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One of the unpleasant truths conservative religious movements tend to overlook is that they can’t actually end abortion—they can only end the safe, legal, regulated kinds. That’s because abortion has always been around, and whether people like it or not, abortion will always be around.
If your devotion to the unborn justifies murdering the born, your concerns stopped being Christian a long time ago.
The point of this chapter is that humans don’t need to hate or scapegoat immigrants, and Christ followers aren’t technically allowed to.
The basic Christian belief that all humans are made in the image of God, in Genesis 1:27, inconveniently affirms the inherent dignity and worth of every person.
The parable of the Good Samaritan is Jesus specifically rejecting the idea of limiting compassion to one’s own group. A despised foreigner is the character who fulfills God’s command to “love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus wraps this up with the command: “Go and do likewise.” This directly refutes any charming argument that Christians should prioritize care for “their own.”
Have you ever, on any US broadcast, heard the noun “illegal” used to refer to white lawbreakers? Dehumanizing terms lead to greater hostility toward migrants and refugees, which is the point. If you humanize them, it’s a lot harder to get otherwise decent Christians to sign on to the cruelty.
You don’t have to like undocumented immigration to agree that these are humans who deserve to be treated like humans.
“The modern conservative is… engaged… in one of man’s oldest, best financed, most applauded, and, on the whole, least successful exercises in moral philosophy. That is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” John Kenneth Galbraith, 1967
But social programs exist because of the conclusive failure of the world’s Christians to adequately provide for others the way God commands in the Book. Christianity should put the welfare state completely out of business due to lack of customers, but that hasn’t happened. So if you want His will to be done, on earth as it is in heaven, it’s going to require a lot of voting.
The poor-haters never talk about generational poverty, systemic inequality, automation, deindustrialization, historic redlining, educational inequities, union busting, globalization, outsourcing, or inadequate access to resources as reasons why people are mired in poverty.
“There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore, I command you to be openhanded toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land.” The Deuteronomy passage calls for ongoing generosity and action to alleviate poverty, not apathy and resignation. By invoking this scripture, Jesus reinforces the idea that caring for the poor is a perpetual moral duty. He wasn’t saying “look away and get used to it”—he was reminding us that the fight against poverty never ends.
I’ll never say Jesus was a socialist. But I will say if he were alive now and preaching the exact same message, right-wing Christians would call him one.
Liberation theology argues that the church should actively work to alleviate poverty and oppression, and calls for structural changes to address systemic injustices and inequalities. It sees faith as a thing you do.
Faith is a present action response.
But the prosperity gospel is dangerous, victim-blaming junk theology that has nothing to do with Jesus’s teachings on humility and service over wealth and comfort. If you’re going to preach that material riches are proof of faithfulness and righteousness, then you’re also messaging that failure and hard times are signs of personal sin or spiritual inadequacy.
Sex-positive Christians affirm that sexuality is a gift from God and an essential aspect of human identity and relationships. They reject the ancient hang-ups that equate sex with sin, or view it merely as a means of reproduction; instead, they recognize its potential for pleasure, intimacy, mutual fulfillment, and yes, spiritual growth.
Shame can distort our perceptions of ourselves for years, and push us to act in ways we don’t actually really want to behave, to self-medicate from trauma.
“The profound moral question is not, ‘Do they deserve to die?’ but ‘Do we deserve to kill them?’ ” Sister Helen Prejean
George Carlin famously pointed out that America began as a nation of slave owners who wanted to be free.
Jesus overturns “eye for an eye” in his very first sermon. That one on the mount, that the Christian nationalists never quote, ever. He begins with something everyone can agree on: “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy” (Matthew 5:7). Which is very pleasant, catchy, and true. But this is New Covenant time, and the carpenter’s here to explicitly reject the concept of retribution. He tells the crowd that the time has come for nonviolence and forgiveness. You have heard that it was said, “Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.” But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone
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Many Hebrews looking for a Messiah who would drive out the Romans didn’t know what to make of this Nazarene advocating non-retaliation and turning the other cheek. This commandment to forgive those who hurt you was a radical call to break all cycles of violence, and to deliberately reject righteous vengeance. By preaching love for our enemies, Jesus further dispels any justification for violence—including legal executions.
