If you want your ass handed to you, trying writing or commenting in the blogs as if you know what you're talking about when, in fact, you don't. Blithely assume no one will really know everything about an arcane subject and get ready to be horrified as real experts show up and shred your inaccurate thinking and assumptions to bits.
Another way to get bludgeoned is by generalizing groups of humans into convenient labeled slots, always an extremely foolish thing to do, but always tempting. Nevertheless I'm going to break both of those rules with the following thesis:
Christ has been betrayed in the United States by "Christians" who have completely lost their way, they have not a clue as to the central teachings of Christ. The United States is not a Christian country.
To immediately assay any instant assumptions here, this is not a persecution of Christianity, religion, religious persons, spirituality, or
any personal or institutional religious element found in the United States. I like Christians, I go to church, I'm close to my priest, and I think all major religions practiced as they could be to be a good thing for society. Even now with all their failings organized religion does an enormous amount of good every day.
It is true I don't know the bible for jack and that listening to sermons for ten years only leaves me confused. Still, I'm fairly sure I know enough about Christ to speak with confidence, for his message was extremely simple and repeated many, many times in the gospels. It's not ambiguous in any sense, it's a crystal clear as crystal can be:
Love god will all your soul and your might. Love your neighbor as yourself. [I may not have it precisely right but I don't have a bible and Jesus doesn't care, anyway.]
The Big Two. That's Christianity. Sure I'm confident about this, but I've got excellent sources, too.
Trying to empirically measure the "Christworthiness" of a person as to how much they love god (with all your soul? really?) is futile. But I do think it's possible to make judgments on the validity of Christian influence on the second dictum of the Big Two.
If you think blowing up Iraqi kids is okay to keep the peace, you are not a Christian.
If you keep silent as the House cuts food stamps and taxes for the rich, you are not a Christian.
If you vote for greedy corporatists who despoil and rape our planet, you are not a Christian.
I could go on for much longer than this--fundamentally, the teachings of Christ have had no empirical effect on the behavior of the United States. Here's Jimmy Carter on the subject:
""When I was younger, almost all Baptists were strongly committed on a theological basis to the separation of church and state. It was only 25 years ago when there began to be a melding of the Republican Party with fundamentalist Christianity, particularly with the Southern Baptist Convention. This is a fairly new development, and I think it was brought about by the abandonment of some of the basic principles of Christianity. First of all, we worship the prince of peace, not war. And those of us who have advocated for the resolution of international conflict in a peaceful fashion are looked upon as being unpatriotic, branded that way by right-wing religious groups, the Bush administration, and other Republicans."
"Secondly, Christ was committed to compassion for the most destitute, poor, needy, and forgotten people in our society. Today there is a stark difference [between conservative ideology and Christian teaching] because most of the people most strongly committed to the Republican philosophy have adopted the proposition that help for the rich is the best way to help even poor people (by letting some of the financial benefits drip down to those most deeply in need). I would say there has been a schism drawn -- on theology and practical politics and economics between the two groups."
Bill McKibben in a great article from Harper's, The Christian Paradox:
"But is it Christian? This is not a matter of angels dancing on the heads of pins. Christ was pretty specific about what he had in mind for his followers. What if we chose some simple criterion--say, giving aid to the poorest people--as a reasonable proxy for Christian behavior? After all, in the days before his crucifixion, when Jesus summed up his message for his disciples, he said the way you could tell the righteous from the damned was by whether they'd fed the hungry, slaked the thirsty, clothed the naked, welcomed the stranger, and visited the prisoner."
Again, this is no way a persecution of anyone or any group. Christ was a screaming radical who proposed extremely difficult actions; it doesn't surprise me that so many of us fail. I fail all the time at the Big Two, it seems impossible to do.
But I do loathe lying, dishonesty and denial and a virulence many might find surprising. It galls me to no end so many smugly proclaim this to be a Christian country, it's just assumed to be this overwhelming fact, when it's not even close. Perhaps if we stopped lying to ourselves there would be hope for a much more closer adherence to the best of who Jesus really is.
I was hurt very much last year when my church would not persecute Bush for the war. Hell, my church leadership doesn't even call other fake and insincere "Christian" churches on their incredibly destructive and non-Christian behavior. It's a humility and community thing, there are real spiritual reasons they don't do it. Drives me up the wall sometimes.
But there are good reasons to proclaim the truth, too, no matter how uncomfortable it is. So I'll do it here: the United States is not a Christian country.