The Church of the UnChristian Christ: A Jesuit's view of Bush's America

[thebullet]

Pharisee Nation
By John Dear
Common Dreams
Tuesday 15 February 2005
Last September, I spoke to some 2,000 students during their annual lecture at a Baptist college in Pennsylvania. After a short prayer service for peace centered on the Beatitudes, I took the stage and got right to the point. "Now let me get this straight," I said. "Jesus says, 'Blessed are the peacemakers," which means he does not say, 'Blessed are the warmakers,' which means, the warmakers are not blessed, which means warmakers are cursed, which means, if you want to follow the nonviolent Jesus you have to work for peace, which means, we all have to resist this horrific, evil war on the people of Iraq."
With that, the place exploded, and 500 students stormed out. The rest of them then started chanting, "Bush! Bush! Bush!"
So much for my speech. Not to mention the Beatitudes.
I was not at all surprised that George W. Bush was reelected president. As I travel the country speaking out against war, injustice and nuclear weapons, I see many people consciously siding with the culture of war, choosing the path of violence, supporting corporate greed, rampant militarism, and global domination. I see many others swept up in the raging current of patriotism. Since most of these people, beginning with the president, claim to be Christian, I am ashamed and appalled that they support war and systemic injustice, that they do it in the name of God, and that they feign fidelity to the nonviolent Jesus who gave his life resisting institutionalized injustice.
I am reminded of Flannery O'Connor's great book, "Wise Blood," where her outrageous character Hazel Motes is so fed up with Christian hypocrisy that he
forms his own church, the "Church of Christ without Christ," "where the lame don't walk, the blind don't see, and the dead don't rise." That's where we are
headed today. I used to think these all-American Christians never read the Gospel, that they simply chose not to be authentic disciples of the nonviolent Jesus. Now, alas, I think they have indeed chosen discipleship, but not to the hero of the Gospels, Jesus. Instead, through their actions, they have become disciples of the devout, religious, all-powerful, murderous Pharisees who killed him.

A Culture of Pharisees
We have become a culture of Pharisees. Instead of practicing an authentic spirituality of compassion, nonviolence, love and peace, we as a collective people have become self-righteous, arrogant, powerful, murderous hypocrites who dominate and kill others in the name of God. The Pharisees supported the brutal Roman rulers and soldiers, and lived off the comforts of the empire by running an elaborate banking system which charged an exorbitant fee for ordinary people just to worship God in the Temple. Since they taught that God was present only in the Temple, they were able to control the entire population. If anyone opposed their power or violated their law, the Pharisees could kill them on the spot, even in the holy sanctuary.
Most North American Christians are now becoming more and more like these hypocritical Pharisees. We side with the rulers, the bankers, and the corporate millionaires and billionaires. We run the Pentagon, bless the bombing raids, support executions, make nuclear weapons and seek global domination for America as if that was what the nonviolent Jesus wants. And we dismiss anyone who disagrees with us.
We have become a mean, vicious people, what the bible calls "stiff-necked people." And we do it all with the mistaken belief that we have the blessing of
God. In the past, empires persecuted religious groups and threatened them into passivity and silence. Now these so-called Christians run the American empire,
and teach a subtle spirituality of empire to back up their power in the name of God. This spirituality of empire insists that violence saves us, might makes
right, war is justified, bombing raids are blessed, nuclear weapons offer the only true security from terrorism, and the good news is not love for our enemies, but the elimination of them. The empire is working hard these days to tell the nation--and the churches--what is moral and immoral, sinful and holy. It denounces certain personal behavior as immoral, in order to distract us from the blatant immorality and mortal sin of the U.S. bombing raids which have left 100,000 Iraqis dead, or our ongoing development of thousands of weapons of mass destruction. Our Pharisee rulers would have us believe that our wars and our weapons are holy and blessed by God.
In the old days, the early Christians had big words for such behavior, such lies. They were called "blasphemous, idolatrous, heretical, hypocritical and sinful." Such words and actions were denounced as the betrayal, denial and execution of Jesus all over again in the world's poor. But the empire needs the church to bless and support its wars, or at least to remain passive and silent. As we Christians go along with the Bush administration and the American empire, we betray Jesus, renounce his teachings, and create a "Church of Christ without Christ," as Flannery O'Connor foresaw.

