The American Jesus
by Robert Crux | 7 March 2024 |
Politicians should not be given the power to determine who Jesus loves.
Yet, millions of Americans have asked these leaders to use their political power to fulfill a vision of Jesus that is exclusive and discriminatory. The idea that Jesus loves borders, guns, unborn babies, and economic prosperity but hates homosexuality, immigrants, taxes, and universal healthcare paints a picture of how right-wing politicians and evangelical church leaders have rewritten the gospels. A certain set of Americans portray a Jesus who condones power and privilege, and legitimizes hate.
They are confusing a religious message with a political one.
Christianity distorted
Engaging with politicians to use, misuse, and misconstrue the Bible to fit their agenda, followers of Christian nationalism are focused on passing laws that reflect their authoritative and white privilege view of Christianity. Evangelical churches and other mainline Protestant churches should be the adversaries to white Christian nationalism; instead they are their most powerful ally.
Jim Powers, in his opinion column for East Texas News, writes:
In recent years, the rise of Christian nationalism has been a major cause for concern, not just for religious scholars, but for anyone who values the principles of inclusivity, tolerance, and respect.… Christian Nationalists are engaged in transforming a faith based on love and compassion into a tool for political and social exclusion.
Christian Nationalists are supported by politicians who embrace the Gospels with a secular spin, while charlatan theologians give politicians religious cover to say that Jesus would vote Republican, loves guns, wants you to be rich, and doesn’t mind the idea of forcing prayer in public schools.
John Pavlovitz, writing for the Milwaukee Independent, says that people no longer recognize the Jesus of Matthew 25:44-45 in this kind of American Christianity:
They’re rightly incredulous at so many American Christians’ cruelty toward migrants and their callousness toward outsiders and their resistance to help those with less than they have—whether food or health insurance or opportunity. They recognize the sharp disconnect, of supposed disciples of this hospitable, effusively generous Jesus, treating people in need as lazy, seeing foreigners as a threat, blaming the poor for their plight.
Patriot Jesus
The popular sentiment “God and country” has turned Jesus into a patriot, while diminishing God’s kingdom as multinational.
Ameen Hudson, writing for The Gospel Coalition (TGC), explains this in practical terms:
Such a mentality tends to confuse God’s interests with those of a political party. It makes the United States the center of God’s affections, above every other nation. Critiquing the sentiment is seen not only as an assault on the principles of American democracy, but on God himself.
For many American churchgoers, the biblical Jesus has been replaced by the Americanized Jesus who supports white evangelicalism and Christian nationalism. The meek, mild, and gentle Jesus has become the “warrior Jesus.
The book Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez is a sweeping account of the last seventy-five years of white evangelicalism, showing how American evangelicals have worked for decades to replace the Jesus of the Gospels with an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism. The author notes in the book’s introduction:
Evangelicals claim to uphold the Bible as its highest authority in the Christian life, but there are more than 31,000 verses in the Bible. Which ones are considered essential guides to faithful Christian practice, and which are readily ignored or explained away? In like manner, when evangelicals define themselves in terms of Christ’s atonement or disciples of a risen Christ, what sort of Jesus are they imagining? Is their savior a conquering warrior, a man’s man who takes no prisoners and wages holy war? Or is he a sacrificial lamb who offers himself up for the restoration of all things? How one answers these questions will determine what it looks like to follow Jesus.
The American Bible
The American Patriot’s Bible, edited by Dr. Richard G. Lee. with the subtitle “The Word of God and the Shaping of America,” attempts to
marry the United States to a divine project ordained by God to succeed and exist as God’s nation on earth. In this extremely unique Bible, the story of the United States is artfully woven into the teachings of the Bible and Jesus takes on the role of an American patriot.
One of the more unsettling aspects of the Patriot’s Bible is the way it unashamedly glorifies nationalistic violence which has in the past been associated with pagan religions.
Another Bible licensed as the “God Bless the USA Bible”—is billed as “the ultimate American Bible.” Included between its covers, in addition to holy Scripture, are the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the Pledge of Allegiance, as well as the handwritten chorus to Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA.” It places the nation’s founding documents as though they are an extension of God’s word, and that Jesus is an American patriot who affirms America as God’s new chosen nation and chosen people. Writing for Christianity Today, Jamie Aten and Kent Annan refer to the new God Bless the USA Bible in writing that
Joining God’s Word and the founding political documents of a single nation together in one volume signals a divine endorsement of what we have no evidence of God endorsing.
