WHAT WOULD JESUS THE LIBERAL DO? 4.4.2007
© 2007, UrbisMedia
He’s the darling of America’s political conservatives and right-wing fundamentalist Christian evangelists. George Bush idolizes him, so does Jerry Falwell. General Boykin says He could kick Mohammad’s ass (It’s Boykin’s that needs some kickin’). Millions of fundamentalist Christians ask him every day what he would do when they are confronted with tough choices (like whether to buy a new Ford or Dodge pick-up truck). And who is this person (ooops, Son of a God)? Well, you already guessed that one. But WHAT is thus guy (politically, I mean). Well, he’s a liberal ! That’s right, as in “bleeding heart, commie, pinko, homophiliac, tax and spend,” LIBERAL! That’s what! How could these metaphysical Neanderthals worship someone who:
Hung out with working class people
Challenged the conservative religious establishment
Cared about sick people
Cared about children
Said being rich wasn’t a good thing
Was for peace and forgiveness, not war
Seemed to prefer hanging out with guys [1]
Never asked Mary Magdaline to get a boob job
Didn’t play golf
Did not own a pick up truck (even though he was a carpenter)
And, oh, he was a Jew
When the fundamentalist-evangelical Christian Right swept out of the American South on the backlash of Brown vs The Board of Education in 1954 the Voting Rights Act of 1964, among other progressive social movements (especially involving women’s rights), there were few who predicted that it would make such political inroads as to bring about the likes of an idiot like George Bush, their own “annointed one.” One wonders whether how much it owed to the almost world-wide resurgence of religious fundamentalism. There was the election of the Polish Pope (or Polish Joke) who hated communism, but sought to lead the Church back to a time before Marx and Engels, and the rise of the Shia and the Wahabbists and then the Taliban in Islam run by the like of Khomeni and bin Laden. [2] In any case, although they were part of the same primitive use of religion to control rather than liberate minds, Catholic and Islamic fundamentalism only confirmed to the American Evangelical Protestant Right the need for strong Christian crusaders in political office to stave off any rise in religious relativism by those wishy-washy liberals.
The American Religious-Right(eous) captured the moral high-ground of American politics so quickly that the Liberals were rolling down the other side of the hill before they knew what hit them. Liberal Protestant Christians would not be tolerated, as Jimmy Carter learned. Anyway, it seemed he couldn’t beat the Muslims, so they preferred the phony religiosity of Ronald Reagan, who learned that it is easier to buy Muslims than to beat them.
But maybe the greatest triumph of the R-R was a public relations triumph: they took a liberal Jewish rabbi from the First Century and turned him into an icon for the very things he did or would have opposed. No wonder they regarded Liberals as wish-washy; that’s exactly what they were, being terrified that any re-appropriation of Jesus would mark them as being non-secular. Liberal Catholics thought they were really being cool because John XXIII let them sing Beatles tunes at mass. [3]
Liberals were blamed for the loss of the Vietnam war, a war that, like Bush’s Iraq war, was lost before we even started. Liberals were blamed for drug abuse, crime, teen-age pregnancy, inflation, recession, divorce rates, abortion, pimples, hemorrhoids, and, oh, lest we ever forget, Communism and TAXES! [4] Jesus, of course, had nothing to say on any of these subjects, but is routinely presented as if it was not the devil that tempted and tormented Jesus during his forty days in the desert, but those dastardly Liberals. Conversely, religious Right-wingers maintain a strategic silence on what Jesus is on record as having a position.
Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. [Matthew 5:9]
Resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. [Matthew 5:39]
I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despite-fully use you, and persecute you; [Matthew 5:44] Talk about a wishy-washy appeaser. This guy was a Liberal!
If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to cast a stone at her. [John 8:7] Do not judge, lest you too be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. [Matthew 7:1 & 2.] Wow, way too tolerant!
Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy [Matthew 5:7] But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. [Matthew 6:15]
Truly, I say unto you, it will be hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. [Matthew 19:23] You cannot serve both God and Money. [Matthew 6:24.] Oh, no, you mean he wouldn’t approve of Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy!
Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s. [Matthew 22:21] What, he wasn’t for prayer in schools and the Ten Commandments in every public building?
Love your neighbor as yourself. .[Matthew 22:39] So in everything, do to others as you would have them do to you. [Matthew 7:12.] Guess he hasn’t been to Guantanamo.
If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. [Matthew 19:21] What? You mean my SUV, too?
But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just. [Luke 14:13 &14.] There he goes again, taxing us and spending it on those useless social programs.
And when thou pray, thou shall not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. . . . But thou, when thou pray, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret. [Matthew 6:6 & 7] Oh, great, after we went and built him a nice big mega-church with state of the art broadcast equipment.
In short, if we are to have any faith in Jesus or his salvation it would be for the opposite reasons the people who claim him use his name. Any Jesus worth my admiration wouldn’t be seen really dead hanging out with a bunch of zealous zombies who have perverted every Christian principle to suit their hatred, bigotry, greed, and bellicosity. Jesus the liberal wouldn’t shown up in one of their mega-church malls if they were raffling off enough NASCAR tickets to bring all the Apostles and Mary Mag along.
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© 2007, James A. Clapp
[1] Maybe some of the guys were, you know, “that way,” but I happen to think Jesus was straight and, in fact, was in a monogamous relationship with Mary Mag (you know, she of the “Holy Grail” that became the subject of that pile of trip called The Da Vinci Code )
[2] No, I haven’t forgotten Meyer Kahane and right-wing Zionist groups.
[3] Meanwhile, the Pope was blessing Right wing death squads for killing “Marxist” nuns and priests in Central and South America.
[4] About the only ones that Jesus came close to having anything to say about were communism (he sounded a lot like a commie at times) and his apostle, Matthew, was a Roman tax collector.