Troublemaking Nonviolence, the Measure of the Gospel

The first thing we Christians have to do in this time is not to become good Pharisees. Instead, we have to try all over again to follow the dangerous,
nonviolent, troublemaking Jesus. I believe war, weapons, corporate greed and systemic injustice are an abomination in the sight of God. They are the definition of mortal sin. They mock God and threaten to destroy God's gift of creation. If you want to seek the living God, you have to pit your entire life against war, weapons, greed and injustice--and their perpetrators. It is as simple as that.
Every religion, including Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism, is rooted in nonviolence, but I submit that the only thing we know for sure about Jesus is
that he was nonviolent and so, nonviolence is the hallmark of Christianity and the measure of authentic Christian living. Jesus commands that we love one
another, love our neighbors, seek justice, forgive those who hurt us, pray for our persecutors, and be as compassionate as God. But at the center of his teaching is the most radical declaration ever uttered: "love your enemies."
If we dare call ourselves Christian, we cannot support war or nuclear weapons or corporate greed or executions or systemic injustice of any kind. If we
do, we may well be devout American citizens, but we no longer follow the nonviolent Jesus. We have joined the hypocrites and blasphemers of the land, beginning with their leaders in the White House, the Pentagon and Los Alamos.
Jesus resisted the empire, engaged in nonviolent civil disobedience in the Temple, was arrested by the Pharisees, tried by the Roman governor and executed by Roman soldiers. If we dare follow this nonviolent revolutionary, we too must resist empire, engage in nonviolent civil disobedience against U.S. warmaking and imperial domination, and risk arrest and imprisonment like the great modern day disciples, Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day and Philip Berrigan.
If we do not want to be part of the Pharisaic culture and do want to follow the nonviolent Jesus, we have to get in trouble just as Jesus was constantly in
trouble for speaking the truth, loving the wrong people, worshipping the wrong way, and promoting the wrong things, like justice and peace. We have to
resist this new American empire, as well as its false spirituality and all those who claim to be Christian yet support the murder of other human beings. We have to repent of the sin of war, put down the sword, practice Gospel nonviolence, and take up the cross of revolutionary nonviolence by loving our enemies and discovering what the spiritual life is all about.
Just because the culture and the cultural church have joined with the empire and its wars does not mean that we all have to go along with such heresy, or fall
into despair as if nothing can be done. It is never too late to try to follow the troublemaking Jesus, to join his practice of revolutionary nonviolence and
become authentic Christians. We may find ourselves in trouble, even at the hands of so-called Christians, just as Jesus was in trouble at the hands of the so-called religious leaders of his day. But this very trouble may lead us back to those Beatitude blessings.
--------
John Dear is a Jesuit priest and the author/editor of 20 books including most recently, "The Questions of Jesus" and "Living Peace" both published by Doubleday. He lives in New Mexico where he is working on a
campaign to disarm Los Alamos. For info, see:

 

[shereads]

I need time for this. I'll be back.

I won't like it. But I'll read it.

< cries, snarls, curses own helplessness & pounds head on desk >

 

[thebullet]

Sorry, Shereads. Sometimes I post stuff just to get it off of my chest. I hate them fuckin' Christians. I'm a nice, moral, riighteous atheist myself.

 

[Guest]

John Dear is a Jesuit priest and the author/editor of 20 books including most recently, "The Questions of Jesus" and "Living Peace" both published by Doubleday. He lives in New Mexico where he is working on a
campaign to disarm Los Alamos. For info, see:

Sic igitur magni quoque circum
moenia mundi expugnata dabunt
labem putresque ruinas

The Lord rewarded me after my righteous dealing, according to the cleanness of my hands did he recompense me. Because I have kept the ways of the Lord, and have not forsaken my God, as wicked doth. For I have an eye unto all his laws, and will not cast out his commandments from me. I was also uncorrupt before him, and eschewed mine own wickedness. Therefore the Lord rewarded me after my righteous dealing, and according unto the cleanness of my hands in his eyesight. With the holy thou shalt be holy . . .

 

[thebullet]

GoneOffShore:
Yes, I read that article in The Nation. As I have mentioned on this website before, my wife is a fanatical acquirer of information. She eagerly awaits her weekly copy of The Nation.

Yes, I'm not much for the Christian Right. Check out the books Revolt in 2100 by Robert A Heinlein, or The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood to get an idea of where this county is headed.

It's their hypocricy and self-delusion that pisses me off. They honestly believe they are the good guys as they fuck up our world.

