Christianity in America

Many people will wonder how I as a person with high moral values and a conservative bent can have such a strong dislike for Christianity. I suppose it is my experiences with the current American variety of Christianity which appears to be a shallow mockery of historical Christianity and Christian belief.

The most irritating thing about modern American Christianity is the failure of Christians to follow the most tenet of their faith, The Golden Rule; “Treat others as you would have others treat you.” What is so hard about that? I’m not a Christian and I try to live by it.

Every time I encounter one a particularly vile corporate American pest such as the back stabbing practitioner of office politics or the petty minded bureaucrat who mindlessly enforces corporate regulations regardless of their effect on others I find them to be a Christian. The most insensitive and cruel persons invariably have Bible quotes on their walls and Bibles on their desks. I once had the experience of being fired from a job and escorted out of the building for no reason by a particularly loutish corporate apparatchik who had the nerve to lecture me about his faith.

Beyond the failure to treat their fellow human beings decently, which is supposed to be a tenet of their faith; is the lack of humility of today’s Christians. Every time we turn on the TV it seems we get treated to another example of this noxious Christian arrogance.

A particularly odious example of this is California preacher and Vietnam War era draft dodger Rick Warren who has the arrogance to vet presidential candidates about values and civic duty. Another is Fox News mouthpiece Britt Hume who used Tiger Woods travails to rant and rave about the superiority of Christianity over Buddhism (Yes folks Tiger is a Buddhist). Hume had the arrogance to think that Tiger wouldn’t have cheated on his wife if he had just read the Bible and went to church. There are I suppose millions of women who married and divorced “good Christian men” who can disprove Mr. Hume’s idiotic theory.

Now the lack of rudimentary Christian behavior on the part of self proclaimed Christians is to be expected. The vast majority of Christians I encounter seem to have no knowledge of Christian theology, history or even many basic Christian concepts. Most of them claim to have read the Bible but that’s about it.

In particular the lack of knowledge of Christian history on the part of anyone besides a few Catholics is quite distressing. The imbecilic and poorly written “Left Behind” novels are a perfect example of Christian ignorance. They are simply a repackaging of End Time dogma that prophets and preachers have been spewing out for 2,000 years. Any one with any knowledge of basic Christian history or theology can poke the theories presented in them full of holes.

Rick Warren is another example of Christian ignorance. His service doctrine is simply the progressive Christianity of the late 19^th and early 20^th Centuries repackaged. This drivel gave us such wonderful things as Prohibition, the income tax, segregation, the draft and World War I. His attempts to reestablish missionary outreach to the poor heathen in Africa (where most people are now Christians) show us how ignorant the man is of the rest of the world and our own history. I wonder will Rick Warren be there when the missionaries he sends out get lynched by a mob of the natives (probably stirred up and led by a Bible thumping preacher) they are trying to “help.” One can only hope God is that just.

Finally, there is the failure to understand the importance of the separation of church and state. The Founding Fathers (some of whom were devout Christians) wisely sought to keep religion out of the public sphere and avoid the catastrophic religious wars that had devastated Europe. Today both Left Wing and Right Wing Christians seem to be eager to tear down the barrier that protects the state from the church and just as importantly the church from the state. Obviously these people forget about “Render onto Caesar that which is Caesar’s.”

School prayer, faith based initiatives, the peace movement, etc are all efforts to get the state into the church. The faith based initiative is particularly loathsome because it is a blatant grab for tax money by self proclaimed Christians. Since all of these efforts seem to be bent on creating a theocracy it seems quite certain that those behind them are ignorant of history.

Every theocracy in history whether Christian, Islamic, Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, Hindu or Marxist has ended in corruption and oppression. Indeed the most corrupt regimes in history such as the Arab Caliphate, the Byzantine Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Renaissance Papacy, the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, Communist China and Pol Pot’s Cambodia were theocracies. The believers’ efforts to create heaven on Earth invariably ended in corruption, war and oppression.

So it’s obvious that, unlike the Founding Fathers, most of today’s Christians haven’t read their history or worse read it very selectively. This makes me wonder if these people really are Christians. Their faith is nothing like historical Christianity such as that of the Founders.

Perhaps today’s Christians should follow one of Jesus’ most important teachings: “Remove the log from your eye before criticizing others.” I suppose that’s too much to ask because it would require the basic Christian value of humility.

Manhood Under Assault

It’s a difficult time to be heterosexual male in America because present day American society has only one role for heterosexual male: ignorant lout.

The present American orthodoxy teaches that a man must be a rude, crude, ignorant, beer swelling, sports watching brute who makes Fred Flintstone seem civilized in comparison in order to be heterosexual. If a man is educated, polite, well-groomed, honest, honorable, decent and well read; in short civilized, he must be gay.

This horrible stereotype is reinforced everywhere in our society on TV sitcoms where all the average American males are shown as ignorant, beer guzzling sports addicts. In movies where all the American heroes are shown as vicious, nasty, rude, ignorant brutes and the villains as well mannered and well groomed. And most graphically this stereotype is shown on the reality TV hit, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy where the only way average men can learn how to be civilized is to imitate gays.

The results of this horrendous message can be seen all over America today men increasingly act in a rude and crude away. The grandsons of the men who wore full suits to the movies wear t-shirts and blue jeans to weddings. Sexual assault and abuse of women is rampant. Average middle class men go to sports bars and strip joints where women are treated as nothing but sex objects. Movies and other entertainments are increasingly rude and crude. Foul language that was once only heard from the mouths of sailors is now heard on the streets everyday.

The ideal of American manhood is now the ignorant lout, the ideal of the great American gentleman is dead killed by homophobia and a vicious stereotype. Men are afraid to act civilized, to be polite, read, learn, dance, dress well and groom themselves because they are afraid to be branded gay.

Every day experts tell us that young men are performing worse academically and fewer and fewer boys are succeeding in our schools. Some of them even predict that in a generation or two there will be a shortage of men in our colleges. The reason is obvious: boys don’t want to be seen learning because they’re afraid that they’ll be branded gay.

Vast numbers of American women remain single because they can’t find a man with an acceptable standard of behavior. In other words they want a real man who is also a gentleman and can’t find one except in old movies.

In society at large men are afraid to be polite, read books in public, eat at good restaurants and go to the theater or any movie that doesn’t involve explosions or potty humor because they’re afraid of being branded gay. Our society is becoming less educated and less civilized all the time because of this stereotype.

Under present day American standards such he men as George Washington, Robert E. Lee, George S. Patton, Ernest Hemingway, John F. Kennedy and Clark Gable would have been branded gay. After all Washington and Lee were educated gentlemen, Kennedy and Gable were snappy dressers and Patton and Hemingway both read poetry (Patton, about the toughest general our army ever had even wrote poetry). Of course those men didn’t have to worry about being branded gay if they were seen reading a book or heard quoting poetry in public. Gable didn’t have to worry about being branded gay because he was wearing a nice suit with a matching tie. Nor did JFK ever have to worry about loosing any votes because he wore nice suits on the campaign trail.

It is time for the heterosexual men of American who don’t want to be forced to choose between acting like a barbaric boob or being branded gay to rise up and say enough is enough. It is time to show the people of this nation that a man can be civilized without being gay. For if we don’t it will be impossible to live a civilized existence in an America with only two kinds of me