Separation of Church and Hate

by John Fugelsang

Millions of American Christians were media-fed this version of Christianity. White supremacist. Pro-apartheid. Anti-labor. Zero teachings of Jesus. Offering only condemnation and propaganda, always seeking more power, and always needing more cash.

They were charlatans, frauds, hypocrites, and villains. And they made for great TV.

The primary driver of most global conflict, oppression of women, suppression of science, persecution of gay people, and abuse of power is not religion. It’s the extreme fundamentalist wings of all the world’s religions that provide all these dramas for the rest of humanity.

While many of these movements overlap, the general shared goal is societal control, under the guise of “defending Christianity.”

They preach nationalism over global compassion.

And if there’s one thing the Bible shows us, it’s that authoritarian government, aligned with some extreme conservative religious fundamentalists, literally killed Jesus.

He quite famously challenged his followers to love their enemies and to care for those who are different from them.

Shakespeare tells us that even “the devil can recite Scripture for his purpose.” And from the very beginnings of the American experiment, Christianity has been used to justify all manner of evils, from slavery to ethnic cleansing to preemptive war.

nobody hates like a Christian who’s just been told their hate isn’t Christian.

Spiritual people use religion to become better people. Fundamentalists use religion to pretend they’re better than other people.

religion didn’t create hate—hate found voice in religion.

And remember—if your church isn’t telling you to love your enemies but keeps telling you who your enemies are, you’re not really in a church.

people should be fed, that people have access to life, that people should be treated equally and justly.”

Jesus challenged the authority of some of those religious leaders, devoted himself to what some might call a crusade of social justice for the oppressed, and was ultimately executed by the imperial occupiers.

But women aren’t counted as people in the Bible, so any female apostles were officially decreed by the early church to have been sacred-adjacent groupies.

he taught that the essence of the law could be summarized in commands to love God and love your neighbor.

Jesus lived in a politically turbulent time under military occupation. And while he did not advocate for violent rebellion, his teachings and actions were seen as politically subversive.

He was the most famous innocent brown-skinned man ever to be wrongly executed by the state, and he was deliberately killed in the most painful and humiliating of ways.

“The application of Jesus’ teaching to his social world is also seen in the fact that his movement was the peace party within Palestine.”

Speaking in parables also allowed Jesus to convey a message indirectly, thereby avoiding confrontation with religious or political authorities who might oppose him.

These teachings don’t require belief in supernatural events to be meaningful.

He treated them all with compassion, directing his anger instead toward economic injustice and exploitation

In Mark 12:17, he supports paying taxes for the government to redistribute.

WHATTTTTTTT

In Matthew 6:5, Jesus denounces public displays of religious piety that are performed so others can see, rather than out of genuine devotion.

And you’ll never see a right-wing Christian politician or group fight to post these words on a classroom or courtroom wall.

Throughout centuries of American colonialism and slavery up to segregation and beyond, images of White Jesus helped justify the subjugation and mistreatment of nonwhite peoples. Caucasian Jesus assured countless generations that Euro-looking people were superior; all the inherent internalized racism for nonwhite folks was just part of the package.

Trump defenders may be intrigued to know that while Jesus never once condemned abortions, immigrants, or gay people, he was seriously not a fan of adultery, and spoke out against the divorce laws of Moses because he thought it should be harder for men to dump their wives.

Jesus asserts that his true followers are the people and societies who care for the poor, the sick, the marginalized, the immigrants, and the incarcerated. And he tells you who his fake followers are—the ones who are openly religious but indifferent to the poor, the sick, the marginalized, the immigrants, and the incarcerated, the lowest of the low. How we treat them is how we treat him.

Jesus emphasizes that nations will be judged based on their actions and treatment of the vulnerable—not their religious affiliations or beliefs.

Many Christians passionately cling to the antigay parts of Leviticus, but they don’t exactly live by the rest of Leviticus, which also forbids tattoos, wearing mixed fabrics, working on Saturdays, and eating shellfish.

Everything that passes for homophobia and misogyny in the New Testament comes from Paul—not Jesus.

Which means that over the last two thousand years, many Christians have been taught to prioritize certain passages from Paul’s letters that suit their personal biases over Jesus’s irritating orders to love everyone.

So, Paul is literally both a sexist and feminist. He commands women to not speak, but makes them deacons.

Jesus led a small, grassroots Jewish movement; Paul turned it into a formalized global religion. These men had different goals.

Under Rome, Christianity transitioned from a persecuted little faith into a force powerful enough to persecute others.

Gone was the simple, direct message of love from the homeless Jewish faith healer. In its place sprung up new hierarchies, ecclesiastical institutions, and endless dogma and doctrines. More importantly, the merger of Christianity with imperial power led to it becoming a tool for political control, with countless spiritual teachings twisted for authoritarian purposes.

Jesus’s movement was now officially being used to justify violence, oppression, and authoritarian control.

“I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.”

“seven mountains” of society: religion, government, business, education, media, entertainment, and the American family itself.

In other words, adherents and sympathizers of Christian nationalism comprise about 30 percent of the US population. But somehow, they manage to make up two-thirds of the Supreme Court.

61 percent of Southern Baptists accepted the Bible as the literal word of God, higher than the 31 percent among all US adults and 53 percent among other evangelical Protestants.

That’s how the Bible was written, friends. Jesus said, “Welcome the stranger.” Our neighbors heard “Build a wall.”

The Bible is a compilation of the words of men about God. The second most common misconception is that the Bible is inerrant. Nothing man does or touches is absent from error. Therefore, it is full of errors, contradictions, misrepresentations, and mistranslations. The Bible is many things, but the inerrant Word of God is not among them.”

Biblical literalism feeds authoritarian tendencies by emphasizing obedience to rulers over critical thinking and individual freedoms.

Both can answer different questions: Science explores how the universe works, while the Bible addresses why it exists.

“Many things are ‘Biblical,’ like genocide, patriarchy, slavery, polygamy. When I say these things are ‘Biblical,’ I mean that people have in the past—and even today—used the Bible to justify all of those things. So, yes, those things are Biblical. But none of those things are Christlike.

Then, as now, biblical misogyny fell into two basic categories: (1) men who think women are property, and (2) men who think women are icky.

“Woman is a temple built over a sewer.”

Let them die in childbirth; that’s why they are there.”

Pat Robertson famously warned that feminism encourages women to “leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.”

hell yeah