 

[Guest]

GoneOffShore:
Yes, I read that article in The Nation. As I have mentioned on this website before, my wife is a fanatical acquirer of information. She eagerly awaits her weekly copy of The Nation.

Yes, I'm not much for the Christian Right. Check out the books Revolt in 2100 by Robert A Heinlein, or The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood to get an idea of where this county is headed.

It's their hypocricy and self-delusion that pisses me off. They honestly believe they are the good guys as they fuck up our world.

Check.

 

[Kassiana]

I refer to them as the "Christian Wrong," myself.

Though I disagree with the OP. They're just as much Christians as anyone else. They just pick and choose different verses in the Bible to follow. There are plenty of Bible passages which support slaying all of your enemies (check the OT sometime...kill all that breathes is supposedly one command of "God").

I'd prefer it if there were no Christians like those, but they exist and they're Christians.

 

[rgraham666]

Maybe it ain't religious, but a piece of Jesus Christ, Superstar comes to mind.

Neither you Simon,
nor the fifty thousand.
Nor the Romans,
nor the Jews.
Nor Judas,
nor the Twelve,
nor the priests,
nor the scribes.
Nor doomed Jerusalem itself.

Understand what power is.
Understand what glory is.
Understand at all.
Understand at all.

If you knew all that I knew,
My poor Jerusalem.
You'd see the truth,
but you close your eyes,
but you close your eyes.

While you live your troubles are many,
My poor Jerusalem.
To conquer death
you only have to die,
You only have to die.

 

[Guest]

Maybe it ain't religious, but a piece of Jesus Christ, Superstar comes to mind.

Grave, where is thy victory - Bible

 

[shereads]

For more on Pharasees read "Homegrown Democrat" by G. Keillor

Bullet, I'm tempted to send this to my brother-in-law who became a radical right-wing Republican the day he won a lawsuit and became rich. His religious faith sprang up after they moved into a gated golf community. In the Bible Belt, attending the right church is essential to networking as business lunches and client golf.

The most vile offense to a Democrat is to include her on the reply-all list for Republican neocon e-mail chains. Those are a revelation. (If you want it to stop, just threaten to reply-all with Keillor's chapter about Pharisee Prayer. It will stop.) No matter how disastrous the news of the moment, whether we're bombing, being bombed, extending new courtesies to Halliburton while they're under investigation for stealing from those troops we support so patriotically, there is never an e-mail chain that doesn't contain at least one story about the Clintons' evil plan to undermine Liberty.

Amicus is not the exception to the rule. My brother-in-law's transformation proves that even a former liberal can establish beliefs like Amicus' almost overnight. A man who once spent summers with the Peace Corp can be capable of dismissing poverty as irrelevent to God and man. He can look you in the eye and say, "George W. Bush is the most honest president ever to hold office," and you'd swear he was quoting scripture.

His religion is something he took up for business and social reasons, but it became more than that. It's a sort of anti-guilt force field, like a drug that puts the conscience in "mute" mode.

I understand and sometimes share the anti-Christian voices, but having grown up among lovely, generous people whose hearts were in the right place if their politics are not, I think the new religioius right is driven less by religion year by year, and more by the right-wing's need to feel righteous. If George W. Bush is a God-fearing Christian, it's because he has a fragment of conscience that would otherwise be too painful to bear right now. We saw it in action during that first, bizarre press conference after the WMD debacle. He was cornered by hard questions, visibly shaken, stammering nonsense, until he brought God into the discussion. He turned his non-answer into a sermon about the will of God and how it can be difficult for some people to understand. You could almost see the guilt fall away. His poor shriviled conscience drew back into his fly, pulled up the zipper, and probably gave him a dreamless sleep that night.

The war in Iraq wasn't his. It was God's.

That makes him dangerous, but it doesn't make him a Christian. I doubt if there are a fraction as many Christians as there are members of Christian churches.

FYI, I'm an agnostic. I admire the concept of Jesus, and think it's unfortunate that there's no license to call oneself a Christian. Jefferson was an athiest who believed in the teachings of Christ but not the divinity of Christ. He was a Christian by the looser definition of his time. These days, the label wouldn't fit him any better than "ultra conservative" would fit Nixon anymore.

I don't know if Jesus was one person or an idea that needed an identity, but without divinity as an issue, it doesn't matter. The Biblical Christ was a remarkably brave attempt to reverse some of the damage done by the Old Testament.

