Over the past decade, one of the easiest ways for a mediocre mid-brow person to break into the scribbling racket has been the vehicle of anti-religious propaganda. That is due in no small part to the habit of online atheists to click on anti-religious propaganda like trained animals in a Skinner box. The Salon article this piece is inspired by was put up Sunday and, right now as I write this, has 2474 comments and 694 people listening. Those kinds of numbers of clicks on articles aren't, in my experience, heavily associated with high information content, content which introduces new ideas into a discussion or a calm, fair-minded review of information and logical conclusion, it's the reward of writing stuff that will confirm biases, harden positions and promote the agenda of one side. I think a valid conclusion of the reaction as measured in clicks and hits on opinion pieces that the more careful a writer is with their facts and their reasoning, the more unlikely it is to garner that sort of traffic. Digby's pieces, some of the best of that type, get far fewer hits than the hate peddlers like Salon's Jeffrey Taylor, the author of the piece linked to, above. Entire blogs and, I suspect, hosting sites are sustained by appealing to the bottom of that particular barrel, something they have in common with right-wing hate talk media, radio, TV and web. In fact, what they have in common is my theme.
In previous decades, and today, the pseudo-Christian Republican right, funded by billiionaire cash provides an almost identical means of establishing a career in what gets called "journalism" these days. Those careers run on parallel tracks, separate but running the same way. As the topic of so many of the neo-atheist and Antichristian diatribes show, they are in a symbiotic competition. They benefit from each others existence. We don't have to feed on the debris that they produce.
Tayler in his hate-screed pushes the line I was saying Christians need to expose, equating the Antichristianity of Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter with Christianity. Of course it's the same thing that the O'Reillys and Coulters do and for the same purpose, to bury the real gospel of Jesus and the record of the first years of the movement of his followers. The neo-atheists and the Republican right are different sides of that effort to bury any authentic attempts to follow those teachings because they oppose the overall materialism that they both share, the admittedly vulgar materialism or Republican-capitalist Mammonism and the unadmittedly vulgar materialism of neo-atheism.
How shall we know them?
There are tests provided by Jesus for judging the authenticity of assertions of religious authority. If there are any such tests that could be held to authoritatively disqualify people from being authentically Christian, those are the tests to apply. I think it's a good idea to take those ideas of Jesus, seriously. Just as a sampling.
From Matthew chapter 7
15 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. 16 You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? 17 In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus you will know them by their fruits.
Matthew 24:40
Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.
This one would disqualify the Republican right's Antichristianity and it is hardly the only saying of Jesus that exposes them, no matter what they profess. Also from Matthew chapter 7
21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?’ 23 Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.’
And what is the will of God? The most famous qualification of all of them,
Luke 6:31
Do to others as you would have them do to you.
There is absolutely nothing I can think of in the program of the Republican right, Antichristian assertion of morality that can pass any of these tests. Their profession of Christianity fails, absolutely on even these tests set by Jesus for evaluating the authenticity of people who claimed to be following him. The gospels are remarkably prescient about those who would do that in such large numbers, its understanding of the temptations aroused around even a movement as opposed to them as that of Jesus may be unique in human culture. Science carries little to none of that kind of warning against how its prestige would be abused in the wider culture.
I think one of the great opportunities for Christians, now that the interdenominational strife among different denominations is seen as the unChristian power plays those usually were, is to be unafraid in calling false Christianity what it is. When someone so clearly and obviously does the worst to the least among us, when they violate the radical equality demanded by the gospel of Jesus and the practice of his followers who knew him, when they turn Jesus into a plaster statue and a tacky photo-copy and video to mask their doing exactly the opposite of what he taught, it's time to call them out, expose them and condemn them, it is necessary to restate the teachings of Jesus in their clear and obvious meaning. There isn't any evaluation made among the multitudes fed by him and his inner circle. St. Francis got close to the primitive meaning of the gospel by giving up everything and working for the poor from his base of not owning anything. It is the opposite of what O'Reilly, Coulter and Tayler want people to buy as what Christianity is.
For most of us who are neither right-wing Republicans or neo-atheists, the similarity of effort in this area is a good indication that their goals are served by the same lies and, in the end, have more in common than they would like anyone to believe.
A country governed by the moral teachings of Jesus and the example of the apostles in Acts would be a radically egalitarian country without differences in economic status, it would be based on an open and mutual sharing of goods, care for the sick, children, the destitute, it would see aliens as our neighbors and members of our families. It would not disdain and hold people in contempt, it would not promote pride and fashionable divisions. It would be merciful to criminals and other sinners, it would likely be radically different than any society we have experienced for all of those reasons. It would be a country that surpassed the hopes of liberals in providing those things which the only legitimate liberal agenda advocates. It would be hell for the Antichristians, it would be closer to heaven than most people would dare to hope to get. We might even be able to win the Antichristians over, too, once they saw that they had nothing to loose but their grotesquely obsessively amassed wealth which they could never use. Which all sounds too good to be achieved, which is something I'm willing to be wrong about because the alternative is what I know from experience to be entirely worse. It's better to fail attempting to do what's good than to succeed in doing something that is as bad as the present day.
Tayler is louder and uglier, but I read the same kind of "reasoning" at Crooked Timber, once up on a time. There is such a great deal which passes for "reason" on the intertoobs that is simply mindlessness, and a true concern for others is never allowed under the withering scorn of selfishness and self-concern.
ReplyDeleteAs you say in your final paragraph, we could do so much better; we could at least imagine so much better.