Matthew Teutsch, writing for Medium, describes the Patriots Bible as a book that promotes a civic religion rather than a democracy:
Before even opening the book, we know that the Patriot’s Bible serves to foster and promote Christian Nationalism, ‘an ideology,’ as Samuel Perry and Andrew Whitehead define it, ‘that idealizes a fusion of Christianity with American civic belonging and participation.’
Those Jesus hates
Megan Bailey, author at Beliefnet News, notes that
In the New Testament, Jesus welcomes foreigners, children, the uneducated, prostitutes, the disabled and many more imperfect people.
She says that unfortunately,
Many politicians use God as backing for their policies and beliefs, which end up being hateful and hurtful toward certain groups of people. Many Americans love to put their own ideals into what Christianity is supposed to be. An example of an argument many have is, “God hates gays.”
Craig M. Watts, in his article “Trump Christianity and the Abandonment of Jesus,” underscores the hypocrisy of the American Jesus writing:
Only an Americanized Jesus could lead people in churches to support heartless policies that endanger the environment for profit, reduce accessibility to healthcare for those who are less affluent, and separate children from their parents who come to the borders of the U.S. seeking refuge from threats. Only an Americanized Jesus could lead people who call themselves Christians to believe that “America First” is a motto that is compatible with faith in the God who “so loved the world” that he sent Jesus.
Politicizing Jesus
The culture of a nation can have a huge impact on how Jesus is portrayed to its citizens. The American Jesus is all about preserving and protecting the temporal earthly kingdom of the United States of America, while the Biblical Jesus is all about advancing and building his own kingdom from every nation, kindred, and tongue.
The political Jesus has been empowered to do things the Biblical Jesus could not do. There is now substantial credible evidence that significant segments of Christianity—not just a tiny fringe—support violence to achieve their political goals. When the horrifying violence at the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, caused people to wonder if it was more just a political uprising. Samuel L. Perry and Andrew Whitehead in their article for Time magazine pointed out:
We are forgetting that January 6th was very much a religious event—white Christian nationalism on display. We must remember that fact. Because evidence is mounting that white Christian nationalism could provide the theological cover for more events like it.
Since 2016, right-wing politicians have been trying to get people to see violence differently…that it is patriotic and necessary in order to deconstruct what is described as the “deep state.”
The Public Religion Research Institute’s (PRRI’s) 2023 American Values Survey, asked Americans if things have gotten so far off track that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.” A third of Republicans agreed with that statement, compared with 22% of independents and 13% of Democrats.
Joash Thomas, in his article for Medium, says that now cultural context is assumed to be part of our Christian faith:
If your Jesus cares more about the Second Amendment than the Second Commandment, your Jesus is not the Biblical Jesus. If your Jesus cares more about “fighting for our rights” than advocating for the rights of immigrants, marginalized ethnic groups, orphans and women, your Jesus is not the Biblical Jesus. If your Jesus cares more about fighting CRT and Marxism than bringing down systems that perpetuate the sins of racism and sexual abuse, your Jesus is not the Biblical Jesus.
Making decisions for God
Christianity in America has been ravaged by the dominant teaching that we can make decisions for God, that we can decide whom God loves and hates, and which political party He supports. If you subscribe to any of these beliefs, your Christianity might be more political than religious. Joash Thomas, again: “Christian nationalism… says: ‘If a person disagrees with me, that person is disagreeing with God.’”
In practice, the growing movement of Christian nationalism turns out to be a way of talking about Jesus so that no one, including Him, can keep us from doing the evils we think we need to do to save our “American way of life.”
Followers of Jesus do not seek privilege and exclusivity but willingly serve others with the lovingkindness, grace, and mercy of Jesus. We can trust the voice of God only when that voice is leading us to love and to serve the least of us.
Robert D. Crux, Ed.S, worked as a teacher, principal, and superintendent of schools over a period of 35 years in Adventist education before retiring in 2016 to Lawton, Michigan, where he enjoys writing, reading, biking, model railroading, and, most of all, his grandchildren.