It can't be easy for believers to defend both testaments equally when one condones spite killings and the other stresses the value of mercy. No wonder Christians are angry these days. They were already cornered into holding contradictory beliefs from the old and new testaments. But with the right wing now busily rebranding Jesus of the Beatitudes as sword-wielding Warrior Jesus, Christians who would like to hold to Christ's teachings aren't very popular. I'm certain they don't get invited to my brother-in-law's golf club.

 

[Guest]

FYI, I'm an agnostic. I admire the concept of Jesus, and think it's unfortunate that there's no license to call oneself a Christian. Jefferson was an athiest who believed in the teachings of Christ but not the divinity of Christ. He was a Christian by the looser definition of his time. These days, the label wouldn't fit him any better than "ultra conservative" would fit Nixon anymore.

I don't know if Jesus was one person or an idea that needed an identity, but without divinity as an issue, it doesn't matter. The Biblical Christ was a remarkably brave attempt to reverse some of the damage done by the Old Testament.

It can't be easy for believers to defend both testaments equally when one condones spite killings and the other stresses the value of mercy. No wonder Christians are angry these days. They were already cornered into holding contradictory beliefs from the old and new testaments. But with the right wing now busily rebranding Jesus of the Beatitudes as sword-wielding Warrior Jesus, Christians who would like to hold to Christ's teachings aren't very popular. I'm certain they don't get invited to my brother-in-law's golf club.

Who cares. US coal mining industry is having the biggest economic boom, ever!

Fuck emvironment. Dig coal. Burn the planet.

Thank you, Jesus! Thank you, George W!

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

Yeah, pretty much. It is hypocrisy. They are reenacting the pharisees in every way. The pharisees believed that correct ritual and faith alone were what granted you entry. The evangelicals preach the same. The pharisees showed disdain for those not under their fold, did nothing to aid the unfortunate and believed it right that they should suffer. They would cross the street to avoid the lepers and beggars. The evangelicals do the same in hummers and laws. In every form and every way, Evangelical Christianity and its un-Christian branches and relations do not follow the teachings of Christ but are in fact in worship of the Pharisees.

It doesn't matter that in the OT it says kill everyone or that in Paul's letters it preaches hate and casting sin out and doom. What matters is what Christ said, what Christ did, the path of Christ God said one must follow. Only then can one be CHRISTian. Without Christ, one can be an ian. A Pharisian, a Paulian, an Old testamentian perhaps, but never a CHRISTian.

But that doesn't matter. In the greatest evil, that which is named politics, all that matters is the interpretation and the number of people that believe the lie. By winning the rhetoric game where good christian=patriotic=loves the bomb, the impression has been changed. Sure, Christ has been cast aside of his own religion for the mere gain of power-mongers, but to politics it doesn't matter. All politics cares about is the victory and the victory is seized through seizing the good rhetorics and assigning all the bad rhetorics to the other side.

That's why people who believe earnestly in the proliferation of peace are traitors. Why those who aid the poor are stealing your money for handouts. Why those who treasure the constitution are aiding terrorists to defeat freedom. Why those who piss on Christ are Christian. Why those who help topple freedom love it. And why those who would hasten Armageddon merely to see Judgment Day with their own eyes are sane honest Americans.

Welcome to Hell, its name is politics.

 

[rgraham666]

I'm remebering Screwtape Proposes A Toast by C. S. Lewis

Screwtape was a demon. He also appeared in The Scewtape Letters, a journal of letters from a senior to a junior demon on how to properly corrupt human beings.

The toast was to organised religion, which 'has bought more souls to Our Father Below' than anything else in history.

 

[Couture]

I refer to them as the "Christian Wrong," myself.

Though I disagree with the OP. They're just as much Christians as anyone else. They just pick and choose different verses in the Bible to follow. There are plenty of Bible passages which support slaying all of your enemies (check the OT sometime...kill all that breathes is supposedly one command of "God").

I'd prefer it if there were no Christians like those, but they exist and they're Christians.

Following the old testament doesnt' make you a Christian, it makes you a Jew.

 

[rgraham666]

I'm going to disagree with you a bit here, Luc.

Politics is no more evil than any other tool we humans have created. It is in fact, ethic free. Like all tools it can only be used as we direct it.

And that's where the problem is. People who run for office these days generally fall into two categories in my opinion.

Many people who go into politics these days either do so to hold up their egos. These people are dangerous because they have no goal other than their own aggrandisement. They can too easily be bought or swayed.

