“I’d be a Christian if it were not for the Christians.” -Gandhi

“I like your Christ, but not your Christianity.” -Gandhi

Today’s New York Times had a an interesting article about a Baptist Church in Williams, Alabama. The church, like nearly everything in America these days, is deeply polarized.  Chris Thomas, the church’s pastor, is a good ‘ole Alabama boy, who had two Confederate flags engraved on his high school class ring, but his college and seminary education gave him the transformation that St. Paul states in I Corinthians 13:11:

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, a thought like a child, I reasoned like a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

It was during his college and seminary studies that Mr. Thomas was exposed to debates and thoughts that he never got in his hometown of Enterprise, Alabama. Here he learned that women and gays could lead churches, and that the Gospel of Jesus was to be both lived and preached. The article poignantly details how his maturity affected his job search as he prepared to graduate from seminary:

By the time he was on the job market, Mr. Thomas could see his politics had changed and told his wife, Sallie, that it might make sense for them to move to the East Coast, where there were liberal Baptist churches. But as a Southerner, he had few connections outside of his home state, and the only church that hired him was back in Alabama.

So after graduation Mr. Thomas began his ministerial career at the First Baptist Church of Williams, Alabama. From the article:

From the start, it wasn’t a good fit. The racial tensions Mr. Thomas wanted to leave behind seemed always to be simmering there.

On a hot summer day Mr. Thomas was in his office when several African-American children were playing basketball outside, he said. One of them came to ask to use the drinking fountain in the church and Mr. Thomas pointed the child toward the door where the water was.

When a congregant, who was white, saw the black child approaching, Mr. Thomas said he pulled the door shut to not to allow the boy inside. The pastor was upset — it wasn’t the first time he’d seen that behavior.

Things got worse once Trump took office. In January of 2017 Mr. Thomas gave a sermon regarding Trump’s ban on Syrian refugees. Thomas read from the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:4-10) where Jesus says:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,

For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

4 Blessed are those who mourn,

For they shall be comforted.

5 Blessed are the meek,

For they shall inherit the [a]earth.

6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,

For they shall be filled.

7 Blessed are the merciful,

For they shall obtain mercy.

8 Blessed are the pure in heart,

For they shall see God.

9 Blessed are the peacemakers,

For they shall be called sons of God.

10 Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake,

For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

After he read the words from the Gospel of Matthew, Thomas added a beatitude of his own:

Blessed are those who seek refuge and have the door shut on their face.

A few days after the sermon, a group of his congregants wanted to talk with him. According to Thomas, the group said with regards to the Beatitudes, “those are nice, but we don’t have to live by them.”

We don’t have to live by them. That phrase struck me like a sucker punch to the jaw. It’s that attitude that has always disgusted me when I think of Christianity, especially as it’s practiced here in the United States. Both Catholic and Protestant sects have divided themselves into conservative and and liberal factions, with conservatives more concerned about halting abortions, denying civil rights to to the LGBT community, and keeping women from taking leadership positions. Liberal factions are hell bent on making Christianity relevant to the 21st century, hoping that young people will either come back to or enter the fold.

The conflict between the conservative and liberal positions are rooted in how Christianity has been co-opted by the state. First the Roman Empire co-opted the nascent Christian faith when the Emperor Constantine allegedly  saw a cross in the sky that had the banner In Hoc Signo Vinces (With this sign you will conquer) while he was engaged in battle. The fact that a man engaged in warfare could take a symbol of state execution and interpret it as God’s blessing on his slaughter should give any true Christian pause. And “conquer”? Jesus never spoke of conquering anyone or anything. In 395 CE Emperor Theodosius mandated that the Christian faith was the official state religion of the Roman Empire.

When the Roman Empire collapsed, the Roman Catholic Church filled the governmental void. The Church mingled its spiritual power with temporal power, and often the temporal power took precedence. One doesn’t see Christ’s teachings to  “love your neighbor and pray for those who persecute you” when Pope Urban II called  for a crusade to slaughter the infidel in 1095. While Urban portrayed the Crusade as a divine enterprise (Deus Vult=God Wills It), he probably called for a Crusade so that French armies could remove the anti-Pope Clement III from Rome. After all, it’s far easier to tell God’s children what to do if there’s only one “true” Vicar of Christ sitting on St. Peter’s throne.

While we don’t have a state church in this country, one would have to be blind and willfully stupid not to see how the Christian faith is utterly entangled in every aspect of our government. Both the House and Senate have chaplains paid for with tax dollars. Churches in this country pay nothing in federal or state taxes, but ministers and priests feel free to tell parishioners not to vote for any candidate who is pro choice (ever hear of a minister or priest telling a parishioner not to vote for anyone who is in favor of capital punishment?). The Republican Party and American evangelicals are enmeshed in a symbiotic relationship, and since Trump took office I can’t tell which entity is the parasite and which is the host. Whenever I see Trump and Franklin Graham or Jerry Falwell on stage together, all I can think of are the immortal words from Bob Seger’s “Night Moves”

I used her, she used me, but neither one cared

We were  getting our share

Working on the night moves

In April of this year Pastor Thomas let his congregation know that he was leaving. Like me, he’s come to the simple conclusion that the Christian faith is now totally co-opted by those who are more interested in serving the state than in spreading the message of love and acceptance that Christ preached and died for. I feel for him. I keep a Missal in my desk at work, and I try to read it each day. Romans 8:35-39, which got me through many a rough day, and which I read at the funerals of my Mom and Dad is still etched in my memory:

35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36 As it is written,

“For thy sake we are being killed all the day long;

we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Gandhi had it right. Christ is wonderful. Christians, especially the American variant? Not so much.