A friend of mine asked a number of his friends what pisses them off about Christianity in the key of USA and so here is what I wrote.
What pisses me off…The people of the cross-bearer have become the most efficient cross-builders in human history. This is done through the demonic mixture of nationalism, fear-mongering, militarism, consumerism, and theo-capitalism. The ignorance of the church in American is preserved by its baptism of a mythic view of reality, with reigning myths like ‘just war,’ the chosen nation, christian nation, innocent nation, and the coming millennial nation. Some how the teachings of Jesus (like the Sermon on the Mount) have become idealistic babble, the confession of faith (‘Jesus is Lord’) is heard as a requirement for running for president and not challenging the reigning Caesar-like structures of our world, and the resurrection of the crucified one is turned into a commodity the church possesses and lord’s over everyone else and not the single most important event in cosmic history where God’s coming upside-down Reign is placed permanently on the horizon of history. With this said, I think it is the American church’s use of the faith in its colonizing of the globe, truth, and power and its perverting of the gospel into a palatable culture\power dominate civil religion that stands as the source of our problem. The Barmen declaration was a Christian theological statement because it could not exist without shaping the community.
Now I need to go watch my Romero dvd or listen to some Rage Against the Machine….I love the church by the way, so don’t get ill if you don’t loose sleep over these issues.
