're ALL Black.
Many of these immigrants are deeply religiously and theologically conservative, homophobia can sometimes be rampant. Hell, you'd think American Evangelicals would be beating down their Congresspersons' doors demanding these people be let into America by the tens of thousands on that basis alone...if they believed what they say they do.
Yes, in a lot of countries, including the United Kingdom I might add, it's the People of Color who are the ones trying to spread the Gospel to the white people...and that even happens on a smaller scale here in the United States as well.
Preach the Gospel to all ye nations, indeed.
For fuck's sake, a friend of mine theorized that if Republicans would do just that, support Black and Brown Christian immigrants and then advocate for and support such people on a pragmatic basis as they once did with Cubans and Vietnamese, they'd be in power forever. Now, that same friend, who is an active member of a large and diverse local Pentecostal church, has also pointed out that most of the Nigerian people who form a large contingent of the congregation are basically socialists...And that's Okay.
I've encountered the same sort of dynamic with a guy from Uganda that I interact with on Facebook occasionally and have written about here as well.
My former co-worker said, when we spoke about this, that it's a trade-off, they might not vote the way he wants if and when they become citizens, but he said he'll take a Nigerian immigrant Democrat that he knows where they stand on a lot of issues (by way of shared religion) over a lot of these Republicans who say Jesus this and Jesus that, but then cut the budgets of federal agencies that support the church's food pantry. It doesn't matter if you're pro-life if you start being pro-death the second that kid is born.
He understood that faith is about community, not about the Self.
He understood that the future of Christianity is most likely in the Global South.
And there are far too few people in America like that guy.
American Christianity not only needs to start preparing for the future, it needs to start adjusting to it, because that future is now.
Looking and reaching back into an imagined white-bread holy past because that's what well-dressed cheats and liars tell you is true has done nothing but turn the American church into a house of demons and devils, and its congregations into mobs of fools, racists and reactionaries who think it's funny to sneer at old veterans or make lewd remarks about younger female reporters and who'd gladly wear the white robes they attribute to Christ, but who'd never take up the self-sacrifice.
I've been saying it for 22 years, Christians, you are what you tolerate. Ironically enough, I started saying it when the impeachment of Bill Clinton looked like it was going to be a thing.
In the late 1990's as a member of a Baptist church men's group and in any college course they'd let me give a speech in, I literally preached against moral relativism...only to watch 20 years later as Republicans embrace that exact same moral relativism with gusto.
Man, do I feel stupid now...
Christians, it wasn't Donald Trump or even Dave Daubenmire that turned your collective Church into a den of demons and a house of devils and threw Christ out like last week's trash, it was you.
You did that.
You are the ones who bought into every partisan hater since at least 1988, who turned Christianity into sacralizing your politics and not much else, and then started worshiping Trump alongside Jesus...and then you gave Christ the old heave-ho at the first available opportunity...even though so many of you can't or won't say why, publicly.
You are the ones claiming that White Supremacy is Christianity.
And if that's what you believe, then you deserve what you're going to get. Hell, as far as I'm concerned, irrelevance is the absolute least of things you deserve if that's what you want to be.
Every tongue and tribe and nation means everyone, all being one in Christ Jesus means all believers treated the same when the Man comes around...not getting to call one woman a demon because you don't like her (or her husband's) choice of partners!
I was taught God does not create junk, and if you put yourself and your judgments above that simple fact trying to say that one person is above another based on their immutable characteristics, then you put yourself above God, and you exchange your religion for prejudice.
In history, or in the afterlife, that doesn't end well.
Cut that shit out.
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