"God's Avengers" have no place in America's secular government
Christians are free to run for office, but American is not a Christian nation, nor can you dismantle the wall separating Church and State
But when fascism comes it will not be in the form of an anti-American movement or pro-Hitler bund, practicing disloyalty. Nor will it come in the form of a crusade against war. It will appear rather in the luminous robes of flaming patriotism; it will take some genuinely indigenous shape and color, and it will spread only because its leaders, who are not yet visible, will know how to locate the great springs of public opinion and desire and the streams of thought that flow from them and will know how to attract to their banners leaders who can command the support of the controlling minorities in American public life. The danger lies not so much in the would-be Fuhrers who may arise, but in the presence in our midst of certainly deeply running currents of hope and appetite and opinion. The war upon fascism must be begun there.
John Thomas Flynn, As We Go Marching (1944)
It seems as if just about every Presidential election cycle, yet another Far-Right Christofascist Get Out the Vote (GOTV) movement pops up intending to drive (or terrify) Right-wing Christian voters into the polls. These groups, while skirting the edge of the Johnson Amendment, want to ensure that more “godly” (i.e., Far-Right Christofascist) Republicans run and vote in elections. This, of course, furthers their goal of insinuating their flavor of God deeper into our government.
This time around, the GOTV efforts are coming from a Far-Right Christofascist group called My God Votes. Of course, the idea that God votes and is a “kill-’em-and-grill-’em” Republican is patently absurd. God, the concept, is not the exclusive property of the GOP, Christians, or Republican voters, nor do they have any moral claim to Him. God is not a partisan or even strictly Christian concept.
And yet (as
has said, “democracy in America is taking a fucking beating these days”), there are groups out there who’d willingly burn America to the ground to prove otherwise.Just about every election season sees the emergence of a new religious-right effort designed to mobilize conservative Christians to vote. The latest such effort comes from My God Votes, which exists to “empower religious leaders and their congregations to take a stand on godly governance, current events and religious freedoms.”
Founded by Texas pastor John Greiner of Glorious Way Church in Houston, My God Votes is run by James Buntrock, who serves as associate pastor at Griener’s church. Earlier this month, Buntrock hosted an inaugural banquet for My God Votes featuring religious-right pseudo-historian Tim Barton as the keynote speaker. In opening the event, Buntrock laid out the organization’s explicitly Christian nationalist agenda, declaring that having right-wing Christians in control of government is necessary to fulfill God’s command that they “have dominion over the Earth and to subdue it.”
I’m hardly a theologian. Still, I think I remember enough of my Sunday School to understand that God’s command that they “have dominion over the Earth and to subdue it” was not meant as a literal command to America’s Far-Right Republicans. Nor is it to be taken as justification for Christofascists to seize control of all aspects of American life.
I’m not about to split theological hairs. That said, I can’t see how a rational person could do anything but wholeheartedly reject the idea that God commanded Republicans like Pastor Greiner to exercise “dominion over the Earth.” That presumptuously ignores the reality that his flavor of pretentious, self-superior Christianity is one of at least 3000 religions worldwide. What makes his faith tradition the ONE, TRUE, and ONLY faith? And how does his argument carry greater weight than a Taliban mullah's argument that his flavor of Islam is the bomb?
It’s like arguing over how many angels can fit on the head of a pin. Before that question can be addressed, there must be agreement as to whether angels, in fact, even exist. If you can agree on that existential point, you must then find consensus on the size of the head of the pin in question. If you can’t settle that issue, the dispute over how many angels will fit on the aforementioned head of a pin is rather pointless.
“I want to start off by saying this is not a political event,” Buntrock declared, prompting laughter from the audience and forcing him to insist that he was being serious. “I say that with all sincerity, because what we’re doing here tonight is kingdom business. This is God’s business.”
“Let me talk just for a minute about what it means to serve in government,” Buntrock continued. “Jesus has delegated his authority to us, the believers, and we’re supposed to operate with his authority on this Earth. And then we take a piece of our God-given authority and we delegate it to somebody to serve in office who’s here to serve us. And so when we read Romans 13 with that understanding, you recognize the lines of authority.”
OK, but what about a Muslim who believes that Allah has given similar instructions to Muslims? Or those in other parts of the world pursuing other faith traditions? Is it not rather arrogant to assume that your God has given you the right to define and pursue “God’s business?”
God is not a White Conservative Cisgender Heterosexual patriot, nor is He American…so how can anyone define, much less pursue “God’s business?”
And how silly is it that you’re relying on a 2000-year-old book that’s been translated and re-translated by who knows how many hands over hundreds of years, some of whom had their own distinct agendas?
Despite how Pastor Greiner or leaders of other “kill-’em-and-grill-’em” Christofascist groups may present themselves, their goals have nothing to do with advancing the teachings of Jesus Christ. It’s about temporal political power and being able to force their harsh, über-Conservative agenda on all Americans.
It’s about power, control, and forcing their theological/political ideology on the entire country. Welcome to Margaret Atwood’s Gilead, eh?
“Those who serve in office are called God’s ministers for good,” Buntrock added. “He is a minister to execute wrath on those who practice evil, and so we have a line of defense that we elect and put in office to execute wrath. They call him God’s Avenger. All of you who are elected people, I want you to know you are God’s avenger to execute wrath against evil. So thank you for serving in God’s kingdom tonight.”
“I want you to know that God is in the business of government, he’s in the business of governing. It started out in Genesis when he created man and woman, and he gave them dominion and he charged them to have dominion over the Earth and to subdue it,” Buntrock declared. “So, you gotta subdue it, take it by force and then have dominion rule over it. So he’s charged man from the very beginning to rule over creation. God established the branches of government that we have in this country; he’s our king, he’s our lawgiver, and he’s our judge: the executive, the legislative and the judicial branches of government.”
