Evangelicals are now rejecting 'liberal' teachings of Jesus
Evangelicals are now rejecting 'liberal' teachings of Jesus
www.newsweek.com
Evangelicals are now rejecting 'liberal' teachings of Jesus
258 comments
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…Trump had transformed the political landscape in the U.S. to the point where some Christian conservatives are openly denouncing a central doctrine of their religion as being too "weak" and "liberal" for their liking.
Trump didn’t transform shit. His views are as old as conservatism. Maybe there was a lull in speaking out about them from about 1975-2001, but they didn’t go away. Trump literally just stumbled ass-first into a convenient landscape with his more plainly outspoken bigotry and hate.
To attribute all of this to the last 6-8 years is beyond stupid and misses the entire problem.
And if these people can’t see that, their blind spot to hatred is so big that they can’t see it until someone screams it in their face. Yeah, it’s great someone in the evangelical community is speaking out, but it’s too little way too late. The fascist ideology has firmly rooted its way into American life over the last 30 years. Now that that tree is bearing fruit and it’s falling on people’s heads, speaking out now is like trying to cut down that tree with pruning shears. You assholes that fostered this for so long needed to cut it off way sooner.
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I appreciate your attempt to bring a longer timescale into conservative christofascism in America but 30 years is still about 300 years too short.
Remember our earliest colonies were totalitarian theocracies with extreme racial purity beliefs
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Many people don't realize that the first colonies were founded by Christians that believed the churches in their home county were not being authoritarian enough. The wanted religious freedom, sure, but they wanted the freedom to be theocratic like you said.
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Fully agree. As an ex-Christian, the crusades used to be unimaginable to me. Now I see them as an easy trend line from current events.
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We already did two crusades this century.
Our correct and just way to live means that when we invade other countries, kill their civilians and take their stuff, it's for their own good because we're bringing
the light of christfreedom and democracy. That's totally a crusade.I'm quite a fan of freedom and democracy - I wish we had some in the US - but using our noblest ideals to justify bloody wars of plunder is the most christian thing I can imagine.
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One of the most eye opening historical events for me as a christian was the Children's Crusade
Happened right before the 5th crusade. Basically a bunch of kids and teens got together and believed that God would part the dead sea for them, like Moses did, and allow them to take Jerusalem. Which at the time was considered a reasonable idea.
They believed in the cause so much, they only sent them with enough supplies to make it there, not a return trip.
Some of the kids made it to the dead sea, and the sea did not part.
It is said out of the thousands of kids they sent, only a few returned. With the rest suffering starvation, thirst, drowning, disease, and slavery.
I still believe in God, and I do have some faith in him, if at the very least like the idea of a Good God being in control of everything.
Kind of like Santa.
Not in the sense that I would drink a vat of Kool-aid for him. Warning: Not Safe For Work
But that I will question my religion and see what I got wrong first, before I challenge the scientific proof. Because if the moral of the story is anything, it's that God works in mysterious ways, but he doesn't part the dead sea anymore.
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I've read at least three commentaries by [priests/deacons/whatever their particular church calls them but I'm using the generic "priests"] priests who 'nourished' and 'tended' to their 'kind' and 'caring' flocks for decades, who no longer agree with their flock's views and have either left voluntarily or were ousted. Tellingly, all three have relocated to liberal states from the South.
And all I can think is how "Southern charm" partially rose up after the Civil War, when they just really couldn't tell the Yankees what they actually thought of them, so they went overboard with the faux politeness ('bless your heart'). And the fact that these 'liberal' priests just either never heard or never understood exactly why people were saying their people were bigots indicates a lack of the introspection that they're supposed to have.
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Trump didn’t transform shit
Picking and choosing what parts of the Bible they want to follow is nearly as old as the religion itself. The first council of Nicea was the first large attempt for Christianity to define itself and create a canon. That happened in 325 AD. Even if we talk only about protestants, denominations are all about what parts of the bible they follow and how they translate the word to doctrine.
To attribute it to one man is so disingenuous. Christians have been interpreting the Bible in whatever way suits them best for over a millenia.
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Seriously. This is not in any way new - it's just that now people feel more comfortable saying the quiet part out loud.
