McElvaine - Grand theft Jesus: the hijacking of religion in America

CONTENTS

Genesis
The Second Going of Christ

1 Easy Jesus
Be a Christian Without Sacrifice or Good Works!

2 Amazing Disgrace
Blinded by the Lite

3 For Christs Sake!
Weve Got to Stop These Guys

4 The Greed Creed
The Jesusless Church of Mammon

5 Religion Is the Worst Thing that Happened to Christianity
Christianity Morphs into Constantinianism

6 Well, Then Jesus Was Wrong!
X-a-Jesus: Biblical Inerrancy (Except for What Jesus Said)

7 These Are the People Jesus Warned Us About
The Right Reverends

8 Jesus W. Christ!
The Rise of the Xian Right to Political Power

9 Waiting for Righty
The Divine Politics of Division

10 War Is Heaven?
Backward Pseudo-Christian Soldiers

11 Unintelligent Design
The War Against Science

12 All About Eve
Some People Claim That Theres a Woman to Blame

Revelation: Lets Put Christ Back into Christianity
Saving Xians from the Jesus Thieves

Appendix A. Through a Looking Glass, Darkly:
The Unholy Gospel According to the Jesus Thieves

Appendix B. A Revolutionized Creed:
Revising the Mistakes of the Bishops at Nicaea and Constantinople, and Restoring the Female Part of God

For Allison
Always a Sweetie-Pie

Why do you call me Lord, lord, and not do what I tell you?

Jesus (Luke 7:46)

Genesis

THE SECOND GOING OF CHRIST

Thats them in the pulpit

Thats them in the TV spotlight

Losing my religion

T hats how I imagine Jesus would paraphrase Michael Stipe as the Christian Messiah looks at the crew of megachurch preachers, televangelists, hypocrites, impostors, snake-oil salesmen, and just plain snakes who have hijacked the name of Christianity, perpetrated identity theft against Jesus, subverted his teachings, transformed his name into a representation of just the opposite of what he stands for, mocked and damned those who advocate what he actually said, and shouted Jesus! JESUS! Jeee-SUSS! at the top of their lungs to distract attention from their crimes against the one whose name they blaspheme. These people deny Jesus (that is, what he actually said), not three times before the cock crows, but three times three thousand, every day, as they crow like strutting cocks in front of television cameras and congregations the size of rock-concert audiences. They project a totally distorted image of what real Christianity is supposed to be.

These Christian impostors often demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public places. The Eighth Commandment (as counted by Jews and most Protestants; the Seventh by Catholic arithmetic) is: You shall not steal. This commandment was, according to some theologians, intended to refer to stealing people: You shall not kidnap.

Yet these same self-styled Christians have committed the ultimate felony, grand larceny on the grandest scale: they have kidnapped Jesus. Their crime should be listed in the indictment against them as Grand Theft Jesus.

Getting to Heaven Without the Hassle: ChristianityLite

In these pages I shall not hesitate to call a spayed Christianity a spayed Christianity.

The Easy Jesus creed that passes for Christianity in wide swaths of America (and, increasingly, in other parts of the world as well) today is very much like one of the magical, miracle, no exercise, eat-all-you-want weight-loss programs:

Lose 50 pounds without diet or exercise!

Get to Heaven without sacrifice or good works!

This religion can appropriately be given a name that reflects its similarity to effortless, no-sacrifice weight-loss plans: ChristianityLite. Its basic contention is simple: Accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior, and you can do whatever the hell you want.

Heaven is a place where you can eat all you want and never get heavy, a grinning Pastor Ted Haggard, of Colorado Springss New Life Church (which could justly be renamed the New Lite Church) told Barbara Walters in a December 2005 interview. And the Church of ChristianityLite is a place where you can ignore the teachings of Jesus, sin all you want, and never be held responsible, never accumulate any bad karma. Less than a year after that interview, it became clear that the smiley-face Pastor Ted truly was practicing what he and the other Leading Lites preach in terms of no-responsibility, do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do sinning. After a male prostitute said Haggard had paid him for sex, he resigned as president of the National Association of Evangelicals, was dismissed as pastor of his megachurch, and issued a statement saying, I am guilty of sexual immorality.

Early in 2006, a Pennsylvania Lutheran preacher of the Lite anti-Gospel made the Gospel of Prosperitythat committing yourself to Jesus will make you monetarily richthe subject of a series of sermons he delivered for Lent. Lent?? No sacrifice or atonement for Lite Christians. Maybe the pastor thought Lent was a reference to the money-lenders that confused Lite Christians seem to think Jesus welcomed into the temple.

The Lite Christians take the Lords name in vain every time they claim to be speaking in the name of the Lord while advocating war, hatred, helping the rich, ignoring the poor, and the rest of their right-wing agenda.

They say, You take the high road, Jesus; well take the low road.

Aborting Jesus: The Striptures of Televangelism and the Megachurches

Lets not pull punches. One of the major issues on which Christian conservatives focus is abortion. Yet it is they who have performed the ultimate abortion:

They have aborted Jesus from the womb of Christianity.

Far from conserving the teachings of Jesuswhich, it is plain from a reading of the Gospels, were socially progressive, calling for nonviolence, cooperation, and helping the poor (the meek shall inherit the earth, blessed are the merciful and the peacemakers, turn the other cheek, love enemies as well as neighbors, and give to those who beg)these self-styled conservatives have ripped those sacred teachings apart and thrown them away, replacing them with a radical doctrine that is on almost all counts the opposite of what Jesus said. They like to quote Scripture, but their Scriptures should be called Striptures, because they have stripped the messages of Jesus from their religion.

The Christian Right, which in fact is neither remotely Christian nor right in much of anything other than its position on the political spectrum, has stolen both the name of Christianity and that of America, distorting the meaning of both beyond recognition. These dissemblers (and, in George W. Bushs malapropism that fit both him and his Christian supporters, disassemblers, since they have totally disassembled the ideals and values of both Christianity and America) have committed one of the worst crimes in history. They have co-opted Jesus for political and profit-making purposes.

Enough already. Far too much already! This crime has me breathing fire.

Lets call a masquerade a masquerade.

People on the religious right have robbed and misrepresented my religion and my country. I, for one, dont plan to let them get away with it.