The other are people like the Shrubbies who have a very definite agenda and they are going to bring it about and all who oppose are not merely wrong but evil. These people are even more dangerous that the first because they cannot be swayed from their goal.

There are a few that run for office intending to serve the public weal. They don't often win. Such people can't speak in sound bites and worse, they would force many people to think about what they believe and why.

Better to vote for a Leader. Then we can get on with our lives and never bother our pretty little heads again with questions of ethics and responsibility.

 

[KarenAM]

Thanks for posting this, Bullet. I'm cautiously hopeful, actually, reading this and similar pieces. Hopeful because I'm seeing more and more Christians trying to reclaim their faith from the hands of its Pharisees before it destroys itself. There needs to be a dialogue within Christianity that folks like me who are outside it cannot bring. Christians need to decide whether they are going to follow Jesus' teachings of humility and love or Constantine's teachings of intolerance, vanity, and violence.

I don't envy Christianity. It has a long, hard road ahead of it. But it's nice to see that some Christians are willing to stand up for Jesus instead of defiling him.

 

[Pure]

Bum Rap

John Dear
//The Pharisees supported the brutal Roman rulers and soldiers, and lived off the comforts of the empire by running an elaborate banking system which charged an exorbitant fee for ordinary people just to worship God in the Temple. Since they taught that God was present only in the Temple, they were able to control the entire population. If anyone opposed their power or violated their law, the Pharisees could kill them on the spot, even in the holy sanctuary.//

Luc said,
The pharisees believed that correct ritual and faith alone were what granted you entry. The evangelicals preach the same. The pharisees showed disdain for those not under their fold, did nothing to aid the unfortunate and believed it right that they should suffer. They would cross the street to avoid the lepers and beggars.

The pharisees are getting a pretty bum rap, here. I don't suppose John D, or Luc have any good, non-biased evidence for their claims.??

As a matter of fact, there are many overlaps of Jesus' and Pharisee teaching, and a couple are indicated in the gospels. {Added: Note in the books below the commonly known point that Paul himself was a Pharisee.}

As to supporting the Romans! There's a ripe one. You have heard of the Catharginians? Is that the path Dear wants? The Jews simply wanted to survive; they mainly acquiesced to oppression, not wishing the alternative. Yes, a certain subgroup got overly chummy (actively collaborationist) with the Romans, but, iirc, it was the Sadducees.

Further, it's clear that both Jesus and Paul preached *against* stirring up the Romans, and there are passages of Paul enjoining one to obey the rulers. Indeed, subsequent Chrisitanity has shown a habit of reaching accomodation with rulers of all kinds (heard of Constantine?), be they in Latin America or Europe.

It's unfortunate that, like the word 'gypsy', and the related word gyp (cheat), the word 'pharisee' is now used as a term for hypocrite. I don't deny there might have been Jewish hypocrites, but Christians aren't exactly free of them either (or Muslims, for that matter).

What's really odd is that the Christian right's [esp. of a few years back] caricature of the Jews is being used here by leftists to whack that right.

I believe the Christian right should be critiqued in its own terms or from an atheist pov, not by using anti Jewish stereotypes with little basis in reality.

PS. I by no means wish to single out Luc, in this thread; he's merely one of several in this thread who are on a bandwagon; he is quoted simply as providing a convenient quote in agreement with Dear. Luc's progressive and humane credentials are not being questioned.

For anyone interested in information about the pharisees, a cursory look at Barnes and Noble yielded the following, a couple of which I can vouch for:
2. Jewish Contemporaries of Jesus: Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes by Gunter Stemberger


3. Flavius Josephus on the Pharisees: A Composition-Critical Study by Steve Mason

4. Paul the Jewish Theologian: A Pharisee among Christians, Jews, and Gentiles by Brad H. Young

5. Pharisees, Scribes and Sadducees in Palestinian Society
by Anthony J. Saldarini, James C. VanderKam (Introduction)

6. Pharisees: Rabbinic Perspectives by Jacob Neusner

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

I'm going to disagree with you a bit here, Luc.

Politics is no more evil than any other tool we humans have created. It is in fact, ethic free. Like all tools it can only be used as we direct it.

And that's where the problem is. People who run for office these days generally fall into two categories in my opinion.

Many people who go into politics these days either do so to hold up their egos. These people are dangerous because they have no goal other than their own aggrandisement. They can too easily be bought or swayed.