They don't actually believe in the teachings of their religion. It's just a convenient armor they can cloak themselves in to deflect criticism.
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Yeah thank God mainstream christians realize they actually hadn't been following the Bible for decades. Centuries.
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"now"
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I had a very similar upbringing but I fundamentally disagree that Christ's message isn't political. Christ was a political figure in his era, executed for political reasons. Early Church history is full of Christians being tortured and executed by sovereigns.
I think you're correct only to the extent that Christianity won't tell you how to set budget priorities for FY2024, but Christ's message will almost certainly inform certain decisions made in that budget, like feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, welcoming migrants, and pursuing justice and mercy. And to the extent that we have one political party who consistently claims to represent Christ's teachings and similarly rejects Christ's message as applied to the policies they support, it's inherently political right now as well.
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To expand a bit, Christ said, "“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
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My favourite passage. Matthew 22: 36-40
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It's not so much about Jesus himself being a political figure, it's more a question of which ideologies more closely align with his teachings. So it's probably more accurate to say "liberal ideology is significantly more similar to Jesus's teachings than conservative ideology."
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Yeah I hear you. I was raised Episcopalian/Anglican and I was always shocked at the horror stories I heard from other kids coming from more conservative denominations. I was like "I don't believe any of the supernatural stuff but youth group is fun and it's not like they're preaching bad things..."
That said, the historical Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher. Essentially no modern denominations get it right. Essentially all Christianities today are extremely Westernized as opposed to Semitic.
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I'm about as atheist as it gets, not like the angry kind but I firmly don't believe any kind of higher power exists, at least in the way religions do. I grew up in a Christian family and went to church in my early years. I guess the message got through to me because that's basically my philosophy just without all the spiritual stuff.
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I have to ask this. How is feed the hungry not political. I jist don't get how there can be apolitical morality, or laws. What isca politic what makes something's political
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I guess they didn't read the Gospel of Matthew in that case.
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"Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins."
And when Jesus was asked what the greatest of the commandments was:
"The most important one is this: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these”
yep, Jesus really was a liberal hippy cuck
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And beating swords into plowshares. Real liberal cuck bullshit
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God, Guns, and Freedom amirite?
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I dunno if I can love my neighbour as myself, is it alright if I just grab her by the pussy?
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that sounds kosher
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They'll just write a Murican Bible with guns and pickup trucks.
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That is a really, really good fucking idea. We should make a Bible that is adapted to modern American vernacular and interprets some of the stories in insanely biased and hateful ways. You could make a massive amount of money.
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The book of latter, latter day saints?
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murican trinity, God, Trump and the American Spirit
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That version sounds a good deal like Mad Max films.
I would expect Trump at some point to "write" a book narrating his struggle in life, an inspirational narration of his hardships, to elevate his followers and supporters.
It would make a nice companion book for this one.
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In fact, forget the Bible!
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Actually, Phyllis Schlafly's kid was trying to crowdsource a "conservative bible" translation back around 2009, claiming that modern translations were done with a "leftist bias" and that several passages were added by "liberal scholars", including the story of the adulteress in John ("let he who is without sin cast the first stone"), and editing any mention of the Pharisees to either "intellectuals" or "the elite" depending on which 'translator' you wanna go with. Oh, they also get rid of Christ's prayer on the cross, because, and I quote, "it implies that Jesus forgives unrepentant people."
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That's hilarious. Not sure why they would need to crowdsource it however. As a good Christian scholar dont they already know the biblical languages fluently?
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This is the apotheosis of Reagan's cynical exploitation of Evangelical voters. They were always going to end up rejecting the very deity they claimed to follow as the culmination of their path astray.
Like, as soon as "Christians" started voting to cut social welfare programs and programs to help children, they were on the road to apostasy (in their religious framework).
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It started long before that. When Pope Sylvester threw in with Constantine is when I place it, but probably before that.
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Conservative Christians praise Jesus and follow the example of God. Liberal Christians praise God and follow the example of Jesus. One judges, the other forgives. One smites, the other saves. One says "praise me", the other literally says not to worship him but to follow his example.
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Or they just make up shit as an excuse to do whatever they please for their own personal benefit while easing their conscious.