“The reality is that capital punishment in America is a lottery. It is a punishment that is shaped by the constraints of poverty, race, geography, and local politics.” Bryan Stevenson, Equal Justice Initiative
When you factor in the costs of a capital punishment trial, including appeals, the costs of maintaining death rows, and the costs of actual executions, it’s considerably more expensive to murder a prisoner than to incarcerate them for life without parole. Reports from the state of North Carolina (2011), the Kansas Judicial Council (2014), the Nevada Supreme Court (2015), the California Legislative Analyst’s Office (2021), and Florida’s 2010 Commission on Capital Cases have all confirmed the higher fiscal impacts associated with the death penalty compared to life imprisonment.
In recent years we’ve seen 150 death row inmates freed by DNA evidence or recanted testimony, some after decades in prison, all appeals exhausted. It’s impossible to say how many innocent prisoners have been killed. A 2014 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences estimated that at least 4.1 percent of condemned inmates were falsely convicted.
The United Nations condemned the execution, stating, “Alabama’s use of Kenneth Smith as a human guinea pig to test a new method of execution amounted to unethical human experimentation and was nothing short of State-sanctioned torture.” A month later, Turning Point USA founder, MLK hater, and Christian nationalist bamboozler Charlie Kirk said on his Thoughtcrime podcast that he wanted to see corporate-sponsored TV executions of Donald Trump’s political opponents: “It should be public. It should be quick. It should be televised…. You could sell, you could fund the government. You could have
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Antisemitic child-man podcaster Nick Fuentes announced that under his America First movement, all non-Christians would be executed: “When we take power, they need to be given the death penalty…. They must be absolutely annihilated when we take power.”
Americans who warn of the perils of “big government” want that same government to have the power to strap a citizen to a table and fill them with poison until they die? Does it get more “big government” than that?
“I object to my government killing people because my government is meant to be me, and I object to me killing people.” Steve Earle, songwriter
Pope John Paul II said, “Modern society has the means of protecting itself, without definitively denying criminals the chance to reform. I renew the appeal… for a consensus to end the death penalty, which is both cruel and unnecessary.”
Central to Jesus’s message is his whole idea of redemption, and the always present possibility of forgiveness for everybody, even those of us who have committed the most horrible of crimes. The death penalty, quite permanent and irreversible, rejects the possibility of repentance and change that Jesus keeps talking about.
“We utterly deny all outward wars and strife and fightings with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretence whatsoever; and this is our testimony to the whole world.” Quaker Peace Testimony
The right to bear arms, enshrined in the Second Amendment of the US Constitution, is at present worshiped by much of right-wing US Christianity. The anti-violence teachings of Jesus, however, are not.
We live in a world where Christian nationalists maintain a proud tradition of re-creating Jesus in their own image. And it turns out, their Christ isn’t the nonviolent bearer of compassion who demands we turn the other cheek. When it comes to war, torture, the death penalty, and gun proliferation, some of Jesus’s locked-and-loaded fans have overlooked ...
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Guns don’t kill people, but NRA people who own congresspeople make it easier for deranged people to be heavily armed people who kill innocent people.
As you may have noticed, Jesus is in no way talking about armed self-defense. He’s talking about having a sword as a prop so he can get arrested. And in the very next line, the apostles say, “Hey, Jesus, we’ve already got two swords here with us.” Jesus replies, “That’s enough.”
