Sunday School Lesson #Pi on Sunday, February 16, 2025.
Today's lesson develops a working definition of today's American Christianity. The entire lesson might develop in multiple parts. We will see how this one goes. I've never been as brief a speaker or writer as was Jesus of the New Testament -- if we accept that the Beatitudes and other communications between the man and the people around him are fairly represented in modern texts. However, as with most blogs, I develop an idea as I write. Unlike other writings such as books and speeches, a blog is free-writing. There is seldom an outline; there is always the seed of an idea that festers until it must be explored.
To define the Christianity that flourishes in these United States is both complex and important. The definition is complex because the religious studies courses in which we enrolled decades ago as easy A courses while we pursued the serious stuff of our declared majors no longer holds true. Every religious group such as Christianity or Islam or Judaism is fractured. The sects and subsects within the larger identities are powerful and influential, more so than at any time in modern religious history. And political powers are the reasons we should study the complexities instead of the assumptions. Maybe the old religious studies curriculae had value -- they helped many view a wider world and broaden their understanding. But those ideas are no longer valid.
First, today's white evangelicalism is not about Jesus. Having rejected the teachings found in the New Testament -- because those teachings are inconvenient, they call for empathy and social obligation and humility, they exist in sharp contrast to Christian Nationalism -- today's white evangelicals seek to create a nation in which they exercise exclusive power. The Old Testament is their guide. The white evangelical and fundamentalist sects of Christianity are far right extremists and political absolutists. They are greedy for revenge and dominance; they willingly harm others to get what they want.
The Sunday School lessons we sat in before the 1970s seem antiquated and mythical. We heard that Jesus threw the money changers out of the temple. So we assumed that Jesus wanted state and religious separation. We assumed that Jesus despised religious organizations that paid homage to wealth and politics. We assumed that Jesus cared about the ways that business and politics fucked society's poor and vulnerable. We agreed on these assumptions; we couldn't ask Jesus in person so we tried to understand these ideas from the religious text. The religious text binded most of Christianity to each other. We agreed -- whether Baptist, Methodist, Church of Christ, Mormon, or Roman Catholic -- that Jesus' teachings were superior to all other philosophies. Even the atheists agreed with us. Jesus' teachings were the basis of a better society, wherein politics was the domain of the greedy and powerful but where some people of faith could tread and protect both religious freedoms and society's vulnerable citizens. Because Jesus' teachings are simple: live honestly, give love and protect love, help all who need help, eschew greed, be good and derive strength from being a good person.
Challenge: read the first four books of the New Testament. Do not use other texts written to explain the New Testament. Do not read beyond the first four books. Turn off Christian and Conservative radio. Turn off the television. Avoid church services and Bible studies. Saturate yourself for 90 days in this. After the 90 days, take an honest look into other religious texts to understand whether Jesus' teachings are similar to the teachings in other religions. Let me what happens.
Observing today's Christianity from the outside, I am aware that many good people remain religious and faithfully practice the rituals of their churches. However, the Christianity that follows Jesus and practices Jesus' teachings is hard to find. It does not exist at all among white evangelicals and fundamentalists. When Jerry Falwell, Sr. and others opportunistically stepped into Southerners' backlash to the civil rights and voting rights legislation of the 1960s, the inner city chaos caused by vicious policing of black neighborhoods, the anti-war protests, feminism and young people challenging traditional gender roles...a new era of Christianity began. The Republican party also opportunistically stepped into the fray. Both the GOP and white evangelicals under Falwell created a war. It became a war for the USA, among the citizens of a free nation. Christian Nationalism was born. It had nothing at all to do with Jesus. It had everything to do with Power and Greed and Personal Profit.