Jesus. H. Christ.  

To coin a phrase. 

 Where the hell is my church? Why is it letting right-wing radicals hi-jack Christianity? Christianity, whose only truly salient message is “Love one another.” 

 These days, increasingly, Christianity is instead a branding instrument being used as a cudgel to conform to the tenets of power-at-all-cost, to hate, to comply with some kind of state religion imposed by no one’s God or Allah or Mohammed or Krishna, but by craven politicians. And they don’t want your souls (I tend to believe they’re soul-less at heart); they only want your votes. 

 Just like they don’t want your babies; they want control over your bodies. They don’t want you to earn a living wage; they just want you to think someone of a different race, ethnicity, religion, gender or station is taking it away from you. They don’t want you healthy; they just want your belief that Covid is a political rather than a medical issue. They don’t want you to be free — to speak, to gather, to vote, to disagree, to practice your religion; they only want to be free to tell you what you can and cannot do. 

 They’ve even corrupted the word, the very idea of “fear,” as in Biblical mandates to “Fear God,” using fear of many, many things — people, ideas, beliefs, progress — to control and motivate their ever-more-paranoid supporters. In contrast, just to be clear, Biblical scholars and theologians say that to “fear” God, is to to love, honor and respect God, with awe and with reverence. It has never been about cowardice, hate and anger. 

 So we know what the right wing radicals and their cronies in the so-called religious right are doing. But what are churches doing to repudiate this vile corruption of their own Christian values? Why such silence in the face of Hate supplanting Love? Why no messages distinguishing between evangelism (I'd like to share my faith with you) and the unconstitutional establishment of a state religion? Where are the Christian spiritual leaders? Why aren’t they denouncing their “brothers and sisters” who worship false idols? Why aren’t they pushing back — rigorously and relentlessly — on the radical right’s perversions of their/our faith? Seems to me they should be shouting from the rafters (OK, preaching, and even marketing the message) that their God/our God would not abide such cruelty, violence, deception, immorality, injustice, indecency, mendacity, hate, abuse of power or intolerance. We need — or at least I need — a stronger, more faithful response, one that merits an “Amen!”