Where in America Does This Jesus Dwell?

Rick Mercier writes:

WAS JESUS a big winner in the last election? You'd sure think so. If the pundits and Religious Right zealots are correct, the Son of God scored a knockout victory on Nov. 2.
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All this hype about the God talk swirling around in our culture prompted me to do a little research (a big departure from how I usually prepare for writing a column). I cracked open my Bible and started rereading the Gospels.
And you know what? I can't see what all this sanctimonious values rhetoric has to do with Jesus. I've compared what I read in Gospels with what I've been hearing from the Religious Right, and I've concluded that the holier-than-thous must have traded in their red-letter editions of the Good Book for red-state versions that omit most of Jesus' teachings.
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The truth is, if you depend on the Christian right for your theological sustenance, you probably won't recognize the Jesus of the Gospels.
Jesus was quite a troublemaker. In fact, I'm thinking the Bush administration would have a special place for Jesus were the swarthy Nazarene to take up his ministry today in the U.S. of A.--in a cell with other Middle Eastern men awaiting deportation.
Let's recall what the Jesus of the Gospels espoused. "When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you," the sandal-wearing rabble-rouser was known to say.
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Jesus told the ruler: "There is still one thing lacking. Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me."
When the ruler started looking glum, Jesus responded with his famous kicker: "How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."
Holy class warfare! No wonder Republicans have switched out the Jesus of the Gospels for a low-rent moralizer preoccupied with what other people are doing with their bodies.
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If you're a thoughtful, independent-minded person, I'll bet you read the Gospels and wonder: Where in America does this Jesus dwell?
Where in America is the Jesus who sides with the poor and the outcasts? Where in America is the Jesus who disdains those who wear their piousness on their sleeves? Where in America is the the Jesus with the prophetic voice, the radical who dares to tell the powerful what they don't want to hear?
Is he in the pews that fill every Sunday morning with the smug and complacent? Is he in a political party that fights for tax cuts for the rich while neglecting the needs of decent, hard-working Americans? Is he among the "God-and-country" demagogues who push an idolatrous nationalism and who see military service as the supreme form of sacrifice?
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In the spiritual vacuum that exists in this country, the Christian right is well-positioned to argue that its menagerie of fears and chauvinisms--piled into a box labeled "moral values"--constitutes a serious moral narrative. It doesn't, but the Religious Right's contribution to the denigration of Christianity will continue unabated until other Christian communities come up with a compelling alternative.
The trouble is, our society seems to lack the kind of exemplars who could build that alternative. What we need are the spiritual descendants of Martin Luther King Jr. and Dorothy Day, people who are willing to endure the enmity and scorn of the political establishment and mainstream culture.
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Maybe those people are out there, but I don't see them. That's why I'm not optimistic about the survival of the Christian tradition in our culture. What many view as a great spiritual revival looks a lot to me like another stage of rot in American Christianity's corpse.
Can the cadaver rise up? It doesn't seem hopeful. In contemporary America, the Jewish Palestinian whom many call their messiah has become just another Middle Easterner to be ignored or reviled.