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The Dominionist Christ Isn't the Christ We Know
The New Testament Christ has for 2000 years been defined in mainstream Christian churches by his doctrines of forgiveness, tolerance, and brotherhood. That is the Christ we know, the Christ we have always known. It is NOT the Christ of the fundamentalists. The fundamentalist Christ has been re-imagined and re-defined through the prism of the Old Testament. He is a Fire-God of anger and revenge, the opposite of everything we used to think Christ stood for. He has little time for the poor, tolerates only the narrowest possible definition of 'Christian', seethes with righteous hatred of outsiders, is intolerant of those with different views, and despises wimps--he will come the next time clutching a sword in one hand and a .45 caliber automatic in the other. The fundamentalist Christ is essentially built from an Old Testament perspective. He is everything the Christ we know originally came to overturn. He is the vengeful son of a vengeful god, and he demands obedience to his strict regimen with eternal punishment the price for disbelief. He is a muscular Christ, not that weak-kneed, lily-livered liberal icon from the old mainstream. This is not a Christ who would ever turn the other cheek. It is a Christ who would throw the one who slapped him to a pack of ravenous wolves and consider it a righteous act. It's hard to overstate the enormous gulf between the centrist Christ and the fundamentalist Christ (what I call the 'NT Christ' and the 'OT Christ'). They have virtually nothing in common. They are, in fact, each other's polar opposite. If you look at the Christ depicted in the Left Behind series, you'll get a pretty good idea just how severe the difference is. The fundamentalists' version of Christ is a natural result of their orientation toward the Old Testament. They quote OT passages with relish and largely ignore the NT altogether. When they do quote the NT, they re-define the meaning of whatever passage they're quoting with OT verbiage--what used to be called 'fire and brimstone'. In other words, they 'spin' it so it's in line with OT revenge values rather than NT forgiveness. None of this means I'm against Johnson's suggestion that 'perhaps we can find and use Christ's words as a way to reduce the level of anger and hate, and find a peaceful common ground.' On the contrary, I think that may be the best possible approach to try. But it won't be easy. We'd be going up against a simple, powerful icon that can be described and defined by comic book images with a complicated message that's a lot more nuanced and harder to explain than a tv sit-com. You can't get the full import of Christ's message in 22 minutes plus commercials. We would also, like Christ himself, be going up against the Old Testament, and that's not a project to be taken lightly.
The Dominionist Christ Isn't the Christ We Know | 4 comments (4 topical, 0 hidden)
The Dominionist Christ Isn't the Christ We Know | 4 comments (4 topical, 0 hidden)
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