Posted by:
Human
(
)
Date: April 03, 2021 08:14AM
From the article:
“No, the difference 40 years ago wasn’t the fact of faith in politics, but the substance of it. We went from “feed my sheep” to cutbacks in school lunch programs. From “love ye one another” to ignoring AIDS because it was “only” killing gays. From “woe unto you who are rich” to tax cuts for the wealthy and trickle-down leftovers for everyone else. From compassion for “the least of these” to condemnation of mythical welfare queens and other lazy and undeserving poor.
“It was a faith less of joy than of perpetual outrage, less of hope than of abiding fear. Which means that ultimately, it was not faith at all, only the degradation thereof...
“And really, if you were a person seeking God, seeking the comfort of faith, the solace and sustenance of faith, would you be drawn to that? Fat chance.”
Fat chance, indeed.
If these churches still preached “feed my sheep”, “love one another”, “woe unto the rich”, and care for “the least of these”, then not only could the 87 percent of us who still profess belief in God remain in the churches, but even those who don’t believe but do believe in the message could belong to a church community.
Chris Hedges documents the GOPizing of the churches very well here:
https://www.alternet.org/2007/02/the_rise_of_christian_fascism_and_its_threat_to_american_democracy/His book on this from 2008:
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/American-Fascists/Chris-Hedges/9780743284462