Separation of Church and Hate

by John Fugelsang

His overall parenting strategy was to guarantee that I’d be way too liberal to ever fit in with Christians and far too Christian to ever blend with liberals.

I think many of us remember an America when family could disagree over politics while still generally getting along. Maybe yours still can.

Decent Christians—including moderates and sane conservatives—along with righteous atheists, agnostics, and many people of other religions, have always had to band together to beat back the batshit-crazy Christians.

And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that nobody hates like a Christian who’s just been told their hate isn’t Christian.

If they’re going to stand in your house and claim to represent Jesus, you’re allowed to prove if they really mean it.

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

By prioritizing Jesus’s teachings, Christianity can emphasize principles that unite, without relying on coerced belief in two-thousand-year-old supernatural accounts to win people over.

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.

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.

Not only are Christians supposed to prioritize following Jesus’s words above the other parts of the Bible, that’s also quite literally why this religion got its name.

They’re willing to deny the origin of the Christian faith—that it’s not traditional Judaism—just to be mean to trans kids.

It was all Paul, founder of modern Christianity; the church’s first spin doctor, and the guy who right wingers quote alarmingly more often than Jesus.

And so it was that Paul took over Christianity and redefined what the religion would be. It’s like if Ronnie Wood joined the Rolling Stones in 1975, then the other guys all got killed in a plane crash, and Ronnie just kept the band’s name to himself for his solo career.

The good news is that it really doesn’t matter, because Paul is not God or Jesus,

All too often, however, it’s led to Paul being a top ingredient in modern Christianity’s All You Can Cherry-Pick Buffet.

People who’ve been conditioned to think you’re on the side of the devil aren’t permitted to meet you halfway.

Christian nationalists want the US to be a Christian nation, but they don’t want to follow the words of Christ. It’s like irony and hypocrisy having violent hate-sex.

Deism generally dismissed beliefs like Jesus’s divinity, instead believing in a distant, impersonal God who set up natural laws and principles to govern the universe but wasn’t a fan of intervening in human affairs; like a boss who only works remotely and never pops in the Zoom meetings.

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.

Some of these folks seriously enjoy being martyrs, and any hostility from you will give them license to act like one.

Faith does not require literalism;

Science has never made me doubt the existence of a loving God, but some Christians have.

unlike being gay, homophobia is highly curable.

Context is a wooden stake to Christian homophobia.

If they wanna hate the gays, they’ve gotta love the immigrants.

Keeping citizens from serious illness, permanent disability, or being unable to work at full capacity is crucial to America’s economic well-being. Even if you don’t care about poor people, think of the poor money.

Strength is measured by who you protect, not who you attack.

There’s one rule that consistently applies to both Christianity and comedy—don’t punch down.

And growth is not to be answered with smug liberal “I told ya so’s.”

We can’t hate them. But in a democracy, we must beat them.