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Why listen to Jesus when you can disfigure Old Testament stories to demonize migrants?
I recommend calling them “Christian refugees.” It’s accurate, and will enrage exactly the right people.
That’s how we generally know this is all a scam.
Abbott launched Operation Lone Star in March 2021, which deployed the Texas National Guard and Department of Public Safety to the border, arresting asylum seekers who were legally entitled to seek protection. He began busing migrants from Texas to other states in very public media stunts that used vulnerable and confused humans as pawns. But in 2022, Governor Abbott topped himself when he ordered the installation of razor wire along sections of the Rio Grande River. What better way to honor Christ’s commandment to welcome the stranger than slicing up some of the more desperate ones? A federal
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“The Christmas story we tell, the story the infant Jesus grew up to tell, counsels sympathy toward the less fortunate, compassion for tho...
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Our right-wing Christians are fighting to turn away the most desperate foreign refugees, all while worshiping Jesus, who was once a foreign refugee.
This means that Joseph and Mary most certainly did not “respect the governing authorities.” It also means that Jesus of the Bible spent his formative years as an undocumented kid.
According to the Washington Post, Trump questioned why the US would want to accept immigrants from places with majority nonwhite populations instead of countries like Norway. He reportedly said, “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?”
(Never mind the fact that Norway has universal healthcare, free college, strong social safety nets, higher environmental quality, and relatively low levels of income inequality. All that socialism the angry white people scream about over here is why those nice white people enjoy living over there.)
But what a lot of xenophobic Christians miss, besides the brutally obvious racism, is this: Jesus himself came from an undesirable foreign place that could credibly be called a “shithole.” Nazareth was a remote enclave of a few hundred people, a typical agricultural community where people worked hard and lived simply. Archaeological excavations in Nazareth have revealed small stone homes with no public buildings or infrastructure, indicating it was a modest, isolated rural settlement, smack in the middle of nowhere. It wasn’t along any major trade routes and was not a place of any political or
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Here’s what a shithole Nazareth was considered to be: In John 1:45–46, when Philip tells Nathaniel about Jesus of Nazareth, Nathaniel replies, “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?”
THOU SHALT NOT HATE ON POOR PEOPLE
“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
America leads the world in Christians who believe Jesus wants us to help the poor by cutting programs that actually help the poor.
Particularly since the early 1980s, the US has often pursued policies that favor the wealthy and increase economic inequality, which economists and theologians have come to label “the exact freaking opposite” of Jesus’s teachings about caring for the poor—and the dangers of wealth—as stated in Matthew 19:24 and Luke 16:19–31. Christian America has been caught up in the long con of trickle-down economics, a rigged system that gives massive tax cuts to the wealthiest, who need them the least, and all too often punishes struggling people with cuts to social services, fare hikes, and a degrading
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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.
“We are developing a socialistic state in these United States as surely as I am standing here right now. Our give-away programs, our welfarism at home and abroad, is developing a breed of bums and derelicts who wouldn’t work in a pie shop eating the holes out of donuts. And they will stand in line at an unemployment office rather than go look for a job.” “Conditions Corrupting America,” 1976 Falwell sermon
By the time Franklin Roosevelt became president in Depression-era 1933, it was tragically obvious that churches were not able to adequately care for America’s elderly poor. Social Security lifted millions of seniors out of poverty, while being called “socialist” by people like Falwell. Yet the Falwell model has endured, as it’s proven to be more convenient than the joyless drudgery of caring about poor people.
Ronald Reagan often cited the “welfare queen” stereotype, so people would innately understand that safety nets encourage laziness and fraud.
Former House Speaker Paul Ryan suggested that poor people suffer due to a “culture of poverty” where people are not instilled with a work ethic, a tastefully mod...
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The first Trump administration proposed cuts to SNAP (food stamps), Medicaid, and other social programs in every one of its budgets, arguing these cuts were necessary to reduce dependency and promote self-sufficiency. In other words, the o...
