Crap Christianity is out there, it's evil, and I worry about "good" Christians who don't seem to notice

TARA: So all the people who thought he could talk to their loved ones on the other side, what's to stop them from falling for the next Dalton Rand?
NATE [after thinking a moment]: Not a thing.

-- from last week's episode of Leverage, after

Nate's gang has successfully exposed a fake psychic

by Ken

This is what comes of not keeping up to date on your TV-watching. Over the weekend I finally caught up with last week's episode of Leverage (i.e., not from this past Wednesday but from the week before), a show we talked about just recently, and out pops this nugget on the ceaselessly predictable gullibility of a chunk of the public. This might have come in handy the other day when I was replying to a commenter who had, I think, misread what I wrote on a favorite subject of mine, Crap Christianity.

Here's what commenter Mikbee42 wrote:

" aided and exhorted by the colluded forces of darkness around them, starting with the fortresses of mind-controlling Crap Christianity."

wtf ken?
how about starting with the mind controlling israeli-jewish crap media, wall street and zionist politicians a la lieberman.
the real cult of ignorance.
your bigoted blanket statement about "Christianity" is not what i expected from you or dwt.
lets keep it fair and balanced!

And here's what I replied:

Sorry I was unclear, Mikbee42, but I didn't make a "blanket statement about Christianity," bigoted or otherwise. I referred specifically to Crap Christianity, which I've written about here frequently: It's the virulent, exploding version, generally but not exclusively evangelical, that has infested the U.S. in, say, the last 50 years.

If this is the first time you're encountering my reference to Crap Christianity, I can see where you might not have gotten my meaning. Still, it seems to me quite a jump to reading that as a statement that Crap Christianity = Christianity. That's not only not what I meant but not, I'm pretty sure, what I wrote -- though again I can appreciate the possibility of confusion.

(There is, of course, the larger subject of the stupendous historical wreckage wrought proudly in the name of mainstream Christianity -- and of course by most religions that have had the opportunity. But that's a subject for another time.)

I don't think anyone could complain that DWT devotes too little attention to crap media or to crappy Joe LIeberman. However, I guess it would be my opinion that neither of these has had anything like the effect of the organizers of Crap Christianity in turning some 40 percent of the population into ungoverning and ungovernable mental zombies.

I don't know that anyone particularly cares about my views on religion, but in the interest of clarity, I don't believe it's inherently good or bad. Like most creations of humans, it's both -- it reflects pretty much the exact spread of motivations and behaviors, from the best to the worst, that we find in most human endeavors and activities. Religion can be used in the service of moral and humane ends, and it can be used to justify and promote the worst impulses of mankind.

By Crap Christianity what I mean, in case it isn't obvious, is basically the Christian Right, in which small groups of people seek to control the thinking and behavior of (they hope) much larger groups of people, in the interest of the controlling group's egos or thirst for power or greed for wealth. It is fundamentally an authoritarian system, and in all its facets it's about control.

Here's how I put it in what was basically a music post last September, "Bach's faith rouses devotion, not ennui (or ridicule), in this nonbeliever -- his Jesus isn't the Right's 'macho Jesus'":

Bach's belief in Jesus as a representation of the best in us, the fullest and most meaningful humanity of which we are capable, the Prince of Peace, doesn't require much of a stretch for me. In fact, that belief, not to mention the actual teachings of Jesus, is what makes me crazy in the incessant braying of modern-day crap Christianity. Longtime DWT readers have heard both Howie and me sound this theme frequently. The ignorant, lying, bellicose, immoral crap Christians not only seem blitheringly unaware of what Jesus actually preached, but represent something very close to the forces of oppression and inhumanity that were Jesus's lifelong antagonists.

By coincidence (or is it coincidence?), in the Introduction to Max Blumenthal's book Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party, I just encountered this remarkable description of the "macho Jesus" central to "the authoritarian mindset driving the movement that has substantially taken over the modern Republican Party: the Christian Right," as he experienced it personally in five years of interviewing hundreds of its leaders, attending dozens of rallies and conferences, listening to "countless hours" of radio broadcasts, and sitting "in movement-oriented houses of worship where no journalists were permitted."

As I explored the contours of the movement, I discovered a culture of personal crisis lurking behind the histrionics and expressions of social resentment. This culture is the mortar that bonds leaders and followers together. . . .

The movement's Jesus is the opposite of the prince of peace. He is a stern, overtly masculine patriarch charging into the fray with his sword raised against secular foes; he is "the head of a dreadful company, mounted on a horse, with a double-edged sword, his robe dipped in blood," according to movement propagandist Steve Arterburn. Mark Driscoll, a pastor who operates an alternative Christian rock venue from his church, stirs the souls of twenty-something evangelical males with visions of "Ultimate Fighting Jesus." This same musclebound god-man starred in Mel Gibson's blood-drenched The Passion of the Christ, enduring bone-crushing punishment at the hands of Jews and pagans for two hours of unrelieved pornographic masochism.