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"Conservative Christians praise Jesus and follow the example of God. Liberal Christians praise God and follow the example of Jesus." This is a very interesting insight, does it come from your own observation or from e.g. the bible?
And I am assuming USA, is that correct?
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It was a quote from someone I heard on the internet a long time ago. Can't remember from whom, so I guess it is my quote now. USA definition of liberal and conservative.
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"When we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus himself are seen as subversive to us, then we're in a crisis."
Half this story is about the idiot SBC constituency. The other half is about top SBC officials who have somehow come to believe that the teachings of Jesus were anything but subversive to begin with.
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Jesus were anything but subversive to begin with.
Can you cite an example of an idea that Biblical Jesus said that was subversive to established Jewish thought?
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You probably are just trying to be quippy but actually Jesus was quite subversive to established Jewish doctrine. You can see it in the parables.
One can see it in the Parable of the Woman called out for adultry. To deeply paraphrase with a shit condensed version : A bunch of Jewish scholarship - the folk who basically serve as biblical laywers - try and cast a woman in front of Jesus for judgement for her supposed flagrant overstepping of the rules with the prescribed punishment under Jewish law. This law is one of the actual commandment breakers and these community leaders demand Jesus judge her by their rule book. Jesus refuses. This is where we get the whole "he who is without sin cast the first stone" thing. Jewish law contained the punishment for adultry was not written by god, it was written by priests. Jesus does tell the woman not to do it again so God's will is communicated so one could read this as a message to be wary of the laws of priests because they do not reflect the will of God. "Do not kill" and "do not covet" which means something closer to "be jealous of/desire" superceed those laws. It's not on humans to take it upon themselves to render judgement. That is up to God.
This made the teachings of Jesus ridiculously unpopular amongst Jewish priests because they got a law for everything. One could look at the inclusion of Leviticus - a description of Jewish laws in the Christian Bible as a reminder that priests made those laws. They were unauthorized human expansions on the simple directives that came straight from the source.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_and_the_woman_taken_in_adultery
Other parables to look into were "The unjust judge". But yeah. Jesus was about as anti authoritarian as you could get.
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The passage where the man expels the people from the temple, accusing them of betraying the teachings seems very much subversive.
Here is a single man going against status quo and establishment. If that is not a good exemple of subversion, there is none.
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Saying he was the Messiah in and of itself was subversive to established thought.
The Jews at the time thought the Messiah would come in clad in armor, sword in hand, on a white horse, come to slay their enemies.
Instead he rolled up humbly on a donkey talking nonsense like "love each other, treat others kindly"
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The whole "camel through the eye of the needle" bit is likely as radical as it looks at first glance. It was tried to be explained away through the centuries as more rich Christians started to appear, such as by claiming it was a small doorway in the city wall that would be difficult to get a camel through.
These claims don't appear to hold up. Meanwhile, there were sewing needles uncovered with a recognizable design to modern ones, and you ain't getting a camel through it. The way we would plainly read it today seems correct: rich people aren't getting into the Kingdom of God.
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So, you have never heard the Bible fable of why Jesus was crucified? Come on 😀
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I've said it before, but, (assuming he existed at all) Jesus was a brown-skinned non-English-speaking Palestinian Jew who healed the sick and fed the poor (and didn't charge money for either thing) and encouraged his followers to do the same, supported paying taxes, and showed open contempt for wealth and the wealthy.
If only he had also been openly gay he would be every single thing modern Christians hate.
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Just wanted to point out it's widely accepted, even by secular historians, Jesus was a real person. Him being a jew from Nazareth and being crucified for starting a quarrel in the temple are generally accepted as proven through non-biblical records.
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Just wanted to point out that if we admit that he was not a real person, just a con James and Peter were running, the mystery is over and no one can sell any more books. If the History channel, or Discovery channel, or any UFO organization or any saint miracle has shown: once it is explained you have nothing left to draw in crowds.
The only records we have of the events are hearsay multiple times removed decades later.
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One slight correction: he showed open contempt for the money-changers scamming people at the temple.
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He didn't show open contempt for the wealthy as long as they lived up to his standards for faith, charity, and humility. It's just that there were, and are, so dang few of those.
