A friend skilled at finding gems to
read sent me this one today. Worth
reading.
Fox
News Bill O’Reilly defended the Republican Party’s spending cuts for SNAP by
effectively declaring Jesus would not support food stamps for the poor because
most them are drug addicts. If his insensitive remark is inconsistent with
Scripture, which it is, then the question becomes why do talking heads on the
right get away with proclaiming what Jesus would or wouldn’t support?
The
answer is simple: Conservatives have not read the Bible.
Here the author chooses to overlook the
parallel error: most of the poor are not
drug addicts. Not even close. But the author chooses (smartly) to focus on
the central theme of interpreting scripture.
The
Right has successfully rebranded the brown-skinned liberal Jew, who gave away
free healthcare and was pro-redistributing wealth, into a white-skinned,
trickledown, union-busting conservative, for the very fact that an overwhelming
number of Americans are astonishingly illiterate when it comes to understanding
the Bible. On hot-button social issues, from same-sex marriage to abortion,
biblical passages are invoked without any real understanding of the context or
true meaning. It’s surprising how little Christians know of what is still the
most popular book to ever grace the American continent.
Here the author annoys me a bit with
phrasing like ‘A has successfully rebranded…for the very fact that an….’ As I read it (and I am no writing expert)
this is either incorrect or inelegant or both.
It was rebranded for the fact that?
I suspect the author means they were able to rebrand successfully
because an overwhelming number are illiterate.
But, like the poverty and drug abuse comment, this is off point.
More
than 95 percent of U.S. households own at least one copy of the Bible. So how
much do Americans know of the book that one-third of the country believes to be
literally true? Apparently,very little, according to data from the Barna
Research group. Surveys show that 60 percent can’t name more than five of the
Ten Commandments; 12 percent of adults think Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife; and
nearly 50 percent of high school seniors think Sodom and Gomorrah were a
married couple. A Gallup poll shows 50 percent of Americans can’t name the
first book of the Bible, while roughly 82 percent believe “God helps those who
help themselves” is a biblical verse.
Here the author is accepting the
assumption on the Right that to be a good Christian one must read, and know
well, the Bible. I do not share that
assumption, but I understand that it is central to the argument here and it is
an accurate description of what most on the Right assume on this question.
So,
if Americans get an F in the basic fundamentals of the Bible, what hope do they
have in knowing what Jesus would say about labor unions, taxes on the rich,
universal healthcare, and food stamps? It becomes easy to spread a lie when no
one knows what the truth is.
Here the author is correct about this
conflict…and this is also true about most conflicts that become salient enough
to be contested in and through the mass media, where public and private sector
elites voices dominate and specialize in re-presenting their own private
interests as if these were the public interest.
The
truth, whether Republicans like it or not, is not only that Jesus was a meek
and mild liberal Jew who spoke softly in parables and metaphors, but
conservatives were the ones who had him killed. American conservatives,
however, have morphed Jesus into a muscular masculine warrior, in much the same
way the Nazis did, as a means of combating what they see as the modernization
of society.
I am not aware of this Nazi connection;
would like to know more. Seems similar
to what the KKK did with Jesus?
Author
Thom Hartmann writes, “A significant impetus behind the assault on women and
modernity was the feeling that women had encroached upon traditional male
spheres like the workplace and colleges. Furthermore, women’s leadership in the
churches had harmed Christianity by creating an effeminate clergy and a weak
sense of self. All of this was associated with liberalism, feminism, women, and
modernity.”
Here the author provides a provocative
quote, but which assault? When? By whom?
It’s
almost absurd to speculate what Jesus’ positions would be on any single issue,
given we know so little about who Jesus was. Knowing the New Testament is not
simply a matter of reading the Bible cover to cover, or memorizing a handful of
verses. Knowing the Bible requires a scholarly contextual understanding of
authorship, history and interpretation.
For
instance, when Republicans were justifying their cuts to the food stamp
program, they quoted 2 Thessalonians: “Anyone unwilling to work should not
eat.” One poll showed that more than 90 percent of Christians believe this New
Testament quote is attributed to Jesus. It’s not. This was taken from a letter
written by Paul to his church in Thessalonica. Paul wrote to this specific
congregation to remind them that if they didn't help build the church in
Thessalonica, they wouldn’t be paid. The letter also happens to be a fraud.