God is NOT in the business of government or governing. Nor did He establish the branches of American governance. All those things were done by men, some of whom believed in a benevolent God and others who didn’t.
The Founding Fathers shared a desire that American governance be secular, something that Pastor Greiner and his fellow Christofascists have chosen to ignore. The Founding Fathers created a two-track system that fostered a structure separating Church from State. Each would have influence and control over its domain but could not bleed into the affairs of the other.
The Founding Fathers were determined that their new nation wouldn’t become a theocracy…and it’s survived in that form for almost a quarter-millennium.
Christofascists are adamant in their pursuit of a theocracy because they claim, correctly, that the phrase “separation of Church and State” never appears in the Constitution. But the intent of the Founding Fathers was clear, and there’s ample precedent to underscore that intent. I’ve written frequently about the 1791 Treaty of Tripoli and Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists. Those are but two examples of writings from the Founding Fathers that lay out their thinking.
The fact that “the separation of Church and State” doesn’t appear in the Constitution doesn’t render it invalid. The “right to possess a weapon of war” also doesn’t appear in the Constitution…but try telling that to a Proudly Closed-Minded Gun Control Foe ©.
America isn’t a Christian nation, but one in which citizens are free to be Christian if that’s their chosen path. American governance is secular and answers to no one faith tradition.
Sadly, America today abounds with Christofascists who are willing to misinterpret the intent of the Founding Fathers to justify their lust for political power. And, as
tells us, Far-Right Christian Nationalism is slowly but surely swallowing America whole.
No, Christians are not called to establish “God’s government on Earth.” That’s power-hungry Christofascists getting their greed and power-hungry bloodlust. Despite their flowery prayers and phony words, none of that has anything to do with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
The danger posed by Christofascism is, as
explains, about blood and power. I’d also add that any time Donald Trump is involved, there’s a significant component of anger and grievance.While a genuine fascist is all about “blood and soil,” Christian fascism has to be more, well, flexible. Subtle even. After all, if you claim to be a universal religion, it can’t just be about ethnicity. It has to be about “pure faith.”
But I think it is more than pure faith. And it isn’t just about ethnicity. Christian nationalism is always about pure blood and purifying blood, which, in Christianity, is about something else, something theological that bleeds over (if you’ll pardon the expression) into power, race, politics, and nationality….
My argument here, however, is that Christianity always holds the possibility of religious nationalism or fascism — believing in a blood atonement is a dangerous thing, far more dangerous than we’d like to admit. It is only a few theological steps from a “fountain filled with blood” to desiring actual blood or seeking to purify the world with blood. The church itself has never been shy of wielding the sword against others or its own. When threat and fear arise, they stoke the desire for purity, and purity is embraced as a sacred mission to cleanse a people, community, or nation, there’s very little to stop the lure of holy violence. Call it a crusade, Christian nationalism, or Christofascism. But by whatever name it has been — or will be called — it is bad.
And it is in our blood.
The reality that many of the “Christian” groups have embraced Donald Trump can, should, and must be taken as evidence of moral, ideological, and theological hypocrisy. People like Pastor Greiner and groups like My God Votes are little more than Far-Right hypocrites using their flavor of God as a smokescreen. They worship America first, with God coming in a distant second.
Once they’re in power, those who don’t fall into line will be dealt with accordingly.
They discount all other faith traditions save for theirs as evil and illegitimate and those who follow those “false” faiths as apostates. Again, I’m no theologian, but that’s hardly the behavior of the benevolent God I was taught about in Sunday School.
We don’t need more God in our government. Because, despite what the Christofascists might have convinced themselves of, America doesn’t belong to good, God-fearing, White Conservative Christian Cisgender Heterosexual patriots.
Americans, regardless of their theological bent, would do well to keep in mind that there’s no such thing as a “little bit of dictatorship.” And once we allow the Christofascists to get their foot in the door, forcing them back out may prove exceedingly difficult.
Christofascists might also do well to remember that Christians like themselves need not be intolerant, inflexible, judgmental assholes. This world could use more Christians like Jimmy Carter, a man who seriously endeavors to lead a Christ-like life (but was laughed out of Washington as weak and pusillanimous for it).
America could use more tolerance, acceptance, compassion, understanding, love, and kindness- some of the things that are actually found in the Gospel.
But those things don’t lend themselves to the sort of violent conflict that Christofascists are gearing up for. And so we have large numbers of “Christians” claiming the “right” to rule America and basing their theology mainly on the Old Testament.
I have SO many questions. Most of them revolved around the hypocrisy of Christofascists who lack the self-awareness to recognize what they’re doing. Or perhaps they don’t feel the need to hold themselves to their own impossibly inflexible standards.
That said, if you judge others by the rules of Old Testament theology, you’ll lack credibility if you can’t be bothered to live by them.
Are you wearing clothes of mixed fibers? Or eating shellfish? Do you plant different crops side by side? Do you insist on working on the Sabbath? I could go on, but you get the point. Cherry-picking isn’t a good look.
We would all do well to ask ourselves a question that
has already reflected on: What is America becoming? And once we have the answer to that, we can proceed to the next question:Is that the America we want?
(All of my posts are public at this time. Any reader financial support will be greatly appreciated, but there is as yet no paywall to access all of my work. I’ll trust my readers to determine if my work is worthy of their financial support and at what level. To those who do offer their support, thank you. It means more than you know.)
By the way, the "Woe unto you" poster at the top carefully elides the most important part of the Bible verse: "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation." (KJV)
I could also add that the vanity of taking God's name does not come in the form of saying "God damn it!" Since God's name is not "GOD", to take it in vain means being so vain as to take God's name to yourself, to presume to legislate God's will and to even dictate to God.
I *could* say that, but I won't ...