A portrait of virility and violence, the movement's omnipotent macho Jesus represents the mirror inversion of the weak men who necessitated his creation. As [psychologist Erich] Fromm explained, "the lust for power is not rooted in strength but in weakness [italics in original]. It is the expression of the individual self to stand alone and live. It is the desperate attempt to gain secondary strength where genuine strength is lacking."

No indeed, Bach's Jesus has nothing in common with this macho Jesus. And I imagine Bach's deep Christian faith must be an irrelevance if not an outright outrage to the crap Christian worshippers of macho Jesus. Indeed, having come this far with Max, we need to continue on at least one more paragraph:

The movement's macho Jesus provided purpose to Tom DeLay, a dallying, alcoholic Texas legislator transformed through evangelical religion from "Hot Tub Tommy" into a dictatorial House majority leader known as "The Hammer." Macho Jesus was the god of Ted Haggard, a closet homosexual born-again and charismatic megachurch leader, risen to head of the National Association of Evangelicals, preaching the gospel of spiritual warfare and anti-gay crusades. And he was the god of Howard F. Ahmanson Jr., an eccentric millionaire whose inheritance of massive wealth literally drove him mad, prompting his institutionalization, who found relief as one of the far right's most reliable financial angels. Macho Jesus even transformed the serial killer Ted Bundy, murderer and rapist of dozens of women, who became a poster child for anti-pornography activists with his nationally televised death row confessional. . . .

Although we now have a number of excellent books exploring the seamy world of Crap Christianity, Republican Gomorrah remains an excellent basic source, with its frighteningly consistent accounts of the twisted histories of the men (yes, they're all men) who made Crap Christianity such a commanding force in American politics. Not surprisingly, Howie has also devoted quite a lot of attention to this cancer on our body politic, and has also used Republican Gomorrah as a basic resource.

Crap Christians don't believe in Jesus or his teachings, on which they basically defecate. Not only have they manufactured their own Jesus, in all essential respects their "macho" Jesus is an Antichrist, clearly intended to undercut the actual teachings of Jesus. Now, in fact, the Crap Christians have undertaken to actually rewrite the Bible to conform to their fundamentally fascist vision, as Noah reported in awarding his "Why Do You Hate the Bible? Award" (among his year-end Scorn Awards) to Ned Flanders look-alike Andy Schlafly of Conservapedia --

for their Bible Project, which aims to “translate” the Bible into a conservative world view -- "to render God's word into modern English without liberal translation distortions" -- because in the demented minds at the Conservapedia madrasa, not only does real life itself have a liberal bias, but so does the Good Book. ("Liberal bias has become the single biggest distortion in modern Bible translations.")

Translation: The Bible needs to be pounded into the service of the ultra-right-wing vision of modern American Movement Conservatism.

Does Joe Lieberman serve the interests of Israel's Likudniks in the Senate? No question about it, and Howie in particular has written about that a lot. Has Joe Lieberman engaged in activities designed to control the minds of Americans? Well, actually, yes, most notably in his efforts to impose censorship on American music -- in league, of course, with the Crap Christians. I don't doubt that his heart is with them, but he hasn't personally done much to advance the cause.

Whereas the Crap Christians have converted, at conservative estimate, tens of millions of Americans into zombielike tools of their authoritarian religious-political vision, creating an electoral force beyond the reach of truth, reason, or even reality, thereby rendering the country increasingly ungovernable, unless perhaps by some eventual mind-controlling authority that's consistent with theirs.

Widespread human gullibility is the Crap Christians' marching weapon. Just this past Saturday Glenn Greenwald wrote a post called "Religious faith in government accusations," in which he noted:

[I]f one hears only the Government's unchallenged, untested accusations about detainees and others whom it labels Terrorists and Enemy Combatants, it semes clear and obvious that the person is an Evil, Dangerous and Bad Man. But when those accusations are actually subjected to scrutiny by courts, it turns out that -- in the overwhelming majority of cases -- there is virtually no reliable evidence to support them. Even beyond those cases, Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell, had access to detainee files and revealed that a huge number of Guantanamo detainees -- constantly accused of being the Worst of the Worst -- were, in fact, completely innocent, as even the Bush administration came to acknowledge.

Glenn went on to point out: "Despite those facts, a religious-like faith in government pronouncements continues to dominate debates over Terrorism and civil liberties."

It's no accident that far-right-wing government pronouncements are greeted by this segment of the population with "religious-like faith." Their faith has been brainwashing them to do so.

I used to feel a lot more anger than I do now toward the "good" Christians who look the other way. What's changed is that I've come to understand how under siege many of them feel in the face of the onslaught of Crap Christianity, which has the show-biz pizzazz and a savvy combination of the right mix of rewards and punishments to lure their people away. But when so-called good Christians deny the existence of or danger from the Crap Christian movement in this country, I have a real problem.

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