The other are people like the Shrubbies who have a very definite agenda and they are going to bring it about and all who oppose are not merely wrong but evil. These people are even more dangerous that the first because they cannot be swayed from their goal.

There are a few that run for office intending to serve the public weal. They don't often win. Such people can't speak in sound bites and worse, they would force many people to think about what they believe and why.

Better to vote for a Leader. Then we can get on with our lives and never bother our pretty little heads again with questions of ethics and responsibility.

I disagree.

Aye, it's a tool so it's not evil in itself, but at the same time, the way we've set up the tool makes its potential for evil greater than its potential for good. Unlike the tool of science, politics currently makes its mark through winning rhetoric wars. This means controlling who gets the good conotations and who gets the bad conotations regardless of reality. Thus, the fact that one party has the buzzword "freedom", "democracy" or "Christianity" matters more in politics than whether said party actually stands for and fights for freedom, democracy, or Christianity.

And since politics is pitted against sociology and other psychological forces, it has become self-preservating by insisting that the buzzword is worth more than the action. That reality can be shaped itself by the buzzword or at least by doing so in the minds of the feeble, it can gain some hollow victory with grave consequences.

Take the political coup on Christianity which has greatly injured everything the religion stood for and the political coups before that which had led to Christianity getting such a bad rep. Also take the defending game that always occurs in two-party systems where defenders of X single issue find themselves defending some Y they find morally reprehensible just because the person is on their party defending their X issue. Look at the supposed Christians trying to defend torture and hoping God doesn't notice and smite them for their sin or the feminists who had to grit their teeth and defend Clinton when he was being a pig.

Politics may be an amoral tool, but its potential for evil has been its most common and persistant use. This is probably because it meshes so perfectly with the natural stupidity of humanity.

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

John Dear
//The Pharisees supported the brutal Roman rulers and soldiers, and lived off the comforts of the empire by running an elaborate banking system which charged an exorbitant fee for ordinary people just to worship God in the Temple. Since they taught that God was present only in the Temple, they were able to control the entire population. If anyone opposed their power or violated their law, the Pharisees could kill them on the spot, even in the holy sanctuary.//

Luc said,
The pharisees believed that correct ritual and faith alone were what granted you entry. The evangelicals preach the same. The pharisees showed disdain for those not under their fold, did nothing to aid the unfortunate and believed it right that they should suffer. They would cross the street to avoid the lepers and beggars.

The pharisees are getting a pretty bum rap, here. I don't suppose John D, or Luc have any good, non-biased evidence for their claims.??

As a matter of fact, there are many overlaps of Jesus' and Pharisee teaching, and a couple are indicated in the gospels.

As to supporting the Romans! There's a ripe one. You have heard of the Catharginians? Is that the path Dear wants? The Jews simply wanted to survive; they mainly acquiesced to oppression, not wishing the alternative. Yes, a certain subgroup got overly chummy (actively collaborationist) with the Romans, but, iirc, it was the Sadducees.

Further, it's clear that both Jesus and Paul preached *against* stirring up the Romans, and there are passages of Paul enjoining one to obey the rulers. Indeed, subsequent Chrisitanity has shown a habit of reaching accomodation with rulers of all kinds (heard of Constantine?), be they in Latin America or Europe.

It's unfortunate that, like the word 'gypsy', and the related word gyp (cheat), the word 'pharisee' is now used as a term for hypocrite. I don't deny there might have been Jewish hypocrites, but Christians aren't exactly free of them either (or Muslims, for that matter).

What's really odd is that the Christian right's [esp. of a few years back] caricature of the Jews is being used here by leftists to whack that right.

I believe the Christian right should be critiqued in its own terms or from an atheist pov, not by using anti Jewish stereotypes with little basis in reality.

Do you consider the Bible non-biased?

Just asking.

The whore who washed Jesus's feet parable is a good pharisee one and there are a smack of others that I'd need to dig out my old Bible to point out the wheres and what nots.

The thing is, Pure the mad, that the pharisees are not translated as "jew". They were a class of people who had controlled the organized religion and had failed in Jesus's eyes to provide the service to humanity that it neccessitated. Jesus's reactions varied with them from pitying to disdainful. Basically, in the Bible, the Pharisees greatest flaw was they believed that they of course would be getting in to Heaven because of ritual and rule-following and Jesus was pointing out that they were hurting themselves spiritually because it was breeding in them arrogance, a disdain for lesser people, in some corruption, and in others a lack of neccessary empathy and good will towards men. These are a hefty sum of the New Testament chapters before the section Paul rants.

