The Christian Right

The following is an excerpt by John Caputo from the introduction to The Sleeping Giant has Awoken: The New Politics of Religion in the United States. It's a collection of essays on the parallels between the "triumph of American political conservatism" and the "ascendance of Christian evangelicalism." A common argument from progressives and leftists in general is that if people voted in their best interest, we would never have a Republican president. When lefties say this, they are generally referring to economic considerations. One thing that isn't talked about as much is the idea that if Christians voted for what their interests should be as self-proclaimed followers of Christ, the same would be true. Anyone who knows me knows that I have often been at odds with dominant "Christianity" in America for all of the following reasons (and more), which the author of the introduction articulates much better than I could:

"the dominant form of American Christianity today, the Christian Right, has sat down to table with virtually every power and domination that Jesus contested in his own lifetime, with the very powers of imperial rule, the rule of the world, which took his life. It stands for authoritarianism, nationalism, and militarism that contradict the letter and the spirit of Jesus' words, who said to love one's enemies, and if one is struck on the cheek, to turn the other cheek. It enthusiastically supports a war that cynically flaunts the classical conditions of just-war theory, "just war" itself being a strange turn of phrase to be found on the lips of a follower of the author of the Sermon on the Mount. It marches arm in arm with an unbridled capitalist greed that has recklessly permitted the rich to grow even richer while grinding up the poor-flaunting the very ministry Jesus announced for himself. By lending itself to laissez-faire capitalism, the Right undermines everything it might have been believed to stand for. Unchecked capitalism wrecks family values by impoverishing families and leaving children homeless and parentless[...] the economics pursued by the Right constitutes an all-out attack upon the middle class, where family life is the mainstay[...] Where Jesus found strength in the weakness of God, in forgiveness and nonviolence, the Christian Right openly lusts for a Christian Empire, even as it was an earlier Empire that took the life of Jesus. The cruelest and most bitter irony is that the Christian Right does all of this in the very name of Jesus, asking us, "What would Jesus do?" -as if Jesus were a capitalist out to make millions and a militarist with aspirations for imperial power, in search of a kingdom very decidedly of this world. What is this if not the will of humans in love with bare-knuckled power, with themselves and their own will, cloaking themselves in the name of weakness of God and nonviolence of Jesus?"

The only thing that concerns me about religious movements is their ability to instigate social change. Spiritual awakening and faith are only useful to a social critic if they are necessary to overhaul the current social structure. In other words, if Christian theology ignores the exploited and oppressed among us, it is worthless. But what I have realized is that it is not Christianity I detest, it is what religious institutions and power structures have done to corrupt it. I am Not a Christian but I respect the moral system that true Christianity teaches, the system of the New Testament that the Christian Right forgets or simply chooses to ignore.