Surprise! Biblical scholars agree it’s a forgery written by someone pretending
to be Paul.
What
often comes as a surprise to your average Sunday wine-and-cracker Christian is
the New Testament did not fall from the sky the day Jesus’ ghost is said to
have ascended to Heaven. The New Testament is a collection of writings, 27 in total,
of which 12 are credited to the authorship of Paul, five to the Gospels
(whomever wrote Luke also wrote Acts), and the balance remain open for debate
i.e. authorship unknown. Jesus himself wrote not a single word of the New
Testament. Not a single poem, much less an op-ed article on why, upon
reflection, killing your daughter for backchat is probably not sound parenting.
Backchat? Talking back?
The best argument against an historical Jesus is the fact that none of his
disciples left us with a single record or document regarding Jesus or his
teachings. So, who were the gospel writers? The short answer is we don’t know.
What we do know is that not only had none of them met Jesus, but also they
never met the people who had allegedly met Jesus. All we have is a bunch of
campfire stories from people who were born generations after Jesus’ supposed
crucifixion. In other words, numerous unidentified authors, each with his own
theological and ideological motives for writing what they wrote. Thus we have
not a single independently verifiable eyewitness account of Jesus—but this
doesn’t stop Republicans from speaking on his behalf.
I guess I assumed that John’s gospel
was written by John the Apostle. A bit
surprised to learn that no writers even knew anyone who knew Jesus, and to
learn how little I know (again).
What
we do know about Jesus, at least according to the respective gospels, is that
Jesus’ sentiments closely echoed the social and economic policies of the political
left. The Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount read like the mission
statement of the ACLU: “Blessed are the poor, for theirs is kingdom of heaven,”
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,” and “Blessed are the
peacemakers.” Jesus also said, “Judge not he who shall not be judged,” and
“Sell what you have and give it to the poor.”
So,
when Republicans accuse Obama of being a brown-skinned socialist who wants to
redistribute the wealth, they’re thinking of Jesus. Stephen Colbert joked,
“Jesus was always flapping his gums about the poor but never once did he call
for a tax cut for the wealthiest 2 percent of Romans.”
Biblical
illiteracy is what has allowed the Republican Party to get away with shaping
Jesus into their image. That's why politicians on the right can get away with
saying the Lord commands that our healthcare, prisons, schools, retirement,
transport, and all the rest should be run by corporations for profit.
Ironically,
the Republican Jesus was actually a devout atheist—Ayn Rand—who called the
Christian religion “monstrous.” Rand advocated selfishness over charity, and
she divided the world into makers versus takers. She also stated that followers
of her philosophy had to chose between Jesus and her teachings. When the Christian
Right believes it’s channeling Jesus when they say it’s immoral for government
to tax billionaires to help pay for healthcare, education and the poor, they’re
actually channeling Ayn Rand. When Bill O’Reilly claims the poor are immoral
and lazy, that’s not Jesus, it’s Ayn Rand.
Here the author chooses to frame free
market thinking through Rand. Not
inaccurate, but there are less extreme versions that would make this argument
stronger.
The
price this country has paid for biblical illiteracy is measured by how far
we’ve moved toward Ayn Rand’s utopia. In the past three decades, we’ve slashed
taxes on corporations and the wealthy, destroyed labor unions, deregulated
financial markets, eroded public safety nets, and committed to one globalist
corporate free-trade agreement after another. Rand would be smiling down from
the heaven she didn’t believe in.
With
the far-right, Republican-appointed majority on the Supreme Court ruling in
favor of the Koch brothers' Citizens United, the flow of billions of dollars
from anonymous donors to the most reliable voting bloc of the Republican
Party—the Christian Right—will continue to perpetuate the biblically
incompatible, anti-government, pro-deregulation-of-business,
anti-healthcare-for-all, Tea Party American version of Christianity.
I had high hopes for this at the start,
but in the end it operates more by suggestion than argumentation with
evidence. For a short piece, however, it
is instructive and points us in directions worth further exploration.