That's quite an all-encompassing headline for a post that started with this Alan Colmes's post that led to this post which bashes both the GOP and Christianity quite effectively. Well, not quite.
A couple of weeks ago, I went to a conference for my church and picked up a book titled They Like Jesus but Not the Church. I haven't gotten into it very far yet (had other things I needed to read first), but the basic premise is that we live in a post-Christian society which looks very disfavorably upon Christianity and is openly hostile to it. At the same time, more people look favorably upon Jesus. These two ideas sound like they would create some cognitive dissonance, but the fact of the matter is that we live in a culture (of which both posts are examples) that is contemptuous of Christianity and has lots of misconceptions and mischaracterizations about Christians.
From the Wolfrum post:
For years, Jesus Christ had kept quiet while his “followers” had killed and committed horrendous acts of intolerance in his name. They were the “birth pangs” of a new religion, his surrogates would say. One day he would be accepted by all as a liberator.
But in an announcement that has left his followers shaken, the Christ himself has come forward to announce that he is leaving Christianity, effective immediately. The reasoning: The 2008 Republican Platform. Reached for comment at a West Hollywood coffee shop, Christ said that he couldn’t deal with a world that so misinterpreted his words and actions.
“They mention the word ‘faith’ 12 times in their platform,” said Christ. “Do they think we’re idiots or something?”
Christ went on to say that he had grown tired of being portrayed as a “marauding archangel of vengeance,” and that he held out little hope that the world would ever accept his message of peace.
Not only does this pervert what Jesus actually said (and didn't say), but it manages to tie the basest of smears to the GOP as though the Republican platform itself is the measure of Christianity. Why not bring up the Democratic Party platform, which also discussed faith?
Of course, the point of such slams is not to understand who Christ is, what his mission for the church is and has been or protecting the freedom to worship Him in private and in public. It's really just another way of bashing the GOP and Christians--two groups the left hates--with one blow.
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