When Christianity seeped into Europe, Augustine covered the naked love of Jesus with Neo-Platonic metaphysics. Later, Aquinas constructed a gilded cage for love within the rational framework of Aristotle.
Soon Christianity would be tainted even further with the seeds of colonialism. Christian empires would feel themselves “called” to bring their Christ to the nations. Conquest and exploitation were justified under that mantle of evangelism. Unfortunately, the Christ imperialists praised looked more like themselves than the dimly remembered Jewish rabbi who called followers to leave just such systems of domination, to sell what they had, and to share the world.
Eventually, cultural Christianity would help give birth to a new Christ. Imperialist propaganda would replace the teachings of Jesus with the false Christ of Colonial Capitalism. Believers could still give lip service to love, but one’s allegiance was now to generic creeds, and one’s loyalty was to cultural hierarchies of power.
There was no longer room for naked love in the new Imperial Christianity. As capitalist empires celebrated Christmas, the cold dark night of the Christmas story was replaced with garish lights. The “silent night” of the new birth was lost in a cacophony of commercial music. Most tragically, the message of “Peace on Earth, Good Will to All” was replaced with nationalistic pride and to a narcissistic form of Christianity where Jesus served as a mascot for systems of greed and domination.
Jackson Browne is not a Christian, but, he wrote one of my favorite Christmas songs of all time called “The Rebel Jesus:”
“We guard our world with locks and guns
And we guard our fine possessions
And once a year when Christmas comes
We give to our relations
And perhaps we give a little to the poor
If the generosity should seize us
But if anyone of us should interfere
In the business of why there are poor
They get the same as the rebel Jesus.”
Whether or not you, the reader, are Christian, you have an incredible stake in this conversation. The insanity being expressed in the name of a nationalized and capitalistic Christ affects us all. Ignoring Christian nationalism will not work. Pathological religion does not leave us alone just because we leave IT alone. Bad religion does not die gracefully, it becomes predatory to every alternative point of view.
It seems to me this discussion requires that we not to get stuck in the dichotomy between theism and atheism long enough to find our common ground of sanity in the unifying depths of naked love.
I always find it interesting that early Christians were accused of being Atheists. To some observers, the threat of the early church was not that they had a wrong creed, but that they seemed to have no real creed at all. The “creeds” they recited were more like hymns than philosophies. Their faith could only be reduced to a life of love.
Bad religion affects us all but Christians bear a particular responsibility to renounce the false Christ of Capitalism and empire and to return to the naked love of humankind that Jesus and all great spiritual teachers have called us.