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You mean the guy who kissed the person he put in charge of the group's money right before Peter denies him three times (roughly the same number as the number of trials, which Peter allegedly was seen going into the area where proceedings were taking place for at least one)?
The guy who had an unnamed beloved disciple reclining on him when he fed the disciple he kissed dipped bread at his final meal?
Who at his execution told this unnamed beloved disciple to take Jesus's own mother into his household as if the beloved disciple's mother?
Jesus might have wanted to be careful about all of that, as technically being gay in Judea was a death sentence under Jewish law. Though they couldn't carry out the death sentence at that time and would have needed to appeal to the local Roman authority to carry out capital punishment, which would have put the local authority in a pickle deciding on granting local barbaric legality to quell rising dissent even though the crime charged would have been a common Roman practice alleged even about the emperor at the time.
So you know, if the story was something like the Sanhedrin wanting Jesus dead and Pilate reluctant, and his most conservative follower who he was seen arguing with potentially denying him at trial right around the time he was kissing and feeding his closest companion at the dinner table - well there might just be more to the story after all.
(Though a number of the other things you said probably aren't the case - for example, the "give to Caesar" taxation thing is anachronistic for Judea in 30s CE which had no personal tax and no coinage with Caeser on it.)
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and didn’t charge money for either thing
In Mark it was healing to get a free meal and in Matthew only after a women called herself a racial slur and begged at his feet.
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I decided that I couldn’t be part of a hypocritical* institution like the church in 2002! I loved the teachings but i saw none of them within the parishioners themselves, so i left to find my own way.
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Jesus teachings, assuming he was even real, boil really down to being a decent human being.
You don't need a religious institution to live by that principle, you don't even need to be a believer of anything supernatural, you don't even have to believe he existed. Just be a decent human being, it's really not that hard.
All those people and their labels, but they always end up just being control freaks and hypocrites, all throughout history. And then they wonder why others turn their backs on them.-
assuming he was even real,
We can say that he lived with overwhelming certainty. Details are fuzzy and miracles either misinterpreted or made up but there was a guy by his name who was baptised by John the Baptist, travelled around arguing theology and collecting followers, and was crucified.
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The gospel according to Wheaton:
And lo, Jesus said to the people, “don’t be a dick.”
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He did say, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me," which would, at the very least, necessitate believing he existed.
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boil really down to being a decent human being.
Matthew 10:34-36
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Hypocritical? Though hypothetical is funny in its own way
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Real Jesus seems like a great, it's all them gawdamn religions that pucks it up
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He didn't exist but even the fictional Biblical Jesus doesn't seem that great to me.
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I read that there's a group making a new version of the Bible that takes out all the "woke" stuff.
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I think that's just the old testament.
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that is actually really funny
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"the monster we made is acting monstrous"
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So they only follow the old testament? Isn't there already a word for that?
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I've read the old testament....G-d, was pretty mean and spiteful, I can definitely see Christians taking comfort in the murdering and mass killings.
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Tim Keller wrote about this in 2018 and it still rings true. Christians dont get to choose a side.
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Does anyone have a paywall-removed version of this? I tried putting it through 12ft Ladder, but apparently that tool is disabled for NYT.
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What should the role of Christians in politics be? More people than ever are asking that question. Christians cannot pretend they can transcend politics and simply “preach the Gospel.” Those who avoid all political discussions and engagement are essentially casting a vote for the social status quo. American churches in the early 19th century that did not speak out against slavery because that was what we would now call “getting political” were actually supporting slavery by doing so. To not be political is to be political.
The Bible shows believers as holding important posts in pagan governments — think of Joseph and Daniel in the Old Testament. Christians should be involved politically as a way of loving our neighbors, whether they believe as we do or not. To work for better public schools or for a justice system not weighted against the poor or to end racial segregation requires political engagement. Christians have done these things in the past and should continue to do so.
Nevertheless, while believers can register under a party affiliation and be active in politics, they should not identify the Christian church or faith with a political party as the only Christian one. There are a number of reasons to insist on this.
One is that it gives those considering the Christian faith the strong impression that to be converted, they need not only to believe in Jesus but also to become members of the (fill in the blank) Party. It confirms what many skeptics want to believe about religion — that it is merely one more voting bloc aiming for power.