Jesus does not exercise his right to self-defense; it’s Peter who draws his sword, cutting off the ear of the high priest’s servant. Does Jesus join the fight? No. Instead, in Matthew 26:52’s account, Jesus immediately rebukes Peter for taking up arms. He heals the wounded man (who came to help arrest him) and tells his followers, “Put your sword back into its place. For all who draw the sword will die by the sword.” His literal last words to his apostles: reminding them how much he disapproves of violence, even in self-defense. And you really don’t need to search how many guys inscribe
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“In Revelation, Jesus is a pride fighter with a tattoo down his leg, a sword in his hand, and the commitment to make someone bleed. That is a guy I can worship. I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up.” Pastor Mark Driscoll, RelevantMagazine.com
For some Christians, masculinity is synonymous with dominance, violence, and trying way too hard, bro. Fetishizing a chest-thumping, militarized Rambo Christ says more about one’s own insecurities than about the carpenter who frequented the poor neighborhoods of Galilee.
Kristin Du Mez’s Jesus and John Wayne is a definitive read on this issue. She explained to me, “This militarized version became popular during the early Cold War era, when ‘Christian America’ needed strong men to defend against communism. Christian leaders were quite explicit that this defense was a military one, but i...
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Du Mez added, “Toxic masculinity revolves around exercising power and resenting anyone who threatens that power. The Jesus of the gospels divested himself of power and offered himself up on the cross to save sinners. He uplifted the lowly, blessed the meek, and at every turn refused earthly power and told his followers to do the same.”
Christian nationalism already promotes a dangerously exclusionary vision of the US as a fundamentally “Christian” nation. Their rhetoric thrives on militaristic imagery and language, framing political or cultural conflicts not as societal problems we should all try to solve, but as “spiritual warfare.” Constant flex-talk desensitizes followers to the use of violence in defense of their beliefs; because after all, they’re on God’s side and you’re not. So how could God not approve?
Jesus’s whole thing was about putting the well-being of others over individual desires. While self-defense is of course permissible, Christians are specifically encouraged by Jesus to pursue boring, emasculated, nonviolent solutions to our disputes.
Christians have declared their spiritual preference for personal convenience and self-interest over the lives of others. The communal aspects of faith, the call to love and serve others, all crushed by a theology of ME ME ME ME ME.
The messages the Nazarene brought—of the first being last, of loving enemies, of caring for the poor, of breaking down walls between insiders and outsiders—threatened the entire system. He’s warning of social upheaval that comes from embracing this narrow way of radical reform. It’s a message that’s true in any culture. Choosing to stand for the vulnerable and challenge injustice will sometimes mean being rejected by people close to us. Jesus is brutally honest that living by these principles will sometimes cost something.
Strength is measured by who you protect, not who you attack. Jesus modeled the strength to care for those on the bottom rungs, not pick on them.
You learn a lot about a person by who they choose to ridicule, scorn, or scapegoat. Jesus saved his harshest words for the powerful who loved their own authority and/or piety over using their power to help others.
It’s a weak masculinity, one that seeks to make ableism great again in the form of grown men casually normalizing “retarded” as a slur. Because basic respect and dignity for developmentally different kids has apparently become woke. And these same guys—some of them celebrity billionaires, by the way—would never have the guts to use that word at the Special Olympics. Not because they respect the athletes, but because deep down, they know that using a slur for those born differently is an unmanly, punk-ass choice.
If you want to know who’s walking the way of Jesus, don’t just listen to what they preach—watch who they attack. There’s one rule that consistently applies to both Christianity and comedy—don’t punch down.
Scapegoating entire groups works, because it provides certain folks with magically simplistic solutions to complex problems, while also validating a prejudice. It never helps resolve any of those “underlying causes of societal problems” the irritating woke folk keep talking about. But scapegoating can help a certain kind of politician—or religious figure—obtain power.
Scapegoating lets us project our frustrations and fears onto a certain vulnerable group. And every now and then, the right charismatic demagogue shows up to explain how some acceptable-to-hate minority group poses an existential threat to our way of life—and only he can save us from this threat.
I’ve always thought the death of Jesus was like a spiritual game of blackjack. When the hand came down, the Romans hit, Judas doubled his bet, Jesus surrendered, the apostles just stood, and Peter split. The point of the story is that everyone killed Jesus; all of them. And then Jesus comes back and forgives everyone.