Are there overlaps? No shit. Jesus and the Pharisees were both Jews. Yes, that's right, Jesus was a Jew. A special Jew according to the religion that he ended up giving birth to, but nonetheless a Jew. Basically the schism between him and the Pharisees is like the guy above and the Evangelicals. They both believed in God and the truth of the Holy Literature and whatnot, but disagreed on which practice best served God.

Jesus stated kindness, nonviolence, an avoidance of greed, aiding those less fortunate, and etc. The pharisees stated ritual and prayer. In the end, some of the more corrupt of the brood had him taken care of and that's where the Gibson crowd gets the whole "Kill all the Jews" shit out of the tale.

That is basically the New Testament.

So, in conclusion, my proof is the New Testament. Read the parts that are directly attributed to Jesus and especially the sections where he is conversing with or referring to pharisees he met along the way. Since this is a religious discussion whose whole founding is in those very teachings, I'd say this is very much on the Right's own terms.

My point is fairly low-key, the racism is all in your head and in the head of the Gibsonites who wish the term pharisee to mean Jew and for people to believe that Jesus wasn't a Jew himself. In other words, the racism you decry is in someone else's head.

 

[Pure]

Luc said,

Jesus stated kindness, nonviolence, an avoidance of greed, aiding those less fortunate, and etc. The pharisees stated ritual and prayer.

Yeah, right. Jerry Falwell said so.

in the Bible, the Pharisees greatest flaw was they believed that they of course would be getting in to Heaven because of ritual and rule-following and Jesus was pointing out that they were hurting themselves spiritually because it was breeding in them arrogance, a disdain for lesser people, in some corruption, and in others a lack of neccessary empathy and good will towards men. These are a hefty sum of the New Testament chapters before the section Paul rants.

Unfortunately Luc, you have almost zero by way of good evidence for these claims, insofar as they imply claims about what was actually the case in Jesus' time and circumstances. They are simplistic and stereotypical, and not informed by unbiased scholarship, either Jewish or Christian.

Is the NT presented (by you) as an unbiased source Luc? Got any Turkish treatises on the Armenians?

Which of these NT claims do you subscribe to, Luc?
0. Jesus had a very intimate connection with God; was infused with the Holy Spirit.
1.Jesus was born of a virgin.
2.Jesus claimed to be the Son of God.
3.Jesus rose from the dead.
4.Jesus miraculously multiplied loaves and fishes.
5. When Jesus was about to be executed, a crowd of Jews/Pharisees yelled, "His blood be on us and our children."

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

Luc said,

Jesus stated kindness, nonviolence, an avoidance of greed, aiding those less fortunate, and etc. The pharisees stated ritual and prayer.

Yeah, right. Jerry Falwell said so.

Is the NT presented (by you) as an unbiased source Luc? Got any Turkish treatises on the Armenians?

Which of these NT claims do you subscribe to, Luc?
0. Jesus had a very intimate connection with God; was infused with the Holy Spirit.
1.Jesus was born of a virgin.
2.Jesus claimed to be the Son of God.
3.Jesus rose from the dead.
4.Jesus miraculously multiplied loaves and fishes.

Personally? None. I'm very very far from Christian.

I did learn a shitload about it as part of an unspoken deal with my friends. The whole learning their religion so I could converse with them on it and bond better shit. Plus, it helped me understand the conversations around me a bit better.

Is my interpretation unbiased? I based it heavily on the phrases that Jesus himself spoke instead of the random rantings of X apostle. But if you disagree feel free to pick up a Bible, read the sections Jesus himself spoke and make your own interpretation on what Christianity was supposed to have been.

And Jerry Falwell is a fucking doomsday cultist psycho. I think it's a requirement to be a Televangelist.

 

[Pure]

Luc, please be consistent:

You claim that you find all of these statements to be without foundation:

0. Jesus had a very intimate connection with God; was infused with the Holy Spirit.
1.Jesus was born of a virgin.
2.Jesus claimed to be the Son of God.
3.Jesus rose from the dead.
4.Jesus miraculously multiplied loaves and fishes.

Yet you want us to believe certain statements attributed to Jesus about the pharisees?