Another reason not to align the Christian faith with one party is that most political positions are not matters of biblical command but of practical wisdom. This does not mean that the church can never speak on social, economic and political realities, because the Bible often does. Racism is a sin, violating the second of the two great commandments of Jesus, to “love your neighbor.” The biblical commands to lift up the poor and to defend the rights of the oppressed are moral imperatives for believers. For individual Christians to speak out against egregious violations of these moral requirements is not optional.
However, there are many possible ways to help the poor. Should we shrink government and let private capital markets allocate resources, or should we expand the government and give the state more of the power to redistribute wealth? Or is the right path one of the many possibilities in between? The Bible does not give exact answers to these questions for every time, place and culture.
I know of a man from Mississippi who was a conservative Republican and a traditional Presbyterian. He visited the Scottish Highlands and found the churches there as strict and as orthodox as he had hoped. No one so much as turned on a television on a Sunday. Everyone memorized catechisms and Scripture. But one day he discovered that the Scottish Christian friends he admired were (in his view) socialists. Their understanding of government economic policy and the state’s responsibilities was by his lights very left-wing, yet also grounded in their Christian convictions. He returned to the United States not more politically liberal but, in his words, “humbled and chastened.” He realized that thoughtful Christians, all trying to obey God’s call, could reasonably appear at different places on the political spectrum, with loyalties to different political strategies.
Another reason Christians these days cannot allow the church to be fully identified with any particular party is the problem of what the British ethicist James Mumford calls “package-deal ethics.” Increasingly, political parties insist that you cannot work on one issue with them if you don’t embrace all of their approved positions.
This emphasis on package deals puts pressure on Christians in politics. For example, following both the Bible and the early church, Christians should be committed to racial justice and the poor, but also to the understanding that sex is only for marriage and for nurturing family. One of those views seems liberal and the other looks oppressively conservative. The historical Christian positions on social issues do not fit into contemporary political alignments.
So Christians are pushed toward two main options. One is to withdraw and try to be apolitical. The second is to assimilate and fully adopt one party’s whole package in order to have your place at the table. Neither of these options is valid. In the Good Samaritan parable told in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus points us to a man risking his life to give material help to someone of a different race and religion. Jesus forbids us to withhold help from our neighbors, and this will inevitably require that we participate in political processes. If we experience exclusion and even persecution for doing so, we are assured that God is with us (Matthew 5:10-11) and that some will still see our “good deeds and glorify God” (1 Peter 2:11-12). If we are only offensive or only attractive to the world and not both, we can be sure we are failing to live as we ought.
The Gospel gives us the resources to love people who reject both our beliefs and us personally. Christians should think of how God rescued them. He did it not by taking power but by coming to earth, losing glory and power, serving and dying on a cross. How did Jesus save? Not with a sword but with nails in his hands.
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Try archive.today .
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Jesus the lib cuck. Lol
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Dude even cried. Can you believe it?!
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Care to elaborate on his conservative teachings? Unless you're stretching Jesus' teachings to the letters of Paul.
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Without Paul there really is no Christianity. Jesus would have just been one of the many minor prophets at best.
As for his conservative teachings, based on what he supposedly said and did he respected the laws of Moses. He argued over specific rulings but not the laws themselves.
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Always have been.
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LOL, if you reject Jesus' teachings then you literally aren't a Christian, no matter the mental gymnastics, cognitive dissonance & rationalizations you attempt.
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I guess they could go back to Yahweh's teachings. Seems to be a much better fit anyway.
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“Jesus is ideal and wonderful, but you Christians, you are not like him.” - Bara Dada c. 1920
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Everyone’s a Christian until it’s time to do Christian shit
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"Now"?
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I can’t remember who said this but there’s a line about “if republicans can’t win democratically, they’ll abandon democracy before they abandon their ideals.” I guess the same goes for (some) Christians.
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No, these are the WASP teachings updated for American idiots. White Anglo Saxon Protestants. The mirror of the old Nazis. Very closely related.
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🌎👨🚀🔫👩🚀
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Good score!
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There are not and have ever been Christians in America. What Christians pretend to believe is fundamentally incompatible with America, so they invent things like the prosperity gospel and the eye of the needle gate so that they can all pretend to be Christians while serving themselves above all. If someone who actually followed Christ's teachings ever wandered into America by mistake, that person would be murdered by "Christians". They took all the Christ out, now there's nothing left but entitlement and child genital mutilation.
