Christianity Suffers From False Parodies on the Right and the Left

What passes for Christianity, what people see and mistake for Christianity, that's what's wrong with it. That Christianity — the phenomena, not the faith — has been eclipsed by parody; it's why so many dismiss it. Because what's laughable and incredible isn't genuine Christianity, but rather a counterfeit too often misconstrued for the real thing.False in two forms. Parodied first by the right, it's Christianity aligned with the politics of the right. This is false evangelical faith, sometimes false Catholic faith, a Christianity subservient to other masters. This is the Christianity which deigns to underwrite nation, race or regime. It's false in that it prizes being a certain type of American more than Christian, editing charity along political lines.A Christianity in many ways theologically and morally orthodox, "biblical," still, its hollow ecclesiology means its church is America, and not the society that Christ founded and not what Jesus called the kingdom, in which is neither Jew nor Greek, Mexican nor American, and which becomes no kingdom on this earth. This false religion sees presidents as chosen instruments of God, sacralizes profane power and believes God loves Americans better than others. It's tribal faith, not Christianity. The dangerous idolatry is very much part of what's wrong with Christianity today.But, of course, that's not the only mistaken faith. There's also a Christianity parodied by the left and aligned with the fleeting politics of the left, infected too with the deepening absurdity and thinly veiled nihilism of cultural liberalism. Here are many of your millennial ministers, more like underemployed social workers, hip middle-class youngsters indebted for masters degrees of divinity, hardly worth the paper they're printed on, bought from dying institutions. These ministers can offer an extended annotated discourse on privilege whilst looking up from their MacBooks in some regentrified coffee shop, but couldn't offer a coherent account of the Gospel if you begged them, couldn't tell you what difference Christ really makes.Seeing in every progressive acronym and every left-leaning hashtag the movement of the Spirit, they're quick with the shallowest of biblical analogies offered for the latest social cause, and even quicker to support any politician who can parrot the latest liberal zeitgeist. These are the protestants who literally anointed Cory Booker after he announced his candidacy for president; these are the Catholics who willfully ignore and twist the clear teachings of their own church. For them, no theology is foundational, no dialectic evil. This too is what's wrong with Christianity, an ideology equally dangerous.  Continue reading...