Except for 1., Jesus made statements, according to the NT, about all the other points. These you dismiss as concocted, it appears. A narrator makes statements about 1. and 4.

So we get to two crucial statements by a narrator in the NT, that a crowd of Jews
5A) called for Barabbas release, and
5B) said, 'his blood be on us and our children.'

Do you accept the NT as a support for 5A) and 5B) as true?

Admittedly , these are not words of Jesus, but the accounts of miracles are by a narrator also, and you'd dismiss the narrator as unreliable in those cases, it appears. IF A and B really happened (according to you) it's pretty weird that you (for reasons you might explain) suddenly trust the narrator.

Incidentally I don't think you're a racist or of other than fine character, and among the principled leftists on this forum. I'm simply suggesting that you have uncritically accepted certain NT accounts.

Best,

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

Luc, please be consistent:

You claim that you find all of these statements to be without foundation:

0. Jesus had a very intimate connection with God; was infused with the Holy Spirit.
1.Jesus was born of a virgin.
2.Jesus claimed to be the Son of God.
3.Jesus rose from the dead.
4.Jesus miraculously multiplied loaves and fishes.

Yet you want us to believe certain statements attributed to Jesus about the pharisees?

Except for 1., Jesus made statements, according to the NT, about all the other points. These you dismiss as concocted, it appears. A narrator makes statements about 1. and 4.

So we get to two crucial statements by a narrator in the NT, that a crowd of Jews
5A) called for Barabbas release, and
5B) said, 'his blood be on us and our children.'

Do you accept the NT as a support for 5A) and 5B) as true?

Admittedly , these are not words of Jesus, but the accounts of miracles are by a narrator also, and you'd dismiss the narrator as unreliable in those cases, it appears. IF A and B really happened (according to you) it's pretty weird that you (for reasons you might explain) suddenly trust the narrator.

Incidentally I don't think you're a racist or of other than fine character, and among the principled leftists on this forum. I'm simply suggesting that you have uncritically accepted certain NT accounts.

Best,

*Ahem* You asked which of said points I personally ascribe to. I don't ascribe to any of the stated beliefs because I'm not Christian. Fact of life.

Speaking on behalf of Christianity, I would state that the most weight should be placed on statements of Christ rather than things the apostle narrators found interesting or epiphanies they had. If a religion is supposedly based on one man and his teachings. Shouldn't what he taught be the central and most dominant trait of said religion? That's the way I see it at least.

Again, let me state that I have uncritically accepted nothing of it. I'm not Christian. This is merely what I found to be the true heart of the religion when I looked at it.

 

[Pure]

Luc said,

Jesus stated kindness, nonviolence, an avoidance of greed, aiding those less fortunate, and etc. The pharisees stated ritual and prayer

Just so's you don't feel I simply criticized your position, my own is that there was no significant difference between Jesus and the well known pharisee teachers (rabbis), as regards the teaching of kindness, avoidance of greed, and aiding the less fortunate. Nor as regards the importance of actually practicing these virtues. Nor as regards prayer in respect of being important in showing devotion to God.

As far as I can see in much reading, the difference simply lay in Jesus' teaching of non-resistance to evil. 'Turning the other cheek' *taken to an extreme.* {Not always responding to petty injuries with retaliation was a well known Jewish ideal.} A teaching of non-violence, even in response to violence was likely the main difference (except that possibly Jesus wished there to be fewer or no grounds for divorce). That, to use your term, is the 'true heart' of Christianity; where you are not well informed is about the 'true heart' of the Jewish teachers of Jesus' time.

Ironically, at least 90% of self labeled Christians disagree with what I'm saying is Jesus' distinctive teaching. (And probably you do, too.)

That is my opinion. Almost all the 'hypocritical pharisee' stuff of the gospels is pure propaganda.

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

Do you consider the Bible non-biased?

Almost all the 'hypocritical pharisee' stuff of the gospels is pure propaganda.

You know, we could have finished this conversation a hell of a lot earlier.

Allow me to present the following correlaries and caveats to my statements:

1) All material on Chrisitianity is based on the characters depicted in the Bible and the lessons they imparted, most importantly the character of Jesus who is the most key figure in said text. Thus, one who is Christian should strive to fulfill the example of the Jesus character instead of the Pharisees characters. This also means that when referring to said figures in a religious context, I am in truth referring to their characters
2) Above caveat is intended for Pure. Please don't send me annoying messages of how I'm bashing Christianity by using the label character for clarification.