Jesus Needs a New Religion

Posted on by

America is not a Christian nation. America was never a Christian nation. The label itself is an oxymoron.

Christianity died, institutionally, when it became Christendom with its fourth century marriage to Rome at the altar of Constantine and Eusebius. And it has remained Christendom to this day, especially in the nation that more than any other conflates its image with an imagined Jesus.

Politicians of all stripes close their speeches with God bless you and God bless these United States of America. Our money, ironically, says “In God We Trust.” The laying of the cornerstone of the National Cathedral, conflation at its finest created by an act of Congress, was overseen by President Theodore Roosevelt, and placement of its final finial by President George H. W. Bush.

In 1630, Puritan leader John Winthrop, who became the best known governor of the Massachusetts Colony, likened his vision of a moral society to Jesus’s description in Matthew of a city on a hill, a sentinel of the kingdom of heaven for the entire world to see. In recent decades, this reference has been cited in the campaigns and speeches of John F Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, and Elizabeth Warren, to name just a few. The implication is that the United States is Jesus’s own bright city on a hill, a community of kindness, peace, and inclusion, or at least democracy. This is an act of co-optation, not appointment.

Christians left and right claim this territory for the United States, and even more specifically for their own political community. Conservative Christians unite with one party, mainline and progressives with the other. All miss the mark. Followers of Jesus are completely distinct from the Christians of Christendom, the Christian appellation having lost its integrity.

  • Followers of Jesus know no borders. There are none in the kingdom of heaven, as Jesus demonstrated in his meeting of the woman at the well and his parable of the good Samaritan. Every neighbor is to be loved exactly as the self.
  • Followers of Jesus do not go to war. Jesus rejected violence of every kind in favor of inserting oneself, as he did, between victim and perpetrator, taking the blow even if it meant death. No candidate and few Christians, with the exception sometimes of the small sects of Anabaptists and Quakers, advocate this stance. Violence, in defense of “truth, justice, and the American way,” is central to the American myth, the rallying cry that unifies, breaking down the boundaries of all politics in times of threat. This is not the way of Jesus.
  • Followers of Jesus do not judge others. They know only love. How many times have you heard, “Love the sinner but hate the sin?” Those are not the words of Jesus. They are a thin excuse for exclusion of the inconvenient or despised other.
  • Followers of Jesus do not make, carry, or export arms. Christian America claims moral high ground while arming the world to the teeth, defending supposed self-interest while quietly and invisibly padding corporate profit. Eight out of nine parties complicit in the death of an estimated 5.4 to 6 million Congolese in the wars since 1996 used weapons supplied by the United States. And we continue more openly in our current proxy wars in the Middle East and Ukraine.
  • Followers of Jesus serve each other, not the bottom line. This is the biggest and best hidden contradiction of the American myth. Christians, conservative and progressive, throughout American history, have confused productivity with morality. And they have accepted as natural order an economy that demands the service of the poor for the benefit of the rich. Witness the vast community of undocumented immigrants, tacitly ignored when not openly despised, that cut up our beef and serve our fries, or the global sweatshops creating our comfort and convenience. The economy of Jesus serves people. In an American perspective, people serve the economy.

Jesus brushed aside the Pharisees that tried to trip him up about payment of taxes. The coin, indeed, is minted by and belongs to the emperor. But the follower is called to be in the world and not of the world, living with integrity and vulnerability the citizenship of the kingdom of heaven, a realm of the heart that transcends the boundaries of any nation or empire. Give the empire its due, which does not include one’s service to violence or sacrifice of soul. Give your body and soul to love.

Empire and institutional religion, supposed enemies, quickly closed ranks against Jesus and his community of nonviolent love and inclusion. Nothing has changed today. The conflation of Christianity with America has compromised the following of Christ. Jesus needs a new religion.

© Jerry S Kennell

17 thoughts on “Jesus Needs a New Religion”

  1. Thank you for this piece, Jerry. It takes tremendous courage to speak such truth in today’s environment, or any other. Yours is a voice crying out in the wilderness of our present situation.

    Your friend, Greg Kendall

    (We are back in Fort Collins in retirement. Let’s get together soon!)

    Like

    Reply ↓

  2. Thanks for this, Jerry. Your words express the image of Jesus that I have as well. I wonder, however, if trying to get back to ‘the real Jesus’ is a fruitless enterprise. Each person’s image of the historical Jesus seems to be more about our self serving projections than anything else. And curiosity about and compassion for myself and the other is perhaps a good place to start.

    My best to you and Leonor.

    Rick

    Like

    Reply ↓

  4. Beautifully written, open-hearted, broken-hearted, and ever so true!

    Thank you, Jerry. I was struck by your statement “living with integrity and vulnerability the citizenship of the kingdom of heaven.” I’ve been thinking that that’s the only way forward and through, especially now that the superstructure of the American idea seems to be crumbling!

    Thanks for sending this! All the best to you and Leonor! – Virginia

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply ↓

  5. Thank you, Jerry, for exposing the lies of empire, the sham Christianity that infects public dialog.

    As we go forward we need guidance in the use nonviolent resistance. I believe that our witness through massive general strikes is the best way to expose the greed and disregard for life that our government now and has represented to this point in time. If we just let this present catastrophe die of its own stupid volition it will be a massive death of unseen proportions.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply ↓

  6. thanks Jerry. Good words. I hope you are doing well. I think of you from time to time like last week when an organization asked me if a consultant was ever helpful and my answer was yes—and I reflected on working with you.
    Shalom! Dick Thomas

    Like

    Reply ↓

    • Thanks for reading, Dick, and very nice to hear from you. We live in Taos, NM now, and last week I met a woman named Katrina who also lives here and worked at LMH in the late 80’s/early 90’s, which brought you to mind, as well. I always admired your clean desk and your low key but very effective leadership. Shalom!

      Like

      Reply ↓

  8. Given the results of the recent election I find it a very unpleasant task to love certain individuals. It’s very similar to what my understanding of forgiveness is, where it’s a matter of letting go rather than thinking all is as it was prior.

    Love in this case is not feeling warm and fuzzy but more what I won’t do, say, and far more difficult, to feel. I find trumps character to be thoroughly repulsive. The question is what does “love” mean when looking at this? If the opportunity arises do we knock over the tables of the money lenders? I find even thinking about this to be unpleasant. In any case it is not something that will consume me. I have too much experience with depression to go there. And family, if uninformed, will remain family.

    Like

    Reply ↓

Leave a reply to ajourneytowardwholenesscom Cancel reply