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How do you interpret the "camel through the needle" saying other than a (nonviolent) leftist (anarchist, actually, because the only authority that matters is God) stance or the "meek inheriting the Earth"?
Ok, ok, I can concieve of Christianity in a pre-left-right-divide (before the French Revolution), but back then it was essentially a branch of government in Catholic countries.
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liberals are not a religious group that claims to follow the teachings of jesus. Your point is?
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The teachings of Jesus, if read for what they say, are the antithesis of the Republican platform.
Also note: the all-knowing God/man said nothing about abortion and it was a thing then, too.
It's idolatry with a political party trumping (heh) the actual religious teachings.
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Christians are a religious group who claim to follow the teachings of Jesus. Jesus taught many liberal ideals. Some of these include:
- Helping others
- Not hoarding wealth
- Not judging others based on their life choices
At present, many Christians also consider themselves to, politically, be Republicans. The Republican party believes in none of what Jesus taught. They use Christianity to do exactly the opposite of what Jesus taught.
- Welfare? Pull yourself up by your bootstraps!
- Capitalism and profit at all costs
- Condemnation of non-heterosexual lifestyles
It sure seems to me that Republican Christians long ago decided that the teachings of Jesus are too liberal.
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I appreciate you writing all this out, but...
I was replying to walnutwalrus's comment:
liberals are rejecting "conservative" teachings of Jesus
And it appears something went wrong and my comment isn't listed as a reply to that one. This changes the context significantly. Where did you find my comment?
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258 comments
Jesus was a socialist. Maybe they should switch religions
Also, he wasn't white. Which I know really offends their sensibilities.
Jewish too.
The Nazis came up with this concept of "German Christianity" or "Positive Christianity" that essentially took Christianity and emphasized its differences from Judaism, while downplaying Jesus as the messiah and elevating the Führer as the herald of a new covenant. I know we're all joking here but this kind of thing has been done before, over, and over, and over.
Next you'll tell me he didn't speak American.
And he spent his personal time hanging with twelve of his favorite homies.
But American Jeebus is so Kick Ass. He carries a machine gun and shoots immigrants like Rambo without the Vietnamese love interest, but let's be honest that's OK too? /s
Oh what a fucking Seppo-brained take. Best idea of what he looked like we have is that he looked like your average Palestinian (no shit Sherlock), that is, pretty much the same as half a gazillion people from the Mediterranean over Iran to fucking India.
Yeah, it's kind of ridiculous when you consider how at odds Jesus is with most of what capitalism entails. He didn't stutter when he said it's impossible for a wealthy person to get into heaven. He was unambiguously against accumulated wealth. His belief was that if you had resources to help people, you had an obligation to do so. If you kept wealth, then you were failing that obligation.
Granted, I'm an atheist, but I'm tired of the right wing Christianity in the US. Any person who actually followed Christianity, and didn't just use it as an excuse to support their hatred and biases, would undoubtedly vote against Republicans, abortion rights notwithstanding.
Jesus never said it was impossible for a rich person to get into heaven. He said that it was unlikely, but not impossible.
They're similar to Positive Christians
They would probably love Islam if they could get past the whole "brown people worship this religion" thing, Islam really seems far more their type than Christianity.
Coming soon to the Southern portion of the US, Vanilla ISIS!
I've seen genuine support in Appalachia for the Taliban on certain things. Given the economic situation, it may not be long before they have nothing left but their God and their guns.
It wouldn't change a thing, they adapt their religion to their views, not the other way around. Religion is just the excuse they use to tell themselves they're the good guys.
The same people who don't even know the difference between socialism and communism? No place for reason here.
Since they're basically following Paul and John, why not change the name of their religion. (Paul is the prude, John the antisemite and general asshat).
Jesus was not a socialist. Some of what he taught overlaps with socialism, but not everything. Since Jesus came first perhaps it is better to say Socialists are Christians. (since socialism rejects religion this a weird thing to say)
We often use the term proto-socialist for such people. It's not unique to him—Mazdak, for example.
Socialism rejects religion?