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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. Instead, these Christians push a “makers versus takers” binary to smear those ungodly government aid parasites.
If the USA was truly a “Christian nation,” we’d vote to take care of the poor and sick, and let private charity bail out Wall Street.
Jesus warns us, rather constantly, against the dangers of wealth and the pursuit of material possessions (Luke 12:13–21, Matthew 6:19–24). His movement emphasizes community, mutual care, and sharing resources with those in need, also known as “takers.” Jesus gave welfare to the poor constantly—free food and healthcare—and never asked for a co-pay. “You have received without payment; give without payment” (Matthew 10:8 ISV).
Ronald Reagan quoted 2 Thessalonians 3:10 during a 1982 radio address, saying, “The Bible teaches that if a man will not work, neither shall he eat” to support welfare cuts.
Former Speakers of the House Newt Gingrich and Paul Ryan have both quoted this one, as have right-wing pastors Robert Jeffress and Franklin Graham, along with deep spiritual leaders Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh.
Once again, our extremists are quoting our old pal Paul. That pattern should be clear by now, no?
Paul had no idea his letters would one day be cited by guys who wanted a meaner Jesus.
Matthew 26:11: “The poor you will always have with you” (also echoed in Mark 14:7 and John 12:8).
He’s likely alluding to Deuteronomy 15:11, where God demands consistent help for the poor: “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. For many Christians,
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GOD’S TOTALLY WOKE TAKE ON POVERTY God repeatedly commands His people to care for the poor, the oppressed, and the marginalized. The Hebrew prophets frequently spoke out against injustice and called for social and economic reforms to address the plight of the poor. Isaiah 1:17 says, “Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.”
These are not, generally, the Old Testament verses your racist cousin likes to quote.
The money changers were the guys who’d exchange foreign monies for the temple currency. They generally exploited the pilgrims by charging exorbitant exchange rates and fees, which nowadays we call random surge pricing. This price gouging was especially hard on the poor, and Jesus was rightfully angered that a house of worship had been turned into a profit center.
There are, alas, two problems with this theory. First, there’s no historical evidence of such a gate ever existing in Jerusalem during Jesus’s time. Second, this claim undermines the rest of Jesus’s teachings by arguing that Jesus was just really sloppy at metaphors.
Congressmembers assailed the ACA as socialism, because there’s nothing funnier than senators with socialized healthcare warning the rest of us about the evils of socialized healthcare.
“Sure, Jesus told us to help the sick, but he never said the government should force us to do it.”
And in this corner, trickle-down economics, also known as supply-side Reaganomics, with a record of forty years of promises that benefits for the super-rich will eventually, any day now, trickle down to the rest of society.
James, brother of Jesus, 5:1–6: “Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you…. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you.”
Let’s post this verse on public school walls.
So, one day, God smites Er. That’s how God solves His problems; it’s how we know He’s a man.
EVERYTHING JESUS EVER SAID ABOUT PREMARITAL SEX, BIRTH CONTROL, GAY SEX, ANY FORM OF SODOMY, AND/OR MASTURBATION
“Do not judge, or you too will 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
That’s right—priests are celibate not because sex is bad, or because Jesus was a bachelor, but because the church was greedy.
Ladies, conservative men have decided your birth control isn’t medicine—which it is—because the Bible’s against birth control—which it’s not.
Of course, Viagra for men is still very much covered.
Right-wing politicians screamed that such coverage was proof of President Obama’s “war on religion,” as the white Christian majority again framed itself as an oppressed minority.
Jesus talked about banning birth control exactly as much as he talked about monster trucks.
THOU SHALT NOT KILL PEOPLE WHO KILL PEOPLE TO PROVE KILLING PEOPLE IS WRONG
“The profound moral question is not, ‘Do they deserve to die?’ but ‘Do we deserve to kill them?’ ” Sister Helen Prejean
It’s almost impossible to imagine a death penalty abolitionist being elected to our nation’s highest office. And yet capital punishment is one of the most directly anti-Jesus